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multiple homes

Submitted by Lindsay on Tue, 12/02/2008 - 01:43

Home as described by Z: “Home is everything. Home is not sex but also about it. Home is not a delicious meal but is also about it. Home is not a lighted bedroom but is also about it. Home is not a hot bath in the winter but it is also about it.” 168

 A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers gave me my new explanation of “home”. Around this thanksgiving break everyone was throwing around this word, but without context it was difficult to determine if they were talking about New York or ... their place of prior living (hometown doesn’t even work in this context). If home is where you feel comfortable, as it is to Z, then I think that we can have many homes, just as we have many aspects of our personality.

After a semester in this class I have begun to see avoidance of acknowledging your place of prior living as “home” and the extreme distaste of being a “tourist” in New York. To me, this often comes across as an attempt at being “mature”, as if being a student in an urban campus makes NYU students more mature than old high school friends. Evidently we are all in love with the city enough to pay the third highest total cost for university in the country, but this doesn’t mean you can’t have a little place in your heart for another “home”. After my first trip to New York I started devising strategies to live here as soon as possible, and don’t get me wrong, this is exactly where I want to live, but after all of our readings I can also acknowledge Toronto as my home that provides a different aspect of my personality with a different set of comforts.

Home is what you make it

Submitted by care.a.line on Tue, 12/02/2008 - 16:53.

I think as long as where you are (physically and geographically) at a certain point in your life makes you feel comfortable and you feel a sense of loyalty to the place, than you can call it home. Home is more about the people and relationships that you form with people in a certain place. You can have one home where you will eternally return to, or you can have multiple homes which will all take certain places in your heart. Z may have felt like the rural town in China that she came from was her only home at first, but she did establish a connection in England that she will always remember.