“What here makes you feel the most like home?”

My first reaction to this question was nothing. Because the feeling of being home is something that can’t be replicated. Everything is different from the obvious things like food and language, to the small things you never think about. I don’t consider my host family’s home a “home”. It is a building, but a building doesn’t equate to a home.

But then after thinking about it, I realized there were a lot of things here that made me feel like “home”.

I get the feeling of home when I am in the Emory Center here where we have Emory student meetings—when I am with people living the same experience as me. I am comfortable and things are as close to “normal” as they can get. We all come together and raid the food and talk about our host families, our classes, and our general experiences and sometimes frustrations or annoyances that only we can understand.

I get the feeling of home when I am in my bedroom late at night writing about my adventures to look back on—when I am looking through photos of my journeys and trying to put these incredible moments into words that accurately represent the happiness of the moments.

I get the feeling of home when I’m listening to my favorite music.

And when I am video calling my friends and family back in the US.
I get the feeling when I am with my new friends here. My friends are the most valuable thing I have in Spain. Nothing here means anything without them.

I get the feeling of home when I am traveling back to Salamanca after a weekend of traveling. There’s a moment when driving back to Salamanca when the skyline of the small city suddenly appears in the horizon and the outline of this city makes me feel at home again.

I feel at home when I am walking back to my house at night and as I walk through the plaza lit up with golden night light I look up in amazement and remember this is where I live now.

I felt at home this very weekend as the bus was driving through the mountains of Northern Spain and the sun was setting over amazing valleys, meadows, cliffs, and listening to my dad’s favorite song, “Wild Places” and every word of the lyrics I suddenly understood the feelings behind them.

Home is a feeling and not always a place and it’s one of many, many lessons I’m learning here and there’s only more to come.