My new college dorm room sat at the end of what seemed like an endless hallway, lined with worn down carpets and dim fluorescent lights. It looked so incredibly small when I walked in for the first time, and I remember smelling the air of it, thick and humid, void of any life. The walls were bare, the floor was scuffed, and I felt an overwhelming sense of homesickness.
When my family left, I was absolutely lost. I remember sitting down with my back against the wardrobe, looking up at the ceiling and feeling so empty. Everything was so different from anything I’d ever known. I remember feeling terrified, alone, and then… I felt hungry. It was noon, and I told myself that no matter what I was feeling, I still had to get up and eat.
I ran into a classmate from high school by some lucky chance, and we awkwardly traversed the foreign campus and made our way to a dining hall. I had a terrible chicken wrap, a banana, and a sense of nausea built up throughout the day of stress. He felt the same but seemed a little less nauseous about moving than I did. Even though I still felt sick, and the wrap wasn’t the best, somehow I felt a little better about where I was, and I at least I knew the way to the dining hall.
A couple of days later, I met up with a different friend from high school. We walked to a dining hall together for dinner, and I discovered the coveted soup counter. I poured myself a bowl of beef stew from an oversized metal ladle, my friend and I sat down together, and everything seemed as it had been for the past couple of days. But then I took a bite of the stew, I smelled it, and it was identical to my mom’s stew. I remember I was mid-sentence, and everything just sort of stopped for a moment. I realized life didn’t have to be so different from home after all.
My friend and I went back to that place every night that week, and while at first it was for the soup, slowly it became because we wanted to catch up and talk. I went home that night and for the first time, I truly unpacked, and a little life breathed into those dorm room walls.
Around the same time, I took to sitting in the lobby of my building to make friends. I sat with a tub full of cookies sent from my grandma and what I figured was a flawless opening line to make friends: “Do you want some homemade cookies?”.
Slowly, I gained an audience. A group of about five people from down the hall I never would have talked to otherwise came out to eat cookies and get to know people. But without anything to talk about, food was the only connector. Yet slowly but surely, it was conversation and laughter that filled our mouths instead of sugary food, and the hallways felt a little shorter, the lights a little brighter. It was like I’d found a new family through that tub of cookies.
As the weeks went on, I shared ice cream with a friend after she helped me move furniture, tea with another who had the best laugh, junk food with poetry writers, greasy late night food with dorm-mates, impulsive and exhausted egg dinners, muffins with table games, and lots and lots of pizza.
Weeks turned into months, a semester, now almost two. The walls of my dorm room slowly covered in notes, letters, and pictures. My cupboards filled with snacks, and my chairs filled with friends. What I just didn’t realize is with every bite of food, there was laughter, and with laughter, there was home.
