Home

For the first seventeen years of my life home was a single address: 116 School House Road. This is where I was taken back to when I left the hospital as a baby, and it’s the place that much of my life happened. It’s the place where I have woken up on every Christmas morning, and where I learned many of the lessons that make up the person that I am today.

After my high school graduation, the idea of home got more complicated. I moved out of my house for the first time for college. My freshman year was an adjustment, but it was still western North Carolina where I had spent my entire childhood. The people were different, but they were also very much the same. Then the summer after my freshman year I participated in a program that took place in Durham, with a week in New York City and two weeks in Taiwan. As you can imagine, this experience was vastly different than what I had experienced for most of my life.

Over the course of the summer, I had decided to take an internship spot in Serbia. The internship lasted six months, and I would be working with a local non-profit business helping them with their media and marketing needs as well as teaching English and building relationships with local college students.

In the weeks before I left for Serbia, I found myself spending a lot of days at home by myself watching HGTV and eating microwave dinners (shout out Marie Callender’s). It was a weird middle ground between my last semester at WCU and this new adventure I would be undertaking in Serbia. I often found myself thinking about the things I would miss from this place and the surprises that the next one would hold. It was in those times that I began to really consider the concept of home.

Was home a place? I certainly felt at ease in this house that I had spent so much of my life. It was filled with familiar sights and smells and experiences. It was the place where most of my things were. It was filled with so many memories and lessons that were at the essence of my being. However, it was a place that I was growing less familiar with. It was a place that was rapidly changing with or without my presence, and a place that my life was taking place less and less.

Was home a feeling? I was comfortable in this place, but I was arguably more comfortable at my apartment in Cullowhee. After all, it was the place that my life had been happening for the last six months, and the city for even longer than that. It was the place where photos hung on the wall, where the desk was used every day, and the place I longed to retreat to at the end of a long day. I decided I had no idea what home was but assumed that leaving the country for six months would give me a better understanding.

I arrived in Belgrade, Serbia on January 29. We landed after it had already gotten dark and it was exceptionally cold. It wasn’t an incredibly eventful night, just dinner at my boss’ house and then back to the apartment to move in the two suitcases worth of things I was able to bring with me. I remember sleeping exceptionally well considering how foreign the place was to me, and the next day marked the true beginning of my time as a Serbian resident.

Those next few weeks came and went in a kind of blur. They consisted mostly of getting to know my co-workers, finding my way around town, and following my roommate Phil around everywhere because I had absolutely no idea how to do even the most basic things. I realized that things I had taken for granted so often in the States were now so difficult: buying groceries, sending mail, riding the bus, or anything else I tried to do proved to be exceptionally frustrating. I didn’t understand the language, the city, or what I was supposed to be doing half of the time.

These things got easier with time. Phil and the rest of my co-workers were incredibly helpful in the transition, and eventually I got the hang of it. After this initial shock, my days got slower. I started to get an understanding of my work schedule and how to fill my time. I began to meet people and build relationships and find out about all the things Belgrade could offer that America never did.

I had been there about three months when I was chatting with a friend back in America. They asked a simple question: “So, do you miss home?”. If I’m honest, I can’t remember how I replied, but it was in the time after this conversation ended as I sat in my empty apartment that I really began to unpack that question.

I remember thinking again, “what exactly is home?”. Is it my family and house back in Mills River? Is it the place my friends are? Is it simply a country and a language and a people that I’m familiar with?

You see, Belgrade would never be the place that I most deeply identified with. I was an outsider there in many ways: I didn’t speak the language, I didn’t fully understand the culture, I looked different, I thought different, and many other things. In that way, this place would never be home. However, it was the place where my life was happening. My small apartment in Belgrade was the place where I woke up every day and ate breakfast. It was the place I retreated to when I was sick or tired. It was the place I would invite people over to when I wanted to spend time with them or get to know them better. It was the place I laid down in at night and looked out the window and dreamed about what my life would become.

In those ways, this was my home. My parents and sister weren’t there, but I had a team of people around me that walked with me through the ups and down of everyday life. There were no late-night cookout runs after exams, but there were nights filled with card games and laughter with the people who had become my closest friends. There were no family gatherings but there were meals in the home of people who loved me and cared for me like they had been doing it for years.

I was far away from the place that was most familiar, but I was in many ways at home.

This is something that I continued to think a lot about. I have since returned to America and I find myself back among things and people that are more familiar. I now live in Raleigh at a new school with new people and new surroundings, but I once again feel at home. I think that home is less of a place or a group of people and more of a decision. It’s a decision to be fully present in whatever place you find yourself, and a decision to give yourself to the people around you. There are many places in this world that I have found myself in apart from friends and family but, in a way, they have all found their way to feel like home.