As many of us experience moving out of home to study, we are all faced with the same question. “Where are you from?”  For some this question is any easy answer, as their parents’ house in Tauranga is the only life they’ve ever known. But for others this is quite daunting. When someone asks you where you are from, what are you supposed to answer with? Do they want to know where I grew up, or where my parents live? Maybe they want to know my iwi or which colonist country my ancestors are from. Or maybe they want to know which suburb my parents conceived me in or the longitude and latitude of the first house I ever lived in. The possibilities are endless and overwhelming. 

Although I swear the most common answer for Hamiltonian Waikato Students is Tauranga. (Makes no sense, almost as if the Tauranga campus doesn’t exist!!)  

But for most people, the answer to that question is wherever they call home. However, deciding where ‘home’ is also just as hard for some people. They say home is where the heart is, but my heart is in the smoker’s area at 2 am and I refuse to believe that anyone’s heart could ever be in Hamilton. So, if home isn’t where the heart is then I assume for most people it’s wherever we feel most comfortable, a place we know inside and out, a place we have fond memories of or maybe just a place where we feel like we truly belong. 

Home can be made up of all sorts of things, feelings, and emotions. Home is what you make of it. And as life goes on, we’ll all learn that you can have more than one home. It doesn’t just have to be the house you grew up, or the shithole flat that you live in now. It can be mummy and daddy’s bach in Whitianga, your toxic sneaky link’s bed, a person, or the smokers at 2am. Home is not where it is, but what you make of it.