2 years, 2 months, 1 week, and a day.
That's how long it's been since I left home for the first time.
Since that day, it's been 4 countries, 9 cities, 5 apartments, and 3 different schools.
After being all around the place, when people ask me why I chose Wisconsin (of all places!), the answer is actually rather simple: it felt familiar. I wanted College to represent some sort of stability. I wanted to live in a place that felt like my own, where I could see regular faces, and have something to hold onto.
My memories of Madison consisted of hot summers, running barefoot in the grass, spending the day coming in and out of the pool, and eating warm berries right after I picked them from the trees. Somewhere along the way, I forgot that Madison is only warm for about 2 months before it gets colder than Siberia, and during that time, the most exciting thing to happen here are the protests of the Westboro Baptist Church against the "whorehouse" that is my University (I wish I was kidding).
It took me a whole year of complaining to adjust to the place. Even now, you'll be met with an eye-roll if you greet me with an "IT'S GAAAAAME DAAAAY!" on a Saturday morning (or any other day of your life), and I will not forgive you if you judge me because I don't like cheese curds. I still think there are no real places to go shopping in Madison, and I hate the fact that Marcus Point Cinema is so far, and Sundance doesn't have all the movies, but now I know that with all its disadvantages, and all its little quirks, there's another place apart from Mexico where I feel okay.
I love the fact that most of my classes take place under the museum. I like walking to my Arabic class, where I know and like everybody, and I look forward to all those hours in between my classes when I can sit at College Library with a hot chocolate in hand, pretending to do homework when I'm really just watching The Office and taking snaps of the lake as seen from the windows of the third floor.
Madison is not adventurous and exciting like India. It's not a vacation, like Paris, and the food is really bad, unlike in my own country, but it's alright. It's knowing that 9 times out of 10 I will be hanging out with Sadeq, most likely talking things that are completely irrelevant but really funny (for us), it's waking up to home-made coffee, and walking to the museum on Tuesday afternoons, and editing, and the reassurance that I'm doing what I love.
In all honesty, I've seen more cows here than I ever saw in India, but at least now I'm not living off my suitcase.
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