Home is the house I "grew up" in. It's a glass-windowed playroom and countless hours of Mario Kart Double Dash. It’s our handprints in the concrete and the wave of nostalgia that hits every time I see a “5th Street."

Home is a dorm room with walls filled with paintings, Christmas lights and Quentin Tarantino posters. Its sleeping 5 feet off the ground in a homemade window seat overlooking campus.

Home is the smell of warm coffee on a chilly afternoon or a cortado next to a 5-pound textbook. It's being surrounded by strangers, Amy Winehouse songs, a handful of familiar faces and a chocolate cheesecake brownie.

Home is an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, three weeks of speaking another language, making sangria from scratch and being five minutes from the beach. Home is cobblestone roads and sidewalk croissants; Portuguese hospitality and the friends that we left behind.

Home is a sound wave tattoo. It's a band performance, choir recital and a random dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings. It's being the only other person on this planet who can 100 percent relate to my past. It’s matching sunburns and icy blue eyes, my best friend in the entire world.

Home is the greenest of the greens, where 44 strangers became much more in the span of one week. It's hot cross buns, goat cheese salad and 30 pints of Guinness. It's the most gorgeous countryside the world has ever known and people who made it just as beautiful.

Home is her house, but it is also his. Home is spending Christmas Eve on one side of town and Christmas morning on the other. It's two bedrooms, two closets, two bathrooms, two garages, two living rooms. It's a lifestyle.

Home is someone's feet on my hips. It's flying through the air, arching, hanging, reaching, moving. It's countless hours of mental bliss and physical happiness, falling from 4 feet off the ground and getting right back up to do it all again. It's finding peace within myself and within those who lift me up.

Home is a stethoscope in my ears, an all-white pair of scrubs and matching tennis shoes. It's an eight-hour shift filled with IVs, lab values and vital signs. It's doing a little something every hour to help heal someone's unhealthy body. It’s the sounds of a stranger's heart, holding a newborn baby and thinking, "This is what I want to do for the rest of my life."

My home is not limited to the house I grew up in or the place I pay rent to. It is the people I've loved, the places I've seen. It is the boys I've kissed, the girls I've laughed with and the animals I've held. I pick up my roots and take them with me where I go. I leave pieces of my heart with everyone I meet and every place I go.

I will never be limited to one place that I call "home."