ISSUE 4
home.
Easter 2017
22. home among the gumtrees by Tasha May
welcome home.
contents. 6.
sensations of home
by Quintin Langley-Coleman
We’re hoping that this issue will build on the positive reception given to the ‘My Pembroke’ theme of the previous edition, but that the pieces you’ll found here might be a little more probing and personal. Our contributors have responded to the concept of ‘home’ from a variety of perspectives - finalists, international students, and those on exchange from colleges in the USA. Common to most pieces seems a rejection of ‘home’ as simply a building or a place. Instead, it is two things: the people and the sensory. Perhaps this sentiment is symptomatic of the lifestyle of our contributors, peripatetic and impermanent, and in many ways, unusual. Whatever the reasons, we hope you’ll find it an enjoyable and insightful read! Thank you as always to the wonderful Pembroke Street team who have worked so hard to edit, draw, write and design the magazine! Thank you also to everyone who has contributed to this issue - Ed Limb, Jessica Brofsky, Ogaba David Ifere, Quintin Langley-Coleman, Virginia Gresham-Jacobs, Julien Godawatta, Emelia Lehmann, Kate Goodrum and Amy Teh.
4. poetry by Ogaba David Ifere & Ed Limb
14. overheard at pem : best of 2017 'I swear my entire life is being chronicled on Overheard at Pem...'
16. home : an etymological study by Emelia Lehmann
32. from brussels to reykjavik...and now cambridge Disa Greaves considers the meaning of ‘home’ for people with multiple cultural identities, drawing on her personal experiences of living in Reykjavik, Brussels, and
28. claiming home
by Virginia Gresham Jacobs
Editor - Charlotte Araya Moreland Creative Director - Phoebe Flatau Editorial team - Emily Fish, Tasha May, Dísa Greaves, Belén Bale
2.
40. home in absence Kate Goodrum recounts her gap year experiences in Cambodia, and how her sense of perspective on ‘home’ has since changed.
36. home in transition by Jessica Brofsky
Photography - Tasha May Illustration - Lizzy O’Brien and Amy Teh Publicity - Eunice Wong Treasurer - Tim Lee
3.
22. home among the gumtrees by Tasha May
welcome home.
contents. 6.
sensations of home
by Quintin Langley-Coleman
We’re hoping that this issue will build on the positive reception given to the ‘My Pembroke’ theme of the previous edition, but that the pieces you’ll found here might be a little more probing and personal. Our contributors have responded to the concept of ‘home’ from a variety of perspectives - finalists, international students, and those on exchange from colleges in the USA. Common to most pieces seems a rejection of ‘home’ as simply a building or a place. Instead, it is two things: the people and the sensory. Perhaps this sentiment is symptomatic of the lifestyle of our contributors, peripatetic and impermanent, and in many ways, unusual. Whatever the reasons, we hope you’ll find it an enjoyable and insightful read! Thank you as always to the wonderful Pembroke Street team who have worked so hard to edit, draw, write and design the magazine! Thank you also to everyone who has contributed to this issue - Ed Limb, Jessica Brofsky, Ogaba David Ifere, Quintin Langley-Coleman, Virginia Gresham-Jacobs, Julien Godawatta, Emelia Lehmann, Kate Goodrum and Amy Teh.
4. poetry by Ogaba David Ifere & Ed Limb
14. overheard at pem : best of 2017 'I swear my entire life is being chronicled on Overheard at Pem...'
16. home : an etymological study by Emelia Lehmann
32. from brussels to reykjavik...and now cambridge Disa Greaves considers the meaning of ‘home’ for people with multiple cultural identities, drawing on her personal experiences of living in Reykjavik, Brussels, and
28. claiming home
by Virginia Gresham Jacobs
Editor - Charlotte Araya Moreland Creative Director - Phoebe Flatau Editorial team - Emily Fish, Tasha May, Dísa Greaves, Belén Bale
2.
40. home in absence Kate Goodrum recounts her gap year experiences in Cambodia, and how her sense of perspective on ‘home’ has since changed.
36. home in transition by Jessica Brofsky
Photography - Tasha May Illustration - Lizzy O’Brien and Amy Teh Publicity - Eunice Wong Treasurer - Tim Lee
3.
