My week has been full: tutoring, taking on-line classes, going to the vet, taking the car to the autobody shop, keeping doctor’s appointments, and consulting with the senior publishing specialist at BookBaby.

No time for writing a post.

So, I’d like to share an excerpt from an article that appeared in The Daily UW, the newspaper of the University of Washington.

As many of you know we hosted many international students from 1988 through 2022.

Our last student came from Vietnam. As a junior at the University of Washington, Melanie gained a position on its newspaper. In fact, she has begun her own column, “The Third Culture Dispatch,” giving poignant insight into the difficulties that international students encounter here in America.

It is a pleasure to share her writing with you.

In many ways, forgetting your homeland while living in another country is easy. 

We forget the taste of certain fruits, the way the rain sounds on old tin roofs, and how quick and efficient trips to the doctor are. Instead, we busy ourselves to work towards relevance, security, and perhaps even love in another — all rooted in what some anthropologists call a constructed fantasy of a “good life.”

And then there are the small triumphs of adaptation: ordering without stumbling, laughing at TV shows you never grew up with, learning which bus route is quickest. Before long, the rhythms of “elsewhere” become second nature. You start dreaming in English. You stop correcting the mispronunciation of your name. 

You stop missing home in the ways people expect. Instead, you carry it quietly, like lint at the bottom of your jeans pocket. You don’t cry when you think of it, but you do pause. You forget the words to certain songs. You forget certain smells or tastes. You forget what it feels like to arrive because all you know is leaving.

So, when I say I don’t miss home, maybe what I really mean is: I don’t know how to.

Melanie Nguyen, “Third Culture Dispatch,” The Daily UW.