I’ve been at college for three weeks now and while I have texted my mom just about every single day, I’m still away from home and for someone who genuinely enjoys their family, it’s not easy. Yes, I only live 30 minutes away but I don’t go home every night and talk about my day with my mom while cozied up in bed or assure my dad daily that yes, I do have oil in my car (probably, he’s the last one that checked it) or gossip with my sister over a face mask and tea. It’s not easy being away so I have to do the best I can to make GV my home away from home. After three weeks, I think I finally did it.

First, you have to keep connected to home of course, bring your true home into your new one. Hence, I annoy my mother daily. Thanks to technology, everyone I left is just a four digit passcode away, I can text my mom when I have to make an adult decision like which kind of cheese to buy, I can call my dad when my car makes a funky noise, and I can FaceTime my sister when my professor gives me pointless readings and the people above me walk like elephants and I need to vent about the world. Not only that but I have plastered my walls with memories from home. I may have gone a little overboard when I ordered 99 photos from all the way back to freshman year of high school, but I lined them up and every morning and night I get to see my dad and I before homecoming, my sister and I from graduation and my best friends from whatever number of nights we sat watching a movie eating pizza.

So between unlimited texting and an excessive amount of pictures, I got one of the ‘homes’ covered. As for the home away from my original home, it’s all in the food and the furniture. Yeah I know it sounds weird, just bare with me. I’m used to eating dinner with my family just about every night. Mom asks, ‘what do you want for dinner’ , I say ‘I don’t care’, and she still ends up making something wonderful despite my lack of help, it’s like magic. Yeah that doesn’t happen in college. But what does happen is, you genuinely miss the sit down dinners. Lean Cuisines and cafeteria food just can’t replace a home cook meal, and when you do have one again, you realize just how important they are. From this realization came Sunday roommate dinners and let me tell you, I learned a couple things from our new tradition. One, my roommate makes some dang good barbeque chicken, two, crock pots are a necessity in college life, and three, the whole process of making a meal, eating, and cleaning up is actually pretty enjoyable and truly make this place more like a home. Oh and as far as furniture goes, we just now got a tv and spent a solid half hour perfecting the room layout to accommodate our cable port. I never realized just how much moving a couch 90 degrees would change the feel of the room. You add a tv, a tapestry, customize your floor plan and there ya go, a whole new room.

When I got here it felt like a hotel. It was cold and cookie cutter, made to accommodate everyone at the most basic level, not meant to be a home. Now that I have some of the things I missed the most from my home 30 minutes away, I enjoy coming here after a tedious three hour night class. I take my shower, put on comfy clothes, make a cup of hot cocoa and sit with my roommate. On Sundays I look forward to whatever one of us concoct in the kitchen. And every morning I wake up to my fondest memories and start my day of virtual interactions with my family. We still have bland walls and our new tv sits on the floor so clearly we have a little work to do before it’s an tumblr worthy room but still, it’s home now.