Home Again. Part 1.

In the midst of love and life experiences, deep sadness, joy, and resolute hope, each year brings further tangling up, weaving together, unraveling, creation, and rebuilding of relationships, which are what I have long thought determine a person's "home". Since each year is different, and each season brings with it a new lens of experience through which to perceive my various relationships - with friends, family, classmates, strangers, and other - I think that my perception of what "home" means is wont to shift too. Granted, a lot of last year's post on homecoming still holds quite true.

Right now, I feel extra unsettled. The place I want to call home isn't entirely the home I want it to be, and the place that I could call home isn't where I want to be. (So really, I'm still a two-home gal ;)) ... Haha! How fickle am I?

Definitions of "home" that have been sitting in my mind as of late:
- A place where there is always someone waiting for you at the airport (or at least someone who wants to be there, even if they can't make it!)
- A place where you have family and good friends.
- A place you want to be.
- A place where you can happily picture pieces of your future playing out.
- Where your absence is felt, and where there are people whose absence you feel.
- Where, when you leave, there are people who eagerly await your return.
- Where, when your plane gets low enough so that you can see the whole area splayed out below, you feel that tug, that special fondness that not only makes you feel you could just look and look and eat up everything in sight, but that makes you ready to touch earth too, because you know the paths you want to wander, and who you want to wander them with.
- It's a place where you know that the person, and people, you want to wander those paths with is/are just as happy to do so as you.

- It's a place where you know you are wanted.
- It's a place where you know you are loved.

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As I finish writing that list, it kind of strikes me that those are mostly very selfish, one-sided "home" definitions, all very concentrated on what home does for me. ... I think that perhaps I need to work on what home means to me with respect to what I do for those there. 

To be continued.

One of the stranger things that happened today.

Don't get your hopes up though - it's not crazy exciting or anything!

Somebody posted a link on Facebook, and it was for a product at Urban Outfitters. So I clicked the link. Here, you try it: http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/. Did it work? Because GUESS WHAT. Apparently, due to the Charter of the French Language (aka Bill 101), we folks stationed out here in La Belle Province aren't allowed to visit the site, because it's not yet offered in French. Intéressant. So what's an Anglophone girl to do? This is actually funny. It's not as if I were a hardcore online shopper or any such thing, but what if I was? And what if I fancied shopping online at urbanoutfitters.com? Well I wouldn't be able to! I thought that the internet was a place of freedom, at least in Canada. But I'm not allowed to enter the website simply because of my geographical situation while using the internet. I suppose Québec is an exception in this as in so many other things.

Obviously this isn't that big of a deal in how it affects my Urban Outfitters website visiting, but it came as a bit of a surprise to me. It makes me wonder what other sites are off-limits because they're not offered in French...

Québecoise

I am leaving for Québec once more this coming August, again to be educated, though this time in more than just the French language.

For those of you who've read my blog about my time in Jonquière, Québec (http://www.christina-abientot.blogspot.com/), you'll know that I spent five weeks last summer being immersed in the French culture and language through a program called Explore. When I returned home last fall, I didn't quite dare imagine that I'd be able to return to La belle province so soon, but here I am, heading off for Montréal and McGill in 111 days. Wow... That's actually the first time I've counted how many days I have left before leaving.

As a student who is passionate about arts and sciences, I've had a tough time deciding what exactly I want to study, but at the moment, I'm thinking a combination of Linguistics and International Relations could be fascinating. We'll see how it goes.... :)