In the past year, I’ve called Herndon, Kunming, and Yilan, Taiwan my home. I have lived in Herndon for six years, Kunming for four months, Yilan for three weeks. These places span countries and continents, and are distinct from one another in character and culture, but I’ve found a sense of belonging in each of them.
On March 18th I returned home. My Herndon, Virginia one. My family welcomed me with dumplings. I ate at the kitchen counter. My mom, dad, grandma, and little sister ate at the kitchen table. I hauled my luggage to the guest room, where I would closet myself for 14 days in self-imposed corona exile. My days were spent reading, catching up with friends (so much easier when we are all in the same time zone), and, most of all, thinking about the past year.
I’m really bad at goodbyes. I always expect them to be more significant than they are. In the end, I taste a cloying disappointment when life goes on normally, without the people who were just recently a part of normal life. At the San Francisco airport, friends I spent the past six and a half months with boarded their return flights, one after another. To Newark, San Diego, Atlanta, Houston. Everyone left with a hug and a “we’ll see each other again in six months”. I rummaged my mind to find something of interest or importance to say, something that will last through those six months. Eventually, I gave up. There’s a 100% chance we see each other in college next year, and what needs to be said will come up naturally. Right now, it was “see you later”.
We left Yilan, Taiwan on a dime’s drop, which is to say abruptly and sharply. All of Princeton’s Bridge Year programs were cancelled, two and a half months early, because of coronavirus. We had less than a week to say goodbye to the city. I spent my last weekend cruising around Luodong with my homestay parents, eating every item on my bucket list, going home extremely full and content. I watched anime and Taiwanese opera videos with my homestay siblings, then woke up for one final group day, then one final work day. We had only been in Yilan for three weeks. A short time in the grand scheme of things, but the town was extremely welcoming and I wanted to say goodbye properly. Not as a harsh, final thing, but as an open-ended, let’s keep in touch, I’ll be back. Because I will be. I will be back in Taiwan, it’s just a matter of time and circumstance.
I can say the same about Kunming. We had an even shorter amount of time – one day – to assemble our belongings and say goodbye to our homestay families. There was more uncertainty. My last day, I ate lunch with my homestay parents and little sister MiaoMiao. Over sweet and sour spare ribs and julliard salad, products of the spare time that comes with self-quarantine, we said uncertain goodbyes. We didn’t know how the coronavirus would pan out, or if I could return home to Kunming before the program ended. Either way, my homestay family were cheerful and confident that we’d see each other again. I reassured them that I would be back.
The last night before we departed Kunming for Taiwan, I slept on the window ledge of our twelfth-story program house. That last night, I fell asleep gazing into the cityscape. I felt close and intimate with Kunming, like I was cuddling with a well-worn lover, feeling vertigo and dizziness and above all a sense of comfort.
That’s the comforting thing about home, you know you’ll always find a way back.