Ok be honest is it just me or do you guys also miss home but also think about the fact that it is very possible that whenever you get to come back home home just won’t feel exactly like the home you left from anymore so once you come back to college it would now be more familiar and maybe even more than home but also not familiar enough to feel like *actual* home? And that this will be the circle you’re submitting yourself to for the next four years? Ok maybe it’s just me. 

But also, you don’t really miss home as a place. More as a feeling. 

Like when I see the trees in Vassar turning red and the weather turning breezy, I look around and become hyper-aware of the fact that it’s autumn, but autumn now won’t come with pop-up mooncake stores and lantern vendors everywhere. 

Or when I sat and watched Spirited Away with other internationals in the OIS lounge and realized no one knew how in my head the movie felt like the comfort of lying on the floor in my room on a hot summer day with friends feeling like we were gonna stay 7th graders forever. 

Or sometimes I want to talk about something, whether it’s a sunset, a painting, or an idea I have for my English paper, and I stumble over my words and they just won’t come out right, I’m reminded of the ease of speaking about them in my home language, in the language where I think I could do justice to the beauty of things I want to talk about. 

But then again, there is this new, strange sense of warmth. 

In pumpkin-spiced cakes with cream cheese frosting from the Deece and the daily 42807 Instagram stories of people’s (covered) feet pics with autumn leaves on the ground. And in mango lassi and boba and laughing with friends now not at the movie, but at how the wifi goes out every 2 minutes and one of us would have to reload the website and find where we left off all over again. And in hearing English in so many different accents it reminds me of how cozy it feels to have people who are also trying to find themselves in a language that is not their tongue’s home. And in that moment when a friend told me to ‘keep your accent because it’s beautiful’. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that

I hope somewhere along the way, we will realize that even though it might never feel exactly like home, this melting pot of culture feels warm enough.