By Cherrye Moore

Last week fellow ACC blogger and expat, Chantal Panozzo of One Big Yodel wrote five tips to help expats fight isolation abroad. Her tips were right on the mark and in fact, I did many of those things to help with my own isolation when I moved to southern Italy.

But sometimes expats relocate to a country,or in my case, a part of the country, where they truly are very much alone.

When I moved to Calabria in April, 2006-happy anniversary, Me!-I fully expected to be able to quickly and easily meet new people. I did everything experts tell you to do-I joined a gym, I frequented the same places, I was open to making new friends.

But it didn’t work.

In addition to Chantal’s tips, here are three more things I expats can do when they are in an under-expat-populated community.

1. Teach a Private English Class

Teaching private English lessons is the number one thing I did that helped me make friends and meet new people in Calabria. My very first student, a freelance photojournalist, introduced me to his wife and now, years later, the two of us are still friends. I also met some of my favorite people, a family with four children, through teaching English and one of my closest expat friends found me through an ad someone placed for me in a bookstore.

In fact, I can trace the largest percentage of my friends in Calabria back to these lessons.

2. Join an Expat Forum

Expat forums are an easy, non-threatening way to introduce yourself and find more expats in your area. The very first expat I met saw a posting I had made on the Expats in Italy forum and emailed me telling me she was only 45 minutes away. Now, 45 minutes may seem far to those of you in big cities or metropolitan areas, but here in Calabria, meeting an expat an hour away, is like getting a great new neighbor.

3. Look up Expats on Facebook

It is strange to see how much the Internet has changed since I moved to Italy, but new expats have so many more opportunities for meeting like-minded people than we did four years ago. If I was a new expat today, I’d go on Facebook and search for groups or fan pages for Italy and start talking. Once you meet two or three people, you can see who their friends are and, ask them if they know people in your area and easily get connected.

What other tips do you have to help expats in less popular areas meet new people?

Cherrye Moore is a Calabria travel consultant and freelance writer living in southern Italy. She writes about expat life for Affordable Calling Cards.net and about living and traveling in southern Italy on her site, My Bella Vita.

(photo: Mr.Happy on Flickr)

Tags: Calabria, expat in italy, expat life, Expats in Italy, Getting Adjusted, isolation, Italy, Making Friends

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