Living in a foreign country

Today's essay is about or Today's topic.

As those who support this idea claim, one of the advantages of living abroad is that, in a way, you are forced to meet new people and experience different lifestyles, which helps you learn about other cultures. I myself have learnt learned some individualist attitudes while I was in New Zealand, which I was not used to due to my original cultural background, a collectivist mindset. This definitely allowed me to take advantage of the situation by assimilating benefits from both sides.

I took on some individualist attitudes might be better wording here too.

On the other hand, I have struggled and I still am struggling with language and cultural barriers, which are inevitable when relocating in another country. As I currently live in a small town in southern Spain, I often get frustrated and feel homesick for New Zealand, being isolated from the local communities as they always treat me as an outsider due to the language barrier. Lifestyle difference is another issue that has been putting me off. Here in Spain, people eat much later compared to universal eating time and stay up so late to socialise with others, to which I still struggle adjusting myself.

On balance the other hand, although there are some significant gains in life abroad, experiencing a new environment and learning another language, there are difficulties people often need to overcome to be able to gain comfortable life in a foreign country due to some cultural barriers or differences in customs and behaviours.

You could also use To balance it out.

I am so jealous of your command of English! I could never write something like this in Japanese. You did really well. I look forward to this weeks!