When I first started with this article I had a clear idea of how I felt about the question “Where is home?” But once I started putting it into actual typed words, I realized that I was not annoyed by the question, just nostalgic. I had never thought of the word “hogar,” which means home in Spanish, until I arrived in the United States (it may be due to the fact that I left all I knew, I had left my only home).
The official definition of home is “the place where one lives permanently.” Building on this idea, technically I would be “homeless” because I do not have a permanent place to live in anymore. I live in a house with awesome people who have made the decision to give me a place in their house, but it is not my house and it is not permanent. However, when I was little someone told me that home refers to a more intangible idea, almost like a feeling, and I liked that idea better than the dictionary’s. If home also refers to a familiar yet intangible feeling, then I can be assured that I have more than one home.
Whenever someone asks me “where is home” I answer, “Peru,” knowing that they are asking for my provenance. I wonder if I would answer differently if my family moved to a different country, or if I moved to my own place in a different city as a grownup. Would my answer change even though I am still Peruvian? What I would like to answer when someone asks me that question is “my home is Cusco,” where I lived most of my life; but Cusco became my home because of the people there. So actually, home is my mom, who would receive me with a hug after school, home is my dad who would pick me up after English classes, home are my brothers from whom I learned to share, home is my high school where I learned what friendship looks like. So I guess my home is in Cusco because that is where my people live.
But as life is full of changes and nothing ever stays the same, now I have a new temporary home: Harrisonburg, where I am received with a “welcome home” after my classes, where friends have made time to hang out and gotten to know me, where professors have shared their experience and expertise, where I have found a Christian community that I can get support from and grow in my faith. Harrisonburg has become my home.
This is an opinion article and this is just my opinion, but I believe the more adequate way of asking someone their provenance would be “Where do you come from?” And I do not only mean to ask this to international students, but to anyone, anywhere. For instance, a person might be from Illinois and yet feel that New York is their home, but that does not mean they stopped considering Illinois their home.
To clarify, yes, I consider Harrisonburg home now, but Cusco will never stop being my home and that is my struggle with the question. I do not have a single word answer to explain where my home is.