On ‘Home’ by Ogaba David Ifere
Having lived in different places, moving around the UK The term home has a different meaning to me It is less about a place and more about the people Home is where I am the happiest Home is with the people that know me the best Home is a place free of worry and stress My true self I can really express Pembroke has been my home for the past three years I’m now on the cusp of leaving and this home disappears Only the physical place, I will no longer be But the people I have met, I will make efforts to see Because home is more than a physical place It’s the vibes, the people and a friendly face •
illustration by Phoebe Flatau
Ogaba David Ifere is a third-year Law student at Pembroke
4.
5.
On ‘Home’ by Ogaba David Ifere
Having lived in different places, moving around the UK The term home has a different meaning to me It is less about a place and more about the people Home is where I am the happiest Home is with the people that know me the best Home is a place free of worry and stress My true self I can really express Pembroke has been my home for the past three years I’m now on the cusp of leaving and this home disappears Only the physical place, I will no longer be But the people I have met, I will make efforts to see Because home is more than a physical place It’s the vibes, the people and a friendly face •
illustration by Phoebe Flatau
Ogaba David Ifere is a third-year Law student at Pembroke
4.
5.
sensations of home by Quintin Langley-Coleman
Like Proust’s madeleines, we each have certain textures, tastes, sounds, ambiances, and objects that fill us with a sense of home. It may be the smell and softness of a bed; the taste of your grandparents’ cooking on a holiday; or even something as mundane and assuring as the familiar sound of traffic on the street. Most people have a single place where all these sensations and memories are married together into the indelible essence of home. However, I, for one, have trouble pinpointing where exactly my home is, and this is because I have been lucky enough to have lived in three different countries. While I would not call any single one of these places my absolute home, they have all been a home to me, and I associate then with very specific sensory vignettes that I shall draw for you here. photos by Quintin Langley-Coleman
6.
7.
sensations of home by Quintin Langley-Coleman
Like Proust’s madeleines, we each have certain textures, tastes, sounds, ambiances, and objects that fill us with a sense of home. It may be the smell and softness of a bed; the taste of your grandparents’ cooking on a holiday; or even something as mundane and assuring as the familiar sound of traffic on the street. Most people have a single place where all these sensations and memories are married together into the indelible essence of home. However, I, for one, have trouble pinpointing where exactly my home is, and this is because I have been lucky enough to have lived in three different countries. While I would not call any single one of these places my absolute home, they have all been a home to me, and I associate then with very specific sensory vignettes that I shall draw for you here. photos by Quintin Langley-Coleman
6.
7.
Wandering through Central, I smell the humid air pregnant with the smell of anonymous crowds and the ever present hydrosulfide scent that lingers on the edges of your nostrils. The people around me chatter in the choppy, lilting way particular to Cantonese that my ear finds so pleasing, and I smile before ducking into an unmarked door on a sloped street next to The Escalator. I descend a staircase, dark and grubby like a wartime hospital, and emerge into the bright and crowded room that is the fast food restaurant of Dai Ga Lok.
HONG KONG
The decor consists of tables in pale, plastic imitation wood and seats fixed to the ground. I stride up, without glancing at the menu on the wall, to the yellow-uniformed teller looking like an air steward – I always order the same thing. “Lei hou,” I say, “O yiu yat go cha siu fan,” and after a second’s pause, “dai, ton mai yat bui lai cha. Mm goi sai!” * The teller takes the money and I take the ticket to the open kitchen and put it on a tray. The chef, his attire complete with both a toque blanche and white surgical mask, looks at the order, shouts “Lai cha!” across the kitchen, and then takes a hunk of barbecued pork off its hanging hook, which he expertly dismembers on a circular dark wood chop-block with falling strokes of a huge cleaver. He then fills a bowl with perfectly steamed rice, garnishes it with a swish of bak choy, lays the meat on top, and adds a spoonful of sauce. At the instant he puts the bowl on my tray a hot white plastic mug of lai cha appears, poured out from one of the big, boiling tea urns across the kitchen. The whole process takes less than a minute. I take my tray and find a seat in the throng. The din consists of dulled dings of chopsticks on plastic, and the chatter of eaters. I seize my own chopsticks – I am ready to indulge. The pork has a red skin that is tough and sweet, honey-crisped, and the inside is chewy and meaty, while the bak choi is soft and juicy. I wait for the lai cha to cool to an unsingeing temperature, and taste it. It’s strong, bitter, with a creaminess and a hint of caramel from the evaporated milk used to make it. Inevitably, it is marginally too bitter, so I add a sugar sachet to it. I sip again, and now the sweet and bitter tastes waltz together in a milky tea ballroom of gustatory delight. Hou yam. **
photo by Amy Teh
The chattering of Cantonese, and the clattering of eaters; a belly full of cha siu fan, and a tongue steeped in lai cha – these make me feel at home.
