Home

It was really interesting at the end of this weekend because my roommates and I kept talking about how much we couldn’t wait to go “home”. How we missed “home”. Home referring to our Parisian apartment. At first we were slightly alarmed by the way we were describing where we lived. Home tends to have such an emotional connotation, but to be honest, it felt so natural. Home can mean so many different things to a person, and I guess to us home is now our apartment.

In Communications class on Tuesday we broke into groups and had to analyze certain quotations. One of them was “Everywhere is home, if you know enough about how things work there”. I thought this was so interesting coming from the weekend, where I couldn’t quite understand why we kept using this word.

At the beginning of this trip (as you can read in earlier blogs) I felt so disconnected. I counted down the days until my return flight. I would sit in my room and look at pictures from the summer or school. I didn’t want to make this my home, it simply was a temporary house. Now I have become so comfortable where I live. The people in the U (our grocery store) know us…and tend to get annoyed when we walk in and it’s busy because they know we will need extra assistance checking out. Our neighbors are polite when we cross them in front of the mailboxes. Even certain regulars in our area know our faces. I know how to get around our part of the city. I’ve mastered the subway. I can order food. I’ve become more comfortable in my environment, and have allowed myself to accept this as my “home”.  That quote is true, once one starts learning about the way things work and how things are done, it becomes your home.

I had this same experience when I moved to college. At first I was resistant and didn’t want that “foreign” place to be my “home” but now I can’t imagine not calling it my home. I reference SLO as my home, moreso than La Quinta.

It’s interesting that the number of “homes” is increasing as years fly by. Acquiring new one’s as my life progresses. La Quinta, San Luis Obispo, and now Paris. I feel like I will always consider Paris one of my “homes”. While I don’t speak fluent French. I may not know all the best restaurants. It has captured my heart and will always have a small piece of me.