Just want to say I strongly identified with the lunchtime loneliness thing. I recently moved to the Netherlands and fortunately, I am in the position to change

Just want to say I strongly identified with the lunchtime loneliness thing. I recently moved to the Netherlands and fortunately, I am in the position to change the fact that I can't understand what people are saying (by learning the language) - but still, I've had quite a lot of incredibly lonely lunchtimes until I could pick up what people were talking about. It really was the time of day that I started to just get down about before it even began, and would spend time at my desk rather than try to participate in lunchtime. I'm a naturally sociable person so it was a bit "step back" for me to not be able to understand the conversation, and I especially hated not being able to understand the jokes. I still have this, but of course I have the option to learn the language, which I am doing. I don't have any suggestions on how to improve this experience for you, just want to let you know that you are far from alone in experiencing this, and there are many people out there that understand how isolating it can be in the workplace.