The making of a home

I had a beautiful dream tonight. I was in Slovene Alps, more precisely, Bohinj (my favourite place in the world, do check it out!) with my parents. We drove and then hiked to one small peak, where a fantastic view opened to us – snow-capped peaks, including the distinct Triglav, glittering in the setting sun. And in the valley, Bohinj lake. A classic beautiful Slovene view (although the precise one that I dreamt of does not actually exist).

Then I woke up in my English bed. Not going to see such views for a while longer.

I very well remember my first day at uni, when, nervous and shy, I sat down for dinner at a table where I didn’t know anyone. Surprisingly, I even still remember at least half of the people that sat at that table. Two and a half years later, the girl that sat to my left became a good friend, and her blond neighbour is a close friend I see every single day and have effectively been living together since week 1.

Moving into a new country is, I assume, always a roller coaster with many ups and downs. I very well remember how I felt I already knew everything about this place and felt ready to leave, to explore new places that I might like more. Now, with leaving being only a few months away, I’m much less sure about my wish to leave. It kind of became home.

Two lives?

Oxford terms are quite different from other universities, as they are short with very long breaks in between, so overall, I get to spend half a year at home. While I mostly got used to it by now, it was always quite a change in first year – from living an independent life with your friends, to being a daughter again, having to let my parents know where I’m going and helping with all the chores, which felt a bit like losing my freedom. Arguments did follow. But when I look at the time I spend in Slovenia and in Oxford, I feel like my real life is still here, while Slovenia is not more than a long break. Here I have some purpose, work that needs to be done, I’m involved with many activities, live with very close friends and many opportunities to meet new people. Slovenia feels restrictive in this way, it’s kind of like returning to a life I lived three years as if nothing had changed, while I think I have become quite a different person in the meantime. And it seems to me that it’s hard to bring the new me to life there – while I do have friends, there is nowhere I could meet new people.

Homesickness is not something I can say I experienced much. The walls of my room are covered with photographs and now that I look at them closely, almost every one of them is of Slovene nature. The mountains, the rivers, the forests, the many hikes I’ve done either alone or with my friends. That’s not a coincidence, if there’s anything I miss here, it’s the freedom that roaming around my home country gives me. In a way, I feel like that’s also because life in Slovenia feels slower, and my hikes in the mountains express that exactly – they express that I have time to regenerate, enjoy fresh air, forget about work and focus on myself and my thoughts for a bit. This is something I rarely have time to do in England, I often seem to just forget about it. I forget exactly because there is so much else going on, so many activities and opportunities for socialising that I can’t enjoy in Slovenia.

Strangely, it seems that I even miss the mountains and forests less and less. I guess a person just gets used to living without something, in the same way as I’ve accepted other quirks of living here, such as for example went through a lot of pain to learn which bread is edible here (my friends had to listen to quite a bit of complaining on this topic in 1^st year!). In third year, it seems that I finally figured everything out – how to choose the right tutorials and do well on them, how to balance my academic, extracurricular and social activities to achieve the perfect mix (I feel like the academic bit might suffer a bit this term, but am planning to compensate!), how to live a comfortable life here – and of course, which bread to buy (as well as other food items). After feeling like Oxford is really not the place for me long term at the end of second year, it started feeling comfortable and homely now, with everything being predictable and manageable.

These three years all kind of merged into one, and although I distinctly remember not liking it here last year, it’s funny because I can’t remember what bothered me that much. To give you an example, my flatmate reminded me the other day of a conversation we had last year and where I said very decisively that I’d rather live in rural China than here. I still see why living in rural China might be an interesting experience but can’t quite remember what else was in my head when I said that. Now, Oxford just became comfortable without the addition of wondering how my life would be in a different place and questioning whether I like it here. I am here, I may as well enjoy it. In a similar way to how we are all comfortable living in our home town, at least until we’ve got an experience of living elsewhere to compare it to.

However, my Oxford home is going to dilute into nothing soon, and even if I decide to come back, the absence of my current friends will make it a different place. Wherever I go I’ll have to build some new homes. Leaving this one is going to be hard. But on the other hand, perhaps I’m leaving at just the right time – once the comfort zone has been established, it may be good to leave it again, to challenge myself and with that personally grow even further.