1. Home is a concept that is continuously changing, and in turn, affecting the way we perceive our self-identities. As Lian Lister observed on my post, “we grow, we learn, we unlearn, and we have to adjust our concepts on home to accommodate our new knowledge and experiences”. 

2. 3/5 of the student blogs I read happened to associate ideas of home with the physical presence of a house. I think this is partly due to the cultural importance our society places on permanent places of residence that you can “come home to”, but I think on a more personal level, our places of residence bring with them memories of the other people who may be residing or may have resided there with us. In one of the blog posts, ancestry played  a great role in the physical building of the home as well as living in it. This generational settling created an image of home that had to do with both the physical home, as well as the conceptual home.

3. Like Erika ‘s story, as well as my own, the idea of ethnicity and identity based around it shifts to match who we want to be, and how we want to be perceived. Erika chose to identity as Swedish at some points because Swedish people are beautiful, and Irish at other points, because Irish people are smart. For myself, working in a restaurant, when people see the name “Milica”, their first question is always “where are you from?/what are you?”. And I almost never respond Serbian/Croatian. I always respond with one or the other, depending on the day, or which one I think of first. Sometimes, if I say Croatian, people will jokingly say “do you hate Serbians?” (I’m not kidding), and sometimes, if it’s a Croatian or Serbian person, they’ll get quiet if I choose the wrong one. So much of what we identify as personal traits, actually seems to be tied to ethnicity, and what people perceive an entire nation to be.

4. Personal growth and experience changes the way we may perceive the same place. By keeping an open dialogue, bouncing ideas off of one another, and keeping our minds open to the different ideas of home, and what this could mean for different individuals living in the same place, a common ground is gained, that isn’t necessarily built on common views shared, or common experience, but on a mutual level of respect. This is more-so an observation I gained from reading the comments and dialogue, rather than the stories themselves.