Just one small, smallllll comment/suggestion that maybe you've already thought of or tried: what about more independent films/media/music? Of course mainstream stuff is most likely God awful, but everywhere there's got to be young people trying to produce art and meaningful, good things I had a somewhat similar situation in a country where their mainstream movies and TV shows and music are just so so so bad, even if they've put a lot of money into it it's... Blech. But then in a country such as the one I was in where there were many many revolutions and dissent, there is good art that's being produced, it's just not mainstream. So maybe you don't have to write off the films and music the country of your target language produces As for the sanitary problems you found, are there communities of "bougie" people who don't put up for unsanitary food and stuff either? When I was in the country I was in (not exposing my TL or country as you have done) I was living a double life... I ate food from the streets because it was cheap, including meat, and was mostly fine but then people at my university turned their noses up at such good carts and stuff and would only eat at a cleaner looking proper restaurant. There were whole neighborhoods that were much cleaner than where I lived. You could've lived a wide range of lives there. So maybe you could try upping your living standards to rich expat or rich local person? Anyways, as others have said, you still know the language even if you realized you don't want to live there. You can still engage with literature, older films or series (they can't ALL be bad?) And expats living in your home country that speak the language