For international students like myself, who live far, far away from where they go to college, it seems like there are two worlds that you live in. One world, is the one in your home country where everything is familiar and where your family, friends, and pets are. This is the world you go home to and you like the food, you know how to get around and are an expert in the culture. The other world is the world of your college. If you go to a liberal arts college in a small town, then this world is literally very small. It becomes even smaller because somehow, public transportation is not very popular in the US (apart from big cities like New York), and it is extremely hard to get around if you do not have a car, which of course you do not because you are an international student. At college, everything is a bit different from what you are used to, you have different friends than at home and you, of course, have all the stress that college comes with.
That is why I like to see them as two worlds, because they are really that different. Of course, you get questions from friends in either country about what it's like in the other and you tell them about people you met, or about your cats. But then, you usually fly home or fly to college and it seems like you are the only person who can travel between these two worlds. Once you leave one world, you leave all the people and the surroundings behind and can only communicate through the social media etc. It almost seems like those people and those places really only exist online or in a weird dream that you had. So, you begin to think of the two places, your home country and college, as so different and you think of you as being the only one who experiences both.
However, some people, occasionally, break that barrier that you think exists between your two worlds. Some people come travel to see you either at college or in your home country, and I think that this is the most exciting event that can happen, even if it is rather coincidental than entirely on purpose.
When it does, you are willing to wake up at 2am in the morning to drive to an airport to pick up that special traveler (even though there is an airport 20 minutes away from your house) because you are so excited and cannot believe that they are actually coming to see you! Then when they're finally with you, you can proudly show them everything you have always been talking about, like your cats.
