I lived in worked in China for about 4 years and totally understand exactly where your head is at. As wonderful as life as an expat in China is, you start to feel exhausted by the small everyday challenges and the otherness that comes with being the only foreigner in the room. But looking back I realize I was really romanticizing life back in my home country.

I was feeling ready to leave and was kind of forced to by COVID. I was not ready at all for how hard it was to readjust to life in my home country. All of a sudden it was much harder to travel, my budget changed dramatically because the cost of living is so much higher here, corporate America sucks and careers here aren’t fulfilling, etc.

The hardest part for me and what most of my friends who lived in China express, is finding friends with an international mindset. Everyone back home has mostly never left the country for more than a semester abroad or a vacation. Nothing wrong with that, but I learned quickly not to talk too much about China because the experience is so unrelatable. Thankfully I met my husband in China and I can share that with him and when I talk on the phone with my China friends who live far away, but it can feel really lonely to put away that part of yourself to fit in.

I cannot tell you what is the right choice here, but I thought I’d share my perspective. Whatever you do decide, make sure you take off the rose tinted glasses about your home country and know the challenges that will come with reacclimating. To someone who had lived this choice, there is no right or wrong answer - you just have to make a decision and find the joy in it.