I met Dionne in Beijing, where she had been living abroad and making a home since 1997. She’s from Barbados and was offered a scholarship to study in China, which she took excitedly. Since this was a time before social media, personal relationships were absolutely essential to finding ways to moving abroad alone from Barbados, and living abroad successfully in China. She found the Chinese people to be very welcoming and gracious. 

Before she could start school, she had to learn Mandarin so she could take her classes. The process of learning the language was very difficult, but luckily she had other foreign classmates that helped her out. 

A friend got her an internship and then a job in a corporate events agency, and she has stayed in that industry ever since. However, she had to basically learn Mandarin again because the terms are so industry-specific compared to educational terms.

She begins each day at 5:30am with meditation, exercise, and coffee, then some free time before going to work. She tries to go to bed by 9:30 in order to get a full 8 hours of sleep. In order to feel at home, she listens to a lot of Caribbean music and keeps her childhood bear with her.

She now lives in San Francisco, after a transition of 10 months back in Barbados. She’s glad she had that transition time because she hadn’t realized how tightly strung she had been living in China, and is enjoying the more laid-back life in San Francisco. However, she’s had to rebuild her social network, and still feels some culture shock because she’s never lived in the US before. 

One of the joys of moving abroad is that she really loves being able to share her own culture with her new friends.

To know more about Dionne’s journey through Barbados, China, Paris and San Francisco, into episode 9 of the Are we home yet Podcast, out now! 

Support the podcast, click here to donate and keep the cool interviews with guests from around the world going!

Tune in every week for 2 new episodes with people from around the world, who are enjoying living and working abroad!

Subscribe, Download, Share, Rate, Review the podcast!

When you share the podcast, tag us as well:  

IG and FB : @arewehomeyetpodcast 

Twitter: @arewehomeyetpod

*** Check out the blog for handy information about living abroad and buy the ebook , a great guidebook for moving abroad!