7 American Truths I Had To Kill To Survive Abroad

The Baggage I Didn’t Know I Packed

Rewiring My Mind Took More Than a Passport and a Plane Ticket.

Have you ever been so sure of something, only to find out later you were walking around like a tourist with toilet paper stuck to your shoe?

That was me. 

Not literally, though I did once trail half a roll of toilet paper out of a bathroom in a Georgian restaurant (don’t ask).

I mean mentally. Spiritually. Culturally. I thought I was open-minded.

I’d lived in France. Taught in Ukraine. Hiked across Spain. I’d eaten pig parts I couldn’t identify in Romania, gotten heatstroke in Albania, and survived a month-long CELTA course in Poland without sobbing in public more than once.

I figured I was basically untouchable when it came to cultural adaptation.

Guess what? I wasn’t.

It turns out, there’s a special kind of ignorance that only shows itself after you’ve bought a one-way ticket, moved your life into a suitcase, and started asking your Ukrainian landlord why there’s no hot water again.

It’s not the obvious stuff either. It’s the deep-down, default crap.

The stuff you never even thought to question.

Like why you feel personally offended when someone’s 15 minutes late.

• Why silence at a dinner table in Spain makes you sweat.
• Why your first instinct when a stranger doesn’t smile back at you in Ukraine is to assume they hate you.

These weren’t just cultural misunderstandings. These were internal meltdowns of an American identity I didn’t know I was lugging around like emotional carry-on.

I’m not alone either. 

A fellow traveler I met in France, an American who thought tipping customs were global, once tried to force a 20 percent tip on a bartender in Strasbourg.

The bartender looked at him like he was trying to bribe his way into the mafia.

That’s when it hit both of us. 

Maybe, just maybe, we needed to unlearn a few things.

Living abroad doesn’t just teach you about the world. It holds up a mirror and asks if you like what’s staring back.

Oh, and guess what? Sometimes you don’t like what you see.

So if you’re thinking about moving abroad, already living that expat life, or just wondering why everyone in Spain thinks you’re in a rush all the time, let me save you a few years of identity whiplash.

Here are 7 things I truths about being American had to slay before I could survive overseas.

1. The World Doesn’t Run on Efficiency and That’s Not Always Bad

My first taste of this came in Spain while walking the Camino de Santiago.

I had trained my American brain to measure productivity in steps, kilometers, and how few breaks I took between cafés.

But one morning, an elderly Spanish man waved me over and insisted I sit down for a glass of wine… at 10:15 a.m. on a Tuesday.

I kept checking my watch like a parolee, waiting for the “efficient” moment to get up.

It never came.

What did arrive was an hour-long conversation in broken Spanish about family, football, and Franco.

I didn’t “make good time” that day.

But I made a connection that stuck with me longer than the blisters.

What looks like inefficiency is often just presence wearing different clothes.

Sometimes the delay “is” the point.

Truth Slain: If you’re always trying to optimize your experience abroad, you’ll miss it entirely.

2. Being On Time Is Cultural Not Moral

In Ukraine, showing up early made me look either suspicious or like I was trying too hard.

In Georgia, being “on time” was a suggestion, not a commitment. I once waited an hour for a friend to meet me for coffee, and when she showed up, she didn’t apologize.

She hugged me and said, “I took the long route because the weather was nice.”

Meanwhile, I had aged five years in my seat, convinced I had been ghosted.

Back in the US, timeliness is equated with character.

Abroad, I realized that equating punctuality with moral virtue was like judging someone’s soul based on how they slice bread.

Truth Slain: Being on time isn’t universal and being flexible doesn’t mean you’re flaky. It means you’re human.

3. Not Everyone Wants to Talk About Work or Talk at All

In the US, it’s basically illegal to meet someone new and *not* ask what they do.

In Bulgaria, I once asked a guy at a bar what his job was, and he stared at me like I’d just asked for his bank PIN and his mother’s maiden name.

He replied, “I do things,” then turned back to his beer.

It threw me at first. I thought that kind of reaction was just a post-Soviet Ukraine thing, where asking what someone does brings flashbacks of KGB interrogations and deadpan answers like ‘Business’.

Turns out, in many places, especially outside of career-obsessed cultures like the US, people don’t wrap their identities around their jobs.

In fact, many just don’t want to talk to a stranger about anything personal, ever.

Truth Slain: If someone doesn’t want to talk, let them be.

Silence can be its own kind of conversation.

4. Friendliness Isn’t Universal and That’s Okay

In Kyiv, I once smiled at a woman on a metro and got a look like I had just insulted her grandmother.

In Switzerland, I tried small talk with a guy next to me in a café.

He slowly stood up, picked up his drink, and moved three tables away.

No explanation. Just a retreat.

For years I thought friendliness was a universal virtue. 

It isn’t. 

In many cultures, friendliness from a stranger reads as needy, intrusive, or just plain weird.

Truth Slain: Not everyone owes you warmth.

Respect isn’t always packaged in a smile.

5. ‘Freedom’ Means Different Things in Different Languages

Growing up in the US, freedom meant (so-called) independence. Doing what you want, when you want, how you want.

In France, freedom looked different. It was about long lunches, paid holidays, and no emails after 6 p.m.

In Ukraine, it was about surviving without fear.

A Mexican traveler, I had once met, told me freedom meant the ability to provide for your family without working three jobs.

Every country has its own flavor of freedom.

Mine wasn’t the only recipe.

But realizing that made me less of a preacher and more of a listener.

Truth Slain: Freedom isn’t a one-size-fits-all slogan.

Ask what it means to others, and you’ll learn a lot about the world… and yourself.

6. Nobody Cares If You’re American, You’re Just a Foreigner

I used to lead with it. “I’m American,” I’d say, like that was supposed to explain everything from my accent to my dinner order.

In some countries, it felt like I was announcing myself as either the punchline or the problem.

In others, it got a shrug and a quick return to more interesting topics.

In Thailand, nobody cared.

In France, they cared mostly when I mispronounced croissant.

In Ukraine, it was just mildly suspicious.

I realized I wasn’t being treated unfairly, I was just being treated normally.

But it felt amazing.

Nobody wanted to interrogate my national identity.

They just wanted to know if I was going to finish the beer I ordered.

Truth Slain: Stop announcing your country like it’s a badge.

It’s not. It’s just part of your backstory.

If people want to know, they’ll ask, believe me.

Actually, I never offer it, but I’m asked it, All. The. Time.

7. You Can Love Your Country Without Thinking It’s the Best Or the Worst

I used to think I had to either defend America or reject it completely, like patriotism was all or nothing, no in-between.

Then I moved abroad. 

Somewhere between watching public healthcare work in France and seeing a former student in Ukraine live on $300 a month, I stopped needing to prove anything.

Yes, I missed certain things. But I didn’t miss the superiority or inferiority complex.

Real love for your country, I found, doesn’t require a standing ovation.

Not liking it’s current state of affairs, doesn’t require you to run away and hide from it in shame either…

It just means you care enough to tell the truth.

Truth Slain: You can love where you’re from without pretending it’s perfect or pretending you’re done with it.

Here’s What I Know Now

Living abroad didn’t just teach me about other cultures. It deconstructed mine. I didn’t expect that. I thought I was adding layers.

What I didn’t realize was that some of the old layers needed to be peeled away first.

So if you’re packing a bag to live overseas, bring your curiosity.

But leave your assumptions at the gate.

Oh and while you’re at it, maybe leave behind that invisible rulebook too.

What about you? 

What mental truths did you have to slay when you went abroad?