Home. Which One?

I just got back to Toulouse after a two-week vacation in my hometown in Sacramento, California. Over vacation, I realized “home” was getting to be a tricky word.

While sipping coffee at Java City café just blocks from the Capitol in Sacramento, I mentioned to a high school friend that I was going “home” just after New Year’s. “Wait, you mean back to France?” she asked. Yes, exactly, home. After living in Toulouse, France for six months, my idea of home fluctuates constantly between France and California.

My friend also now lives far from Sacramento. She pointed out that we both use the word “home” to refer to the home where we are not. Sacramento is home for me when I am in Toulouse, and France is home when in California. For my friend, it is the same, except with New York.

Maybe this tendency to refer to the home where we are not is acknowledgment that we always feel slightly out of place these days in either home. We think we know our old hometown, but it seems unfamiliar at the same time. My friend used to go to cookie outings at this very same Java City with her mom when she was ten. But now she knows the cafés better in New York and has trouble finding her way around downtown Sacramento, where Java City is located.

Coming back to Sacramento after living in Toulouse was a bit of a shock for me because everything is the same, but seems different. The town, streets and people were familiar, but I also saw them with the French equivalent freshly imprinted in my mind. This made the familiar novel and absolutely intriguing.

The streets in Sacramento were amazingly expansive after getting used to the treacherously narrow “pathways” of streets in downtown Toulouse. They are so big in Sacramento that sometimes it felt a park had been covered with cement and road markings. I could see the sky stretch out forever above me while waiting for the light to change to green, and it was strangely awesome.

After months of thinking of coffee cups as the size of a shot glass, the immensity of the Venti at Starbucks in the US was breathtaking. We drink these tubs of coffee? This is the size of 50 French coffee cups. However, the taste of coffee with chocolate, milk and whip cream in it was a welcome one, this such a good idea, no wonder it comes in Venti!

My brother and I drove to the grocery store one night to pick up a few things. In Toulouse, most groceries close by 7 pm. But my brother and I waltzed into the one near our parents house at 9pm, and this wasn't one of the small, over priced stores that are open late in France, this was the full blown supermarket. I also didn’t have to lug my bags home as I usually do here in Toulouse, because, we had a vehicle! What a relief. When checking out I had a moment of doubt, should I help the bagger bag my groceries, or would that be rude? I decide to help bag because I’m now in the habit of it. I don’t think anyone has bagged my groceries since I’ve been in Toulouse, and absolutely no one has asked to help me out to my car. I probably should have accepted the help out in Sacramento just for the novelty of it.

Cheering at New Year’s was incredibly awkward given my new habit of looking directly in peoples’ eyes as I clink glasses. How strange that all my American friends avoided my stare! I felt very distant from them and a bit hurt until I reminded myself that looking deeply into another’s eyes while cheering in the US is more a sign of passionate love than friendly good wishes.

Returning to Toulouse felt comfortable and natural, which was also unexpected. The streets are still decorated with holiday lights and I was happy to be back to what now feels like home. Tomorrow I am going to the prefecture for the third time to get my provisional visa paperwork updated. This is a horrendous experience and probably the task I dread most in France. I will have trouble controlling my frustration over the lack of organization and the rudeness of the government workers. I will undoubtedly curse the French system and wonder why they can’t implement a more efficient one, like we have back home in the US. But for now, it is nice to be surprised by the novelty of my hometown of Sacramento, as well as the ease with which I re-enter my new one in Toulouse.