* **
8.
Hello, I would like one barbecue pork rice, large, and one cup of milk tea (Hong Kong style). Thank you!” Delicious!
9.
Wandering through Central, I smell the humid air pregnant with the smell of anonymous crowds and the ever present hydrosulfide scent that lingers on the edges of your nostrils. The people around me chatter in the choppy, lilting way particular to Cantonese that my ear finds so pleasing, and I smile before ducking into an unmarked door on a sloped street next to The Escalator. I descend a staircase, dark and grubby like a wartime hospital, and emerge into the bright and crowded room that is the fast food restaurant of Dai Ga Lok.
HONG KONG
The decor consists of tables in pale, plastic imitation wood and seats fixed to the ground. I stride up, without glancing at the menu on the wall, to the yellow-uniformed teller looking like an air steward – I always order the same thing. “Lei hou,” I say, “O yiu yat go cha siu fan,” and after a second’s pause, “dai, ton mai yat bui lai cha. Mm goi sai!” * The teller takes the money and I take the ticket to the open kitchen and put it on a tray. The chef, his attire complete with both a toque blanche and white surgical mask, looks at the order, shouts “Lai cha!” across the kitchen, and then takes a hunk of barbecued pork off its hanging hook, which he expertly dismembers on a circular dark wood chop-block with falling strokes of a huge cleaver. He then fills a bowl with perfectly steamed rice, garnishes it with a swish of bak choy, lays the meat on top, and adds a spoonful of sauce. At the instant he puts the bowl on my tray a hot white plastic mug of lai cha appears, poured out from one of the big, boiling tea urns across the kitchen. The whole process takes less than a minute. I take my tray and find a seat in the throng. The din consists of dulled dings of chopsticks on plastic, and the chatter of eaters. I seize my own chopsticks – I am ready to indulge. The pork has a red skin that is tough and sweet, honey-crisped, and the inside is chewy and meaty, while the bak choi is soft and juicy. I wait for the lai cha to cool to an unsingeing temperature, and taste it. It’s strong, bitter, with a creaminess and a hint of caramel from the evaporated milk used to make it. Inevitably, it is marginally too bitter, so I add a sugar sachet to it. I sip again, and now the sweet and bitter tastes waltz together in a milky tea ballroom of gustatory delight. Hou yam. **
photo by Amy Teh
The chattering of Cantonese, and the clattering of eaters; a belly full of cha siu fan, and a tongue steeped in lai cha – these make me feel at home.
* **
8.
Hello, I would like one barbecue pork rice, large, and one cup of milk tea (Hong Kong style). Thank you!” Delicious!
9.
My feet crunch quietly on the red gravel of the Red Rocks trail. The air is dry, dryer than drought-bones, and every breath feels like desiccation. The wind winds around slowly like a lazy serpent, carrying with it the brittle essence of pinesap and dusty baked earth. Crickets chirrup, and branches sometimes jolt with the movement of a bird or rodent. I pass the old familiar cottonwood tree, looking well despite its yellowing spade-leaves, a lonely deciduous in this land of pines. I climb up the sloping rock-face that is leniently considered part of the trail, hoping to meet no sunning rattlesnakes. After scaling the crop, I stop for a second and sit under a lodgepole. I break off a sliver of bark and smell it. If the tree is young, it smells of vanilla; if old, then caramel. This one is caramel. I move on, following the trail up and around the hematite-toned stones that give Red Rocks its name. This part of the trail is particularly steep, flanked by dry grass and sticky thornweeds, and my breath comes in long pants. But at the top there is respite in the form of a bench placed so that it faces along the faultlines of the mountains, instead of merely away from them.
