When I have an idea of something I want to write I will grab my phone and start tying out my thoughts in my notes. These notes are usually a couple sentence to a paragraph long and usually happen while on buses or trains. Well now I am on the plane from Rome to Lax and I decided to go through these notes. Before I left there was this constant question in my head of ‘how do we define home?’ I continued to question this for the first couple weeks in Italy. So I started this note but never really came back to it. 

 

 

 

Home is the word that holds thousands of meanings, can cross borders, and has a special attachment to your heart. Whether home be a structure, a person, a memory, or simply the place where you find your dog waiting for you after a long day, the meaning of home is endless.

 

When I moved an ocean away it pushed me to really question ‘what is home?’ and ‘how to define home?’ Being here for 3 weeks now I have started to find things that make home, home and its not quite what I thought. Here in Volterra our villa is kinda home, it’s a place to lay your head at night and to see my fellow Americans. What really makes me feel at home are the reminders I get. Like anytime I am walking around the cobble stone streets and I see a golden my heart breaks a little inside because I miss Addie 

 

Or our 5 hr drive from Frankfurt to Berlin that was filled with green trees, rolling hills, and mountain air. Now that, that really reminded me of home. 

 

And then there was the time when we were are at Lollapalooza in the Olympia Stadion and we are pushing our way to the front of David Gutta (lol throwback). I mumble sorry as I wrestle my way though and this guy grabs my arm. I turn and 

 

he says:

 ‘wait are you american?’ 

We reply:

 ‘YES’ 

He says: 

“we are apart of the milltary and stationed here”

 

We go on to thank them for their services, jump around, and sing at the top of our lungs. Home, I’m tellin you that was a homey feeling.

 

 

 

Looking back now I am realizing that this constant question of home slowly faded after the first month. I think it has to do with getting used to a place. Not that it felt like home but just that I started to pay less and less attention to differences between the Salt Lake and Volterra.

 

I think this is pretty obvious but the more I write the more I believe that home is not just one place. I think that home is a place where my heart feels at peace. This sounds a little cheesy when I put it into words but I feel like it isn’t fair to say home is just one place. When I think about looking up at the red rocks in Moab or sitting at the top of a mountain, skis about to fall over the edge, those are the moments where my heart is at peace and I feel at home. 

 

Looking back, one of the biggest challenges was finding a place where my heart felt at peace. The cobble stones and the tight buildings that surrounded Volterra didn’t always offer the peace that nature does. One of the professors that visited asked us what we were some differences between Volterra and Salt lake. I said that I missed nature. Now he nagged and nagged me about how everything is nature and has come from nature but I realized that because of this lack of “nature” I had to find peace in other things like going to dinner every night for 2 hours or I finding different benches that looked over the surrounding valley to feel more at home.

 

Maybe home isn’t actually a feeling but it’s people. I can tell you for sure I feel at home when I am with my familia but I also learned that other people can be home too. Like Massimo and Carla who run the restaurant we ate at every day and called our Italian mom and dad. Or Anne our professor who really was the the group’s mom, organizing all our trips and looking after us as if we were her own children. And if course I can’t forget the life longs friends I made. Boy oh boy if we are talking people and home there are 3 people that need to be mentioned: Hayley, Jade and Blake. Our late night movies, long conversations over dinner and constant laughs were the most homey feelings of all.

This post is a little sporadic but I guess the final answer is I am still working on defining home. And the thing is I may never have my answer but I think it is such a deep thought to question, especially when we only have this one life to explore it.

 

Lots of love,

gabi