says my fortune cookie.
I feel like I’ve always had a weird definition of “home” — one which different things and different places fit over time. Most people think that home is where they grew up, or where their family is, or just where they go back to at the end of the day. Where I live, where my parents are, or where I spent my childhood, to me, have no bearing on what I consider home. Home, to me, has always been where I felt like I belonged. For a while, “home” was Tokyo. Now, home is becoming people and ideas instead of places.
I can’t pinpoint a location where I feel “home” is right now. It’s more of a mesh of people and things. Lily is home, and Cam is home, and Gabe and Katie and our impromptu International Club is home. My stuffed panda from the National Zoo is home. And Tumblr is home and Twitter is home and Kpop and ELF and VIP are home. Sometimes, when I’m curled up in bed and it’s a bit too cold for comfort, Infinite’s “Julia” or the GazettE’s “Hana Kotoba” is home. Sometimes, under the same circumstances, it’s New York City. Sometimes, home is Tokyo again. Sometimes, it’s Seoul. And sometimes Paris. Or Saint Malo, or any other nondescript village by the sea, where the weather is always damp and windy.
Home, really, is just too abstract to be a place or a set of people who may or may not be blood. Home, really, is where or who or what you long for, regardless of why, or how.
This, as I’m sure you remember from earlier posts, is my Korean flag. I made this one night on a spur of craftiness, inspired by the “obsessed with certain countries” club that me, Gabe, and our neighbor Katie started on a whim. It wasn’t really a club so much as things we had in common. I love Korea, Katie is obsessed with Germany (I mean that in a good way. You can check out her German blog here.), and Gabe is seriously British. I was the first to make a flag, since I’m naturally pretty handy with scissors and tape. Katie later made a German flag which she just colored on a piece of printer paper with crayons. Gabe cheated and printed out a Union Jack and a Welsh flag.
Before this, for Valentine’s Day, Katie cut out a bunch of hearts and wrote “I love you” on them in a bunch of different languages. I liked the idea and so stole it and wrote “saranghae” on a heart of my own. Gabe later did the same with the phrase in Welsh.
Our little section of the hallway became a lovely culture clash.
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