BOULDER
I sit down, my legs feel relieved, and the triptych view is laid before me. This is where the mountains and plains meet. On the right is the town, a few crisscrossing miles of suburbia with the sandstone towers of the university looming above everything else. The middle of the view is the foothills, semi green from valley waters and snowmelt, collinning like stone and soil ripples. And on the left rises the looming faces of the Flatirons – ancient pieces of seabed thrust skywards by the crumpling pressure of aeons past. I breathe in deeply. The air is dry and smells of warm stone, and it is the sight of the skyscraping seabed, dry grass and dusty path, and this dry air smelling of warm stone that makes me feel at home.
10.
11.
My feet crunch quietly on the red gravel of the Red Rocks trail. The air is dry, dryer than drought-bones, and every breath feels like desiccation. The wind winds around slowly like a lazy serpent, carrying with it the brittle essence of pinesap and dusty baked earth. Crickets chirrup, and branches sometimes jolt with the movement of a bird or rodent. I pass the old familiar cottonwood tree, looking well despite its yellowing spade-leaves, a lonely deciduous in this land of pines. I climb up the sloping rock-face that is leniently considered part of the trail, hoping to meet no sunning rattlesnakes. After scaling the crop, I stop for a second and sit under a lodgepole. I break off a sliver of bark and smell it. If the tree is young, it smells of vanilla; if old, then caramel. This one is caramel. I move on, following the trail up and around the hematite-toned stones that give Red Rocks its name. This part of the trail is particularly steep, flanked by dry grass and sticky thornweeds, and my breath comes in long pants. But at the top there is respite in the form of a bench placed so that it faces along the faultlines of the mountains, instead of merely away from them.
BOULDER
I sit down, my legs feel relieved, and the triptych view is laid before me. This is where the mountains and plains meet. On the right is the town, a few crisscrossing miles of suburbia with the sandstone towers of the university looming above everything else. The middle of the view is the foothills, semi green from valley waters and snowmelt, collinning like stone and soil ripples. And on the left rises the looming faces of the Flatirons – ancient pieces of seabed thrust skywards by the crumpling pressure of aeons past. I breathe in deeply. The air is dry and smells of warm stone, and it is the sight of the skyscraping seabed, dry grass and dusty path, and this dry air smelling of warm stone that makes me feel at home.
10.
11.
As specific as these sensations are and even if I perfectly executed them in the future, they would never be able to recreate the fullest sense of home, whose most important aspect wells up from people – friends, family, and familiar strangers. A place is just a place, while home resides in the hearts of those around us. Leaving a place is just leaving a place; leaving people is sadness. •
Quintin Langley-Coleman is a third-year Pembroke student, studying Arabic.
12.
13.
As specific as these sensations are and even if I perfectly executed them in the future, they would never be able to recreate the fullest sense of home, whose most important aspect wells up from people – friends, family, and familiar strangers. A place is just a place, while home resides in the hearts of those around us. Leaving a place is just leaving a place; leaving people is sadness. •
Quintin Langley-Coleman is a third-year Pembroke student, studying Arabic.
12.
13.
over heard at pem :
'You know when you're 15 and you discover Byron and your world just changes?!'
hehe
best of 2017
A short series of our best ‘Overheard at Pem’ quotes heard in and around Pembroke that are chronicled online on the Pembroke Street website.
'If you held hands all the way to Van of Life, it's definitely love.' ‘If you haven’t tried croquet, you really should; it’s a savage sport.’
'You gotta think that getting a First might not be the best, because what are you gonna post on Facebook? Last year you posted ‘Desmond Tutu’, but there's no ‘Desmond First First’, is there?'
shhhh …
'You've gotta have your hoe stage, and then you've gotta have your "no" stage.'
oops 14.
'I swear my entire life is being chronicled on Overheard at Pem...' photos by Charlotte Araya Moreland and Phoebe Flatau
WOW
shhhh… ‘I’m a rower - I have muscles from the nipples down.’
'You may not be a BNOC, but you are a BNIP (Big Name In Pembroke).'
