One of the biggest advantages of an online course is the diverse and interesting situations that each student is studying from. From all across the world, crossing actual and cultural borders, it is really interesting getting to know everyone.

This assignment was so special because it let us look beyond all our different stories and find those threads that are universally found. Here are some that I really liked:

Home is…

1. family dinners, especially for the holidays. (One of my family’s biggest holidays is Eid-ul-Adha and the Eid dinner is definitely a huge part!)
2. adventures together, like hiking, camping, or beach outings
3. the process of finding home. (Many stories told of immigrant families re-creating home for their children.)
4. where mom and dad are. (Especially for people who’ve been on the move quite a lot).
5. family’s shared stories, their history. (I loved reading the stories to, by the grandparents of their lives, often agrarian ones and the nostalgia it brings even though it was often hard times. My family were indentured laborers in Guyana, South America under the British Empire. Working on rice and sugar plantations was brutal and hard work, but still those memories are the one they always tell and want us to remember.)

After completing this assignment, I realized something: not once at least as far as I read was home defined as a structure or a building. This is quite extraordinary when you consider that the dictionary definition of home is ‘the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.’

Home seemed to be more the things we do with the people we love. What does that say about the word home itself…where its literal and colloquial meaning are so different? Or has the meaning of home now become about the people and memories-the only thing static in a world that is becoming more and more transitory and globalized?

Works Cited

Baksh, Maryam. Eid-ul-Adha Dinner. 2015. Photograph. Vancouver, Canada.

“Forced Labour.” The National Archives. Government of the UK, N.d., Web. 12 February, 2016.