Home is....

I don't have any idea how it got to be the last day of May already! It really seems impossible. Tomorrow is my last day of class for my first year of graduate school. There's exams still to come of course, but this year in Switzerland has been incredibly too fast. In many ways, it's like I blinked in January when I returned from Christmas, and opened my eyes to the 31st of May. 

Of course there is much that has happened along the way, no matter how quickly the time seems to have flown. I've learned more about myself in the past 10 months than I have at any other time in my life I think. I've reconciled unnecessary guilt, realized that WE are the only ones responsible for where we end up in our lives (so if you're unhappy...do something about it), met some of the most amazing people, and found that the more and more I travel, the more I realize that as people, as human beings, we are all the same at the core.

We need friends. We need family. We need a place to call home. It doesn't matter if you grew up in a big city in the US, a small town in Italy, or an old bazaar in Morocco (I have had the pleasure of meeting friends from each of these places), at the base of it all, we need people to love and a space that is ours. I have found that here in Lugano, with the city, the things I'm doing and learning, the people I'm with.

I think sometimes people take that the wrong way. That it means I've written off where I've come from. The thing is, that's the wrong way to look at it. When I go home to the US, I am home. It will always be my home. I was grown there, most of my history is there. But here....here is where I found myself. Something that I think speaks for itself.

So I look at it like this:  How blessed am I to have found two homes?! Two places with people I love, places I love, and most of all two places that have a piece of my heart? It's a beautiful thing to get off an airplane both directions knowing that on each side are people to embrace you, a sight for sore eyes, and a bed the causes you to sigh in ecstasy when you curl up in it for the night. What does that all mean? I'm not exactly sure yet. Does that mean I've found somewhere I want to stay for awhile? Yes. Does that mean I want to replace a home? Not in the least.

What I do know for sure...is that I feel alive, and I want to stay that way. So if this where my heart feels that way--like anything is possible, fully aware of dreams within my grasp-- then I think for now its found home. For now anyway....