'I enjoyed the Pembroke Street launch party more than Wednesday Cindies'
‘Driving home late at night blasting Classic FM is better than History Tripos’
OH 15.
over heard at pem :
'You know when you're 15 and you discover Byron and your world just changes?!'
hehe
best of 2017
A short series of our best ‘Overheard at Pem’ quotes heard in and around Pembroke that are chronicled online on the Pembroke Street website.
'If you held hands all the way to Van of Life, it's definitely love.' ‘If you haven’t tried croquet, you really should; it’s a savage sport.’
'You gotta think that getting a First might not be the best, because what are you gonna post on Facebook? Last year you posted ‘Desmond Tutu’, but there's no ‘Desmond First First’, is there?'
shhhh …
'You've gotta have your hoe stage, and then you've gotta have your "no" stage.'
oops 14.
'I swear my entire life is being chronicled on Overheard at Pem...' photos by Charlotte Araya Moreland and Phoebe Flatau
WOW
shhhh… ‘I’m a rower - I have muscles from the nipples down.’
'You may not be a BNOC, but you are a BNIP (Big Name In Pembroke).'
'I enjoyed the Pembroke Street launch party more than Wednesday Cindies'
‘Driving home late at night blasting Classic FM is better than History Tripos’
OH 15.
an etymological study Home is a simple word, but one with a diversity and multiplicity of meanings, inseparably tied to the personal. Emelia Lehmann discusses its origins in the Englishspeaking world and beyond.
Home. Simple, concise, it leaves the mouth as easily as a breath, a sigh - oh - a sweet sound. The satisfying hum at the end, mmm, is like the beginnings of a smile, the tone of contentment, satisfaction and serenity. The word is a quiet drone, constant, consistent, that underlies every action, every thought, every sound. And yet the simplicity of the word is a cover - a mask which disguises its significances, its histories, its global connotations - which veils the complexity of its meanings and associations. The English word ‘home’ is a deeply personal one. It is different for everyone. It is the place people associate with their origins and
16.
identities. England is one such home, America another; a home can be a nation, a dot on the map which gives one a physical location within the larger world. Likewise, it can be brought down to a more microscopic level, to counties, towns, physical structures in which people reside. All of these can constitute an idea of home. And yet, there is nothing ‘English’ about the word home at all. Home is not an idea that belongs only to the English-speaking world. The word itself is the product of centuries of linguistic and cultural connections and appropriations throughout Europe and the wider world.
Home is derived from the Old English ham, meaning dwelling place. This referred to physical structures, like a house, and was later applied to the wider construct of a village, region, or country, extending to incorporate a wider world of relationships. In this way, ham moved beyond a specific place of residence to the local world within which individuals existed and lived. Ham could refer to an estate, the physical space where people came together to work, live, and play. Alternatively, ham meant ‘native land,’ a space which constituted and constructed origins and identity. It could be the place where one lived in the present moment, or the place from which one had come.
Home has experienced new surroundings, new incorporations, and new meanings, adopting and adapting much in the same way that we do when we find ourselves in new environments.
The word ham itself is not native to the English language; it entered English somewhere in the medieval period. Ham is an adaption of the Proto-Germanic word haimaz, meaning village, the Old Norse word heimr for world, the Danish hjem, the Middle Dutch heem, the German heim, and the Gothic haims, all of which share the ProtoIndo-European root tkei, to be home. The English word ‘home’ is part of a long history of interactions with other languages and
17.
an etymological study Home is a simple word, but one with a diversity and multiplicity of meanings, inseparably tied to the personal. Emelia Lehmann discusses its origins in the Englishspeaking world and beyond.
Home. Simple, concise, it leaves the mouth as easily as a breath, a sigh - oh - a sweet sound. The satisfying hum at the end, mmm, is like the beginnings of a smile, the tone of contentment, satisfaction and serenity. The word is a quiet drone, constant, consistent, that underlies every action, every thought, every sound. And yet the simplicity of the word is a cover - a mask which disguises its significances, its histories, its global connotations - which veils the complexity of its meanings and associations. The English word ‘home’ is a deeply personal one. It is different for everyone. It is the place people associate with their origins and
16.
identities. England is one such home, America another; a home can be a nation, a dot on the map which gives one a physical location within the larger world. Likewise, it can be brought down to a more microscopic level, to counties, towns, physical structures in which people reside. All of these can constitute an idea of home. And yet, there is nothing ‘English’ about the word home at all. Home is not an idea that belongs only to the English-speaking world. The word itself is the product of centuries of linguistic and cultural connections and appropriations throughout Europe and the wider world.
