Light hits the window as my train moves further into the landscape that has become so familiar. Fog roles off the side of the window and I take another sip of my coffee that has gone cold. The music in my ears drowns out the creaks and rattles of the carriage moving further into the deep, green mountains. We finally come to a stop and new faces all looking exhausted from the early hours crowd around looking for a seat. Nobody chooses the seat where the coffee has been spilled, they all look at it in regret as the train is already quite full and they keep moving in their own tired way.

For the last year, I have been living in Germany as an exchange student and studying at the University of Siegen in North Rhein Westphalia. I have been here for 13 months and when I leave back “home” to the United States, I don’t consider it actually going home, but more of just stopping by. As a child my family and I moved around a lot always changing schools, having to make new friends, and never knowing how to say goodbye. Growing up I always remember thinking where I was going to be and what I would have to leave behind next. This all changed when my family moved to Chattanooga so my mom could finish her degree and since then we have lived there for almost fifteen years. Even then the time seemed to pass by me so quickly. Friends seemed to come and go just like the memories we would make together and before I knew it I was already turning eighteen and going off to college. I moved to Sewanee and made some great friends along with experiences that will never leave me. But yet here I sit on this train thousands of miles away from the U.S and still I feel at home.

I guess my perception of home comes thankfully from my wonderful mom. When I was 14 she sent me on a high school exchange program to Germany because she wanted me to learn the language and ‘broaden my horizons’ whatever that means for a 14 year old I don’t know it was only supposed to be fun. Supposed was a big generalization I made and would change later on. Every summer or winter after that my mom kept sending me back to Germany to visit friends and to keep on learning. Seven years later and living in Germany I want to say thank you mom.

I have traveled to so many places and made memories that could fill a library, sometimes I feel like I need to write them down, but some of the beauty is simply just having the feelings that you can’t put in words. I can still remember the first time I came to Germany and almost immediately after coming back to the U.S I felt lost and like a stranger in my own home. As Khaled Hosseini once said, "I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurts, only that it does." Since then every time I come back to the U.S or Germany I always am missing the other one for different reasons. It’s a constant struggle feeling like you need to be somewhere, but you want to be somewhere else. When I’m at Sewanee I yearn for Germany and my life there even if it is just sitting on a train for hours travelling through the countryside, but when I’m in Germany I miss the beautiful sunsets that you can see from the cross in Sewanee or the way my favorite café in Chattanooga smells.

It’s not even just the places, but the people too…and not just any people, but those people that make you measure time by the moments you had with them and not the amount of time that passes on a clock. These people, these special and unique people deserve a thank you as well for all the ways you taught me a little more about myself and for being there when I needed you. Endless coffee dates, FaceTime calls, and countless messages over Facebook all add up, but the things I will think of the most is how at that time, we were exactly what each other needed. My notion of home is not a place or person, but instead of all the memories I have collected and made my own. I go to these memories when I need to feel comforted, when I need to learn something, when I need to feel at home.