Where is Home Abroad? – It’s Closer Than You Think

Nuns standing in front of me in line for gelato; millennium-old statues next to Starbucks’; vespas cutting through the streets, honking is just another language they speak in the city; couples who do not seem fully aware they are outside of their homes; button-downs with slacks for grocery store runs and even the beach.

Somehow, a month has passed since I entered into Rome, a Pandora’s box of new adventures, life lessons, and inevitably, longing to be back to what’s familiar: home. What happened to everyone wearing board shorts and slippers, sand covering the floor in every store along the beach? The rolling green Koolau mountains my dad loves to post pictures of? Restaurants that actually do takeout?!

It seems so far away from me now. Exactly 8,100.51 miles away.

After my first year of college when I was reunited with all my friends from home, we talked about how hard the homesickness was and how we managed it. I recalled spending a lot of time in a secluded area of my campus called the amphitheater, pretending I was on my home’s balcony, journaling or reading as my brother periodically interrupted to water his precious cucumber plants (he even named them, his favorite dubbed “The Little Hulk”). My best friend would use a web browser to tune into our local radio, Krater 96.3, as if she were driving to school on a normal Hawaiʻi day rather than walking through the crowded streets of New York City. My other friend shared it wasn’t so much his routines or sights he missed, but being surrounded by us, the people that make home not just a place, but an intimate feeling.

He has a good point there – which is rare and usually reserved for when he’s arguing with me – that the people around us can define a place as home. But even if we’re away from them, I believe we can still feel a place is home just as strongly. For example, I always ask questions in my Italian class if I’m confused, even if I feel no one else is or it’s already been reviewed. My parents taught me no question is stupid, and remembering all the nights they’d help quiz me on my Japanese vocabulary, repeating the hardest ones until I got it down, I continue that same diligence here. In our program-arranged housing, although I dread throwing away the trash or keeping the sink empty, I always made sure to thank my friends and family for sharing the spaces by keeping things clean, and so I take my responsibilities in stride.

I don’t have a balcony or an amphitheater here – one that’s not 2,000 years old at least – but I do have a living room that reminds me of sitting outside as my brother and my mom make dinner, bickering about how he should grow peppers– no, pineapples next. On my walks to and from school, my favorite jams from home make each step from a familiar, reassuring place, and another into an exciting future. I can only call my friends, but the way my friends reference old jokes, how they tease each other, I’m reminded of and relive all the fond memories we have together.

Although the place may change, the people who care about me and what they taught me, don’t. I didn’t come here to get the same experience, or for convenience, or good poke (which is impossible outside of Hawaii, anyways). I came here to be challenged, to learn how to handle and embrace difference. Although Rome is very different, it’s Rome! The only place where the incredible paintings and architecture I studied in textbooks could come to life, where I sleep every night a mile away from the Pope (is that creepy? maybe my dreams have been holier recently or something…). Through its magnificence and its difficulties, I can find the places and people I love in my habits and my surroundings to support me, even in the unlikeliest of places.

I encourage you all to use the tips and tricks that got me and my friends through being away from our home on your study abroad journey. Find the people you love in everything, and you’ll see the world becomes familiar again — in small and big moments, in the food you eat, in conversations, in silly everyday coincidences, in Sonic the Hedgehog advertisements. The last one is because my best friend loves Sonic. I am not lying when I say even in the unlikeliest of places.

If you’re interested in studying in Rome just like me, check out the Temple Rome Study Abroad page to get started!