Home is derived from the Old English ham, meaning dwelling place. This referred to physical structures, like a house, and was later applied to the wider construct of a village, region, or country, extending to incorporate a wider world of relationships. In this way, ham moved beyond a specific place of residence to the local world within which individuals existed and lived. Ham could refer to an estate, the physical space where people came together to work, live, and play. Alternatively, ham meant ‘native land,’ a space which constituted and constructed origins and identity. It could be the place where one lived in the present moment, or the place from which one had come.
Home has experienced new surroundings, new incorporations, and new meanings, adopting and adapting much in the same way that we do when we find ourselves in new environments.
The word ham itself is not native to the English language; it entered English somewhere in the medieval period. Ham is an adaption of the Proto-Germanic word haimaz, meaning village, the Old Norse word heimr for world, the Danish hjem, the Middle Dutch heem, the German heim, and the Gothic haims, all of which share the ProtoIndo-European root tkei, to be home. The English word ‘home’ is part of a long history of interactions with other languages and
17.
other conceptions of the term. Home has experienced new surroundings, new incorporations, and new meanings, adopting and adapting much in the same way that we do when we find ourselves in new environments. When I consider my own home, I am at a loss to define it. What is my abode, my estate, my village, my world? The spaces I occupy are increasingly global. I have lived in two countries and four states. I've scampered up the stairs and marked the steady rise in my height on the walls of five houses and one apartment building. That's not to mention the number of dorm rooms I've occupied in my last three years, moving in and out of resident halls like a bird in a cuckoo clock popping out to chirp the time. One. Two. Three. Four… These have all been places I’ve referred to as home, the return addresses I’ve put on down on letters, physical locations I remember inhabiting.
… all of these things remind me of places where I’ve been happy and allow me to recreate an idea of home in my daily life Home, though, is also a feeling, memories and associations which arise at unexpected moments. The smell of barbecue reminds me of family dinners; friends waving at me across the quad make me think of the groups I belong to
18.
and the people I love. Sitting and reading in the sun, lazy Sunday mornings wandering through farmers markets, coffee in the mornings — all of these things remind me of places where I’ve been happy and allow me to recreate an idea of home in my daily life. My physical spaces are transformed by the habits, smells, and feelings of home that reside within my mind. And yet, that is precisely what home is and what its long and complex history shows. The word itself has, for centuries, incorporated the local and the global, the corporeal and the incorporeal. It is both fixed in space and time, and able to be recalled and recreated through memory, feeling, and sense. Home, even in its most basic linguistic structure, is a global phenomenon, the creation of worldly interactions and associations which defy physical definitions and geographic locations. Like the sweet satisfaction and contentment that saying the word brings, home is a word which is universal and personal at the same time. Home is like the air that we breath everywhere, but also necessarily our own. A sweet undertone that brings music to our lives. •
Emelia Lehmann is a History and Anthropology student on exchange from the University of Chicago
illustrations by Phoebe Flatau
19.
other conceptions of the term. Home has experienced new surroundings, new incorporations, and new meanings, adopting and adapting much in the same way that we do when we find ourselves in new environments. When I consider my own home, I am at a loss to define it. What is my abode, my estate, my village, my world? The spaces I occupy are increasingly global. I have lived in two countries and four states. I've scampered up the stairs and marked the steady rise in my height on the walls of five houses and one apartment building. That's not to mention the number of dorm rooms I've occupied in my last three years, moving in and out of resident halls like a bird in a cuckoo clock popping out to chirp the time. One. Two. Three. Four… These have all been places I’ve referred to as home, the return addresses I’ve put on down on letters, physical locations I remember inhabiting.
