Hogar (Home): Prologue

Los Torres de Serranos with FSU Study Center in the back.

Home.

Home is a nomadic, impermanent, and limitless concept. 

Nomadic, because home moves wherever we move (yes, yes a cliché, move on). Impermanent, because in the midst of human conflict and calamity, change is inexorable. And limitless, because home can be whatever you want it to be.

(Eat your heart out, Hallmark reading cards)

After having the luxury of being born and raised for 18 years in Reseda, California, the longevity that is now my adult life, home is now changing. I have had several concepts of home over these 18 years: California, The San Fernando Valley, School, and, of course, my house that has been the Camacho household for the past 19 or 20 years (all I know is that I came 2 years after).

California has and always will be my home. When I started the college application process, I could have sworn that I'd attend a university in California, whether it was CSUN (California State University, Northridge) or San Francisco State University. Several out-of-state opportunities presented themselves to me (namely, being a finalist for the POSSE Scholarship, Dickinson College). I chose Florida State University, not just because of my dad's unexplainable 20+ year love affair with the University, or its (in)famous Football program, but because I felt it was the home I had wanted my entire life.

In all honesty, the real kicker for me was the First Year Abroad (FYA) Program, where I could choose to study abroad as a Freshman from one of four International locations: Panama; London, England; Florence, Italy; or Valencia, Spain. Being of Latin decent, Spain would be the perfect home to hon my Spanish speaking skills and become immersed in a new culture. 

I recently made a new home, prior to and following orientation at FSU. Through social media and GroupMe, I've already established great friends on the other side of the country, a roommate from Georgia, and a great friend who has shared California as a home with me. This home is with people I will be spending the next four years or so with.

My home is Nomadic. I will take pieces of my home that cannot be separated from me (memories and the person I have become) to Valencia, Spain and make new homes along the way. 

My home is Impermanent. I will have to return from Europe to Tallahassee, Florida (from here on, now known as "Tally") and leave the home(s) I've made. 

But that's okay, because my home is also Limitless. Tally and Florida State University will become my new home, and I will always have the ones I left behind, be it in Spain, London, Florence, Paris, Panama, Rome, and especially Reseda, California.

Home to me is where one feels most comfortable.

My favorite lines from one of my favorite poems go:

"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I––
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

The Road Not Taken~ Robert Frost

My fellow Florida State FYA's and I have taken a road less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

'Til our roads meet,

Chris Camacho

The Traveling 'Nole