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After a year of studying abroad, I thought coming home would feel like picking up where I left off. Instead, I realized that while I had been away, building a new life, life at home had kept moving without me.
I was happy I could see my family and friends, visit the same places I grew up seeing every day and finally be back home after months of only video calls and texts. But while I was there, I began to realize that life doesn’t pause just because you leave. Everything you left behind keeps moving forward.
Now, there's nothing wrong with change.
Everyone and everything in the world needs to change in order to keep growing. But after I returned home, what affected me most was the realization that even the people you’ve known all your life and the places you used to go to every day, will all change without you too.
Apart from leaving your country and having to learn how to live alone, I now believe that coming back home is one of the most difficult experiences international students go through.
Your younger siblings suddenly seem older and taller. Old friends have made memories you weren’t a part of. You have a new neighbor. It isn’t that something dramatic happened, life has just continued.
When I used to tell every person I met that I was an international student, they would all tell me I was brave to be able to leave my home. They’re not wrong. After spending a year in a place thousands of miles away from my family and friends, going back home was what motivated me the most. However, that excitement became smaller once I arrived.
I expected everything to feel familiar, to be the same as when I left. But that feeling never appeared. Actually, I felt more confused than comforted by every place I went because of how different it felt.
I realized I had changed, too, because the routines my family and I followed like clockwork no longer fit me well. I started to like different music and enjoy activities that aren't common where I grew up. I found myself caught between the two versions of “home” that I have now.
However, that’s not the only thing that gives international students a moment of realization.
The moment you start feeling a little too comfortable at home with your family again, you realize that the date you have to return to the United States is closer than you thought. Every dinner starts to feel more significant because you know that soon, you’ll be without them again. Friends start asking you when you’re leaving, and that question stays in your head for a while. You haven’t even finished unpacking your suitcase, and you’re already thinking of what you have to take with you.
Many people don’t see that when it comes to the struggles of an international student.
The first time my friends asked me about studying abroad, they asked about the parties, the independence, if I got to visit another state and all about the friends I made. I told them about all the exciting experiences I had while I was away from home, but those conversations always felt bittersweet. After all, I knew that they would ask me the same things the next time I came back.
International students don’t leave home once. They leave it over and over again.
In a few weeks, the international students that are now in their home countries will take another plane back to Bloomington. I’ll miss home again, just as I missed Bloomington while I was here, in Peru.
That’s the strangest part of studying abroad.
You no longer have one place that feels like home. You now have two places or more, and you can’t love one more than the other because there will always be small pieces of both inside you.
In one place, your family and long-time friends will be there. The places from your childhood will be there. The traditional food will be there. Everything you grew up knowing will still be there for when you come back, in some way or another. Everything changes, but the feeling of identification you have with them will always be there.
On the other hand, there’s the place the older you has come to know. The place where you had to learn how to be on your own after having familiar people around you all your life. The place where you met new people that are now lifelong friends. The place that will see the present and future version of you more than the people back home will.
It’s confusing how a person can call two places home, and it’s complicated to leave each one of them. However, in every place, international students can feel loved and comfortable, because they are home.
Astrid Alomia (she/her) is a sophomore studying journalism with a concentration in public relations and a minor in marketing.