… all of these things remind me of places where I’ve been happy and allow me to recreate an idea of home in my daily life Home, though, is also a feeling, memories and associations which arise at unexpected moments. The smell of barbecue reminds me of family dinners; friends waving at me across the quad make me think of the groups I belong to
18.
and the people I love. Sitting and reading in the sun, lazy Sunday mornings wandering through farmers markets, coffee in the mornings — all of these things remind me of places where I’ve been happy and allow me to recreate an idea of home in my daily life. My physical spaces are transformed by the habits, smells, and feelings of home that reside within my mind. And yet, that is precisely what home is and what its long and complex history shows. The word itself has, for centuries, incorporated the local and the global, the corporeal and the incorporeal. It is both fixed in space and time, and able to be recalled and recreated through memory, feeling, and sense. Home, even in its most basic linguistic structure, is a global phenomenon, the creation of worldly interactions and associations which defy physical definitions and geographic locations. Like the sweet satisfaction and contentment that saying the word brings, home is a word which is universal and personal at the same time. Home is like the air that we breath everywhere, but also necessarily our own. A sweet undertone that brings music to our lives. •
Emelia Lehmann is a History and Anthropology student on exchange from the University of Chicago
illustrations by Phoebe Flatau
19.
Holme by Ed Limb Our village was an island on seas of wheat Its summers stole our carefree minds, its autumns heard the tree-tops’ sighs. Wild winters howled through chimney-pots, and springs of trampolines gave way. Do you remember riding round the frozen lake on farmer’s tracks, the crunch of gravel underfoot, warm arms, cold streams, hay bale stacks? Do you ache for ash where fires roared, for guests gone home, for lark-full skies, for dust that danced on shafts of light? My blood, our sorrow lies beneath the flood. •
Ed Limb is a third year English student at Pembroke
20.
photo by Phoebe Flatau
Holme by Ed Limb Our village was an island on seas of wheat Its summers stole our carefree minds, its autumns heard the tree-tops’ sighs. Wild winters howled through chimney-pots, and springs of trampolines gave way. Do you remember riding round the frozen lake on farmer’s tracks, the crunch of gravel underfoot, warm arms, cold streams, hay bale stacks? Do you ache for ash where fires roared, for guests gone home, for lark-full skies, for dust that danced on shafts of light? My blood, our sorrow lies beneath the flood. •
Ed Limb is a third year English student at Pembroke
20.
photo by Phoebe Flatau
home among the gumtrees Tasha May explores the intricacies of her mixed Anglophone cultural background
When I’m asked, “where do you come from?” in Cambridge, I assume people have picked up on my definitely-notBritish accent. I answer “Sydney” but soon have to untangle the knotty confusion that arises from meaning Sydney, Australia, not Sidney Sussex College. Besides from New Zealand, Australia is pretty much as far away as it gets, but the distance from home never really makes itself felt until the bookends of term time. I remember the end of my first term, taking a break from packing up my room, having a cup of tea in my gyp and looking out the window. I saw parents helping their kids pack their cardboard boxes and suitcases into their cars, and knew that not only would I be making the several trips with my belongings to the Foundress basement storage space on my own, but ahead of me was a bus ride to London, making my way through airport security and the three hour wait before boarding time, the first ten hour flight to Hong Kong, another three hour layover before the final thirteen hour flight from Hong Kong to Sydney. Airports are crowded places, but sometimes that only makes you feel lonelier. When I finally arrived back in Australia on December 4th (eager to finally be rid of the framed matriculation photo I had been transporting as carry-on and knocking people and things with for the last 36 hours) I was waiting in line to scan my passport for the final security check of my journey. However, I found I had to re-queue for the manual security check instead because the facialrecognition technology wouldn’t acknowledge my dishevelled appearance and bedraggled expression as belonging
22.
to the person whose picture appeared in my passport. The end of a Cambridge term leaves you mentally exhausted, but my journey home proves a pretty physically draining one. I do not travel in style – I arrive back home sleep-deprived with bloodshot eyes, limbs that ache from standing in endless queues with a heavy backpack, a headache from screaming babies in the plane cabin and if I’m lucky enough, the cold the passenger next to me had. Sorry, rant over.
