I was with my co-trainer who had recently arrived in Morocco, where we were getting ready to do a workshop on coaching and communication together. He was trying to get the SIM card for his phone working and had been in line waiting while I did some shopping in a nearby store. When I got back to the phone store, this is how our conversation went:

Did you get it fixed?

No, not yet.

Were they unable to unlock the old SIM card?

No . . . (with little more explanation)

Did they look it up to see if it had been deactivated?

No . . . (shared a bit more)

I asked a few more yes/no type questions and then finally asked . . .

Are you going to have to buy a new SIM card?

I don’t know, I haven’t talked to the lady yet.

Dumbstruck, all I could say was, “I should really attend a communication workshop and learn how to ask open questions, like, ‘How’s it going with your phone?’”

verywhere I look, people are together—together with their families, together with their friends, together with their neighbors. Mothers and daughters shop together at the market. Parents with their children play together on the beach. Friends hang out together in cafés, and neighbors sit together in front of their door talking, laughing, and sipping mint tea.

I sit alone.

My family lives on the other side of the world. I have some expat friends who work with me, but they are busy with their own families and their own lives. I keep trying to build relationships with my national friends, but it’s so hard to build trust and deep connection in a foreign language.

I feel alone.

For those of us who feel isolated and alone, how can we find friends to connect with—especially when living in a foreign land with multiple layers of language and cultural barriers?