I have a friend who acts in the same regardless of the situation.

She’ll raise her hands to ask silly questions in a conference hall with hundreds of people. It doesn’t bother her.

Whether she’s with a group of her closest friends or strangers, her personality doesn’t change.

If she’s alone in her room or in a nightclub, she’ll dance in the same way.

Sure, it can be embarrassing. Walking down the road with a companion who breaks into singing nursery rhymes and being in a salsa club with someone who will dance without a partner can be an interesting experience.

But I’m in awe of her. She’s special and unusual. Somehow, by some miracle, she’s remained unaffected by culture.

Do you think moving abroad was a challenge for my friend? Of course not.

When she went to Argentina during her year abroad, she taught university-level students how to teach English. A lot of the students were older than her and it was the first time she’d taught English, never mind taught anyone how to teach English. She was also living in a tiny Argentinian village.

Did it faze her? Nope. She lives in China now, and I’m sure she’s still doing the same things and acting in the same way as she was when I first met her.

So why do most people view moving abroad as the ultimate life-changing, challenging experience?

Because most people aren’t like my friend. The culture they grew up in and the circumstances they’re in dictate the way they act and think. So when they depart from that — boom — culture shock.

But do we really need to fly halfway across the world to experience this or are we just kidding ourselves?

Living abroad didn’t change me

I moved to Mexico when I was twenty years old, whilst my friend went to Argentina.

Was it a life-changing experience? No, not really.

I remember having one bad day a few weeks after I arrived. My professor needed me to go to a publishing house to print out the accompanying reading for her class. This was a foreign concept to me and I struggled for hours to find the shop — nobody I asked knew what I was talking about and, even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have understood them.

When it was time to go home, I was exhausted. Then I had to contend with the usual rush-hour congestion on the bus and the metro to get home — very different from the peaceful twenty-minute walk from campus to accommodation at my home university in Britain. I was feeling fragile and, for the first time, I felt acutely aware of everyone staring at me for being a foreigner.

I longed to return home, to feel like I fitted in and for everything coming to me naturally without overthinking.

So yes, I had a bad day, which was mostly a cause of me living in a foreign country. But that was the worst things got — in the whole ten months, there was no meltdown and no crying.

When I tell people I moved to Mexico, they’re always incredibly impressed and ask me if it was difficult. I don’t want to sound boastful, so I try to sugarcoat things a little, but the truth is it wasn’t.

It was just the same old me, plonked down in a new location speaking to people in a different language.

It’s not that deep.

You don’t have to travel to know yourself

I met my boyfriend in Mexico, and he left Mexico for the first time to visit me in the UK. Many friends and family all wanted to know what he thought of our country and how different it was.

“Everywhere is almost the same,” he said with a shrug.

Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but I agree. I’ve met people from most nations in the world, lived in two very different countries and traveled to more. There are some striking superficial differences when you first go somewhere new or meet someone from a distinct culture — but once you get past the superficial, everywhere is almost the same.

If your personality and sense of identity go beyond the superficial, travelling or moving abroad won’t change you either.

If Spanish culture made you realize you’re wasting your life away working, Cuba showed you the value of simplicity or South East Asia awakened your spirituality, good for you.

But did you really need to venture outside your home town to realize that, or just to enter your own head?

Not everyone wants to travel and that’s ok

A lot of regular travelers show a kind of snobbery towards those who’ve never left their home country or home town.

“Oh, poor thing,” their words imply; “it must suck to be stuck in your small-minded world.”

There’s nothing wrong with traveling, if that’s how you get your kicks. But it’s not a prerequisite for self-awareness or personal growth.

The best people I’ve met — like my quirky friend and my boyfriend — are the ones who don’t define themselves by their culture or the country they’re in. They knew who they were and what they stood for before they ever traveled and moving to a different country didn’t change that.

If you really want to do something difficult that will change you, spare the pollution and try journaling your deepest inner thoughts or living by your principles. Now there’s a challenge.