🇬🇧 About making friends when you move to a place where you don't know anyone

I'm going to talk about a topic that relates to well-being and it can be a barrier to anyone thinking of relocating. How to make friends in a city where you don't know anyone. I will not give advice, I will share some of my experience, which can be a basis for building your "strategy" of meeting people.

It can be scary to think about leaving friends, family, references in your life to go and live in a place where you don't know anyone, whether to study, work, have your company in a more favourable environment for that type of business, live with your foreign husband or wife, etc. It sounds scary, but it's the best thing in the world to conquer your fears and insecurities. Currently, people who knew me before I took this step for the first time in 1998 only have contact with me via the internet, but some friends from high school, even far away, have noticed my change.

As a teenager I was more than shy, I didn't even answer the roll-call at school. I made friends only because my colleagues, for reasons I don't know (curiosity about my "particular" behaviour perhaps), approached me.

In college I decided to start answering calls and presenting papers, but I haven't started conversations with colleagues yet.

When I started using the Internet in 1999, already speaking some English, I started talking to people from all over the world. And from that moment on I started to have more initiative to talk to people, even though in the "real world" it is normal for unknown people to come and talk to me to this day.

One thing that has always worked for me is to seek common interests and talk about them, and then create spaces for other topics. I've loved music since childhood, so, especially on the internet, it's common for me to ask about other people's musical preferences. Some artists I discovered in these conversations are part of my Spotify playlists. If you want to follow me there and then share with me some artists you think I might like, given my tastes there, feel free.

Often, when we meet a person outside the Internet, the environment in which we know each other already gives points of interest. Examples of this are when we meet people at cult movie screenings, in the gym or on a class. In the case of the environment, it may be worth risking questions on related topics, such as asking a new colleague at the gym if she knows a veggie restaurant you love, and even inviting her for a snack. Some people venture into a chat about whey protein and fitness muses themes. I find it very boring, so I'd rather talk about a vegetarian restaurant, a place that serves a wonderful açaí or a boxing movie. I like the gym because it is one more option for moving the body. Not as a way to change it.

Perhaps the experience that most made me fear rejection when talking to strangers was the first time I had to do a group work on the MBA in Porto Alegre. I didn't know anyone in town, so far no one in class had talked to me (unlike my other student experiences). I had to find a group. I saw 3 colleagues with a very typical business administration look, in shirt and tie, and since I had also studied administration, I asked if I could work with them. We never became friends to go out together, as I never had that kind of friendship with anyone in the class despite going to a barbecue with them once, but ok, the goal was to have someone to do group work with and I managed to do that.

I use the internet a lot to meet people and learn about cultures and also talk to some professional musicians that I admire. Not bad for the 16-year-old who did not respond to the roll-call at school. So I think you can too, if you decide to allow yourself to have this experience.

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Nycka, the Nomad