As a child, and growing up I have always been (and continue to be) fascinated in traveling and exploring new places that I haven’t been to or am unfamiliar with. For as long as I can remember my family has always loved to travel. Both of my parents think there is great value in traveling and exploring new places; they believe that it is a great way to become cultured and well versed because it allows an individual to immerse themselves into different traditions, values, and historical context. Because of my parents love for travel we would usually go on at least two family vacations a year (we continue to do so to this day). There were times my dad would leave to go on business trips when I was a child and he would always make sure to bring me and my brother back something from wherever he went. One time it was a doll of an Irish dancer, another time it was a Cheongsam (traditional Chinese dress), and others times it was candy from other foreign places. Every time he brought back one of these gifts I always wanted to hear stories about where they came from and what it was like in the place he had traveled; my curiosity and interest in travel was fostered at a young age due to this.

Up until the summer going into my Junior year of high school I had only traveled with my family. It wasn’t until the winter of 2015 that one of my best friends from high school invited me to go to Spain with her and her family for about a month and a half. My friend Lucia was born in La Coruna Spain, a port city in the northwestern part of Spain. She lived there for the first seven years of her life until her dad  moved their family to Menlo Park, California (my hometown) so he could expand his software company. Her family kept their house in Spain knowing they would come back and visit during the summer to see family and family friends. After being invited to stay at her house in Spain for the summer I told my parents about the opportunity. My parents loved the idea of me going to Spain with true Spaniards, knowing that I would get a unique and incomparable experience as well as an authentic view and taste for Spain. Soon after my family bought me a ticket, and just a few months later I traveled to Europe with my best friend and her family. Once we got to Spain I was excited to see what her house was like and feel out the city, but within the first day or so I realized that my mood was off since being there. For the first five days/week or so I was super home sick, a feeling I had never really felt or experienced before. Me being homesick within those first few days had nothing to do with the people I was with but I began to realize that it was just the cultural shock. It wasn’t that I was in a third world country or anything like that but at first I struggled to feel comfortable in Spain because I was constantly surrounded by people who only spoke Spanish, I felt a huge cultural barrier and had never known what exactly that felt like until that summer. Lucia and her family were pretty much the only people who spoke English to me while I was there. All of Lucia’s Spanish friends that she introduced me to were just about as good at English as I was at Spanish, they had learned English in school like I had Spanish but didn’t feel super comfortable using or practicing it outside of school. Once I had gotten use to the fact that this is just the way the trip was going to be and people were just going to constantly speak Spanish around me I started to learn a lot, enjoy the trip, and appreciate the amazing experience for what it was. I realized a little later that I felt homesick within that first week for two reasons: one was I wasn’t use to traveling without my family or being so distantly far away from them for such a long period of time; and second was I wasn’t in a super common tourist destination where most people know how to speak English and accommodate to the traveler/tourist.

Once I returned home from my trip in Spain all I really wanted was a hamburger and my family. But after reflecting and thinking about how I might be able to relate this experience to Jeannette and her unique perspective on how she views her family to essentially be her home, I realized I understand why Jeannette felt that way. Growing up with so little and moving around so often it would make sense that Jeannette viewed home as her family, the people she was always with/around. Growing up more fortunate than Jeannette I definitely didn’t view home to be only associated with the members of your family; I saw them as an important piece/factor that makes up home but there are definitely other factors I associate home with. It wasn’t until I was thousands of miles away from home and in a completely different setting than I was use to that I truly realized just how much I relate my family to home.