Your first week working abroad: what actually happens

You're standing outside the staff entrance with a bag that's slightly too heavy, a phone showing three per cent battery, and absolutely no idea where you're supposed to go next. Someone told you to "just ask for Marco" but there are six people in the car park and none of them look like a Marco. This is your first hour. It's completely normal, and it gets better.

Nobody really prepares you for the first week of a seasonal job abroad. The content online is mostly about how to find the job, or breathless highlights from month three when everything was brilliant. What actually happens in those first seven days? The overwhelm, the small wins, the unexpected emotional slump on day four. Barely gets talked about. So here's the honest version.

Arrival day is exhausting in a way that has nothing to do with the journey. You're processing a new place, new faces, a new role, and a new home all at once. Even if the logistics go smoothly (your room's ready, your manager's friendly, someone shows you around), your brain's running at full capacity just absorbing it all. Don't expect to feel settled by the end of day one. You won't, and that's fine.

The practical things that make the biggest difference on arrival day are small. Check your roaming actually works (EU roaming means your Dutch/Belgian/German plan should work fine in Spain, but test it). Find where the nearest supermarket is. Eat something proper. And if someone in your accommodation introduces themselves, say yes to whatever low-key social thing they suggest, even if you're tired. That first evening connection can shift the whole week.

Your first two or three shifts aren't about impressing anyone. They're about working out where things are kept, how the team communicates, what the unwritten rules are, and who the useful people to know are. That's it. The urge to prove yourself immediately is completely understandable, but the colleagues who are remembered fondly after week one are usually the ones who were helpful, observant, and didn't complain. Not the ones who tried to overhaul the bar menu on day two.

Ask questions, but ask them at the right moments. Watch how the experienced staff move through the space. If you don't understand something, say so directly rather than guessing and getting it wrong. Most seasonal workplaces are used to training new people quickly. They're not expecting you to arrive knowing everything. What they do notice is attitude. Show up on time, stay engaged, and be someone people want to work alongside. The competence comes with time.

A word on the language barrier, if it applies to you: it's less of a problem than it feels like on day one. Most seasonal hospitality teams are international by nature, and a mix of basic phrases, hand gestures, and goodwill gets you a long way. Don't let the fear of saying something wrong stop you from talking to people. 😄

Staff housing is one of those things that can make a season brilliant or quietly miserable, depending mostly on how you approach it. You're sharing space with people you didn't choose, from different countries, with different habits around noise, cleanliness, and what counts as a reasonable time to come home. There are no established rules on day one. The unwritten ones take a few days to emerge.

The people who settle in fastest tend to be the ones who treat the shared space like a shared responsibility from the start. Clean up after yourself in the kitchen. Introduce yourself properly, not just a mumbled hello in the corridor. If you want quiet at midnight, say so nicely. And be prepared to compromise when someone else needs the opposite. Small early gestures set the tone for the whole season.

It helps to create one small corner that feels like yours. Even in a shared dorm, putting a few photos up, having your own mug, keeping one shelf of the fridge for your stuff. These tiny acts of personalisation make a surprising difference to how at home you feel. A room that still looks like a hotel three weeks in is a room that still feels like a hotel three weeks in. Give it ten minutes and make it yours.

Here's the thing about homesickness: it rarely hits on day one, when the novelty's carrying you. It tends to arrive around day three or four, once the adrenaline of the new wears off and you're left with the reality of a strange bed, an unfamiliar routine, and the absence of the people and places you know. It feels bigger than it is. And it almost always passes by the end of the first week.

Knowing it's coming helps you ride it out rather than catastrophise. If you hit a low point mid-week and find yourself googling flights home at 11pm, that's not a sign you made a mistake. That's the predictable dip that almost every first-timer goes through. The people who make it through to week two (when things genuinely do start to feel more normal) are usually the ones who just didn't act on that impulse.

Call someone from home, but don't spend three hours doing it. Go for a walk somewhere new. Find one good local spot (a café, a beach, a viewpoint) that becomes your place. That small act of claiming something in your new environment does more for your mental state than most things.

It's hard to predict exactly when it happens, but most people who've done a season abroad remember a specific moment (usually somewhere in the back half of the first week) when something shifts. It might be a conversation at the end of a shift that turns into an hour of laughing about something stupid. It might be the morning you wake up and know exactly how to get to work without checking your phone. Or just the first time a guest thanks you and you feel like you actually know what you're doing.

That moment is the turning point. Everything before it is the price of admission. And the reason it feels as good as it does is precisely because the first few days were hard. You earned it.

The first week abroad is the part of the experience that makes everything that follows meaningful. You come out the other side with a baseline of confidence that doesn't come from reading about it or watching someone else do it. It comes from having actually got through it yourself. If you're curious about how seasonal work abroad transforms you beyond those first seven days, it's worth reading about what the longer experience tends to look like.

If you're at the stage where you're planning your first season and want to see what's out there, Yseasonal lists seasonal opportunities across Europe in hospitality, resorts, campsites, and more. Have a look, find something that feels right, and know that the first week is the hardest part. And it's only seven days.