Tim Tams and Vegemite aside, what we miss while abroad can help us learn a lot about who we are. While it's easy to cringe when people start guffing on about how your "OE" is a journey of self discovery and so on; we can draw something of sense from that cliche. Being away from home, it goes without saying really, you'll miss stuff. That stuff will more often that not be completely random - things that you never expected to miss, and that's when you realise what is truly important to you. Or perhaps you'll find that you don't miss much at all. Either way, it opens your eyes to what you really want in life and what actually makes you happy, not just what you think makes you happy. You'll compare who you are abroad to who you are at home, you'll choose the best bits of each and grow a little. But back to yearning for pieces of home...

It makes a whole lot of sense that what you miss when you are abroad is indicative of what is important to you. If you piece together the things you miss you can get a pretty clear picture of what your ultimate lifestyle would look like. Say, you may be in London, you love the city, but you miss your mates and the thai take out shop that was a block away from you apartment back home. A great exercise in getting what you want out of life is to compile a list of the things you love abroad as well as that you love & miss from back home. Often you'll find there can be a compromise somewhere that will offer you everything you love and even if you can't, you'll walk away with a greater appreciation of the stuff that really matters.

Usually the biggest hurdle when abroad is missing the companionship you had back home. Whether it be your girl friends, your family or even your work mates. Either way, chances are the people you miss aren't going to be up and moving to wherever in the world YOU are & the best thing to do is not dwell. The great thing is that travelling offers the absolute perfect opportunity to meet like minded, fun loving souls that have found themselves in the same predicament as yourself. Speak to travellers that have done their time and they'll tell you that one of the best parts of travelling was the people they met along the way. All the while remember, the bonus of having people you miss back home is that chances are they miss you too, which means you can talk them into sending care packs full of aforementioned tim tams and Vegemite - send them some foreign appreciation in the form of a 'wish you were here' postcard and a snow globe and everyone's happy!