I answer “Sydney” but soon have to untangle the knotty confusion that arises from meaning Sydney, Australia, not Sidney Sussex College. From my first time going home, I learnt that the distance does make itself felt in the physical act of getting from Cambridge to Sydney, and vice versa - yet strangely enough, the challenges I felt in Cambridge were more the adjustments common to all university students – transitioning from school to university learning, living in a college as opposed to with your family, and learning to get around a new city. Cambridge was the one university I applied to outside of Australia (thinking, like a lot of applicants, I wouldn’t actually get in) – but never having been to the UK
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home among the gumtrees Tasha May explores the intricacies of her mixed Anglophone cultural background
When I’m asked, “where do you come from?” in Cambridge, I assume people have picked up on my definitely-notBritish accent. I answer “Sydney” but soon have to untangle the knotty confusion that arises from meaning Sydney, Australia, not Sidney Sussex College. Besides from New Zealand, Australia is pretty much as far away as it gets, but the distance from home never really makes itself felt until the bookends of term time. I remember the end of my first term, taking a break from packing up my room, having a cup of tea in my gyp and looking out the window. I saw parents helping their kids pack their cardboard boxes and suitcases into their cars, and knew that not only would I be making the several trips with my belongings to the Foundress basement storage space on my own, but ahead of me was a bus ride to London, making my way through airport security and the three hour wait before boarding time, the first ten hour flight to Hong Kong, another three hour layover before the final thirteen hour flight from Hong Kong to Sydney. Airports are crowded places, but sometimes that only makes you feel lonelier. When I finally arrived back in Australia on December 4th (eager to finally be rid of the framed matriculation photo I had been transporting as carry-on and knocking people and things with for the last 36 hours) I was waiting in line to scan my passport for the final security check of my journey. However, I found I had to re-queue for the manual security check instead because the facialrecognition technology wouldn’t acknowledge my dishevelled appearance and bedraggled expression as belonging
22.
to the person whose picture appeared in my passport. The end of a Cambridge term leaves you mentally exhausted, but my journey home proves a pretty physically draining one. I do not travel in style – I arrive back home sleep-deprived with bloodshot eyes, limbs that ache from standing in endless queues with a heavy backpack, a headache from screaming babies in the plane cabin and if I’m lucky enough, the cold the passenger next to me had. Sorry, rant over.
I answer “Sydney” but soon have to untangle the knotty confusion that arises from meaning Sydney, Australia, not Sidney Sussex College. From my first time going home, I learnt that the distance does make itself felt in the physical act of getting from Cambridge to Sydney, and vice versa - yet strangely enough, the challenges I felt in Cambridge were more the adjustments common to all university students – transitioning from school to university learning, living in a college as opposed to with your family, and learning to get around a new city. Cambridge was the one university I applied to outside of Australia (thinking, like a lot of applicants, I wouldn’t actually get in) – but never having been to the UK
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Australia is definitely my home; but it’s often in the spaces free of human voices, amidst the Australian landscape itself
photos by Tasha May
Australia is definitely my home; but it’s often in the spaces free of human voices, amidst the Australian landscape itself
photos by Tasha May
before accepting my place, the decision does seem rather reckless in retrospect. In the end though, I never really experienced any culture shock. Yes, England is not as sunny as Sydney, and I didn’t know what squash was and drank it undiluted in freshers’ week but overall, as part of the Commonwealth, Australia retains a fairly strong cultural stamp from Britain.
I can remember, shaded by gum trees and great cavernous red rocks – that I feel most at home. To my surprise, I didn’t find the experience of being an international student in Cambridge alienating – or perhaps no more alienating than the sense of being a bit different or ‘foreign’ that I’ve always been used to. I was born in Sydney and lived my entire life there until beginning university in the UK, but having a (very talkative and loud) American mother and spending my early primary education at Sydney’s International French School had a particularly distorting effect upon my accent. One’s accent, like one’s outward appearance, is something that can immediately signal difference and it
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was something people around me picked up on before I was even aware of the concept of an accent. Having assumed I sounded like everyone else did, it was only gradually that I was made aware of my hybrid inflection when I moved to an Australian school. “Where are you from?” and “how long are you here for?” are questions I have long been used to answering. My accent mostly gets taken for American in Australia and the UK, sounds British to Americans, and there are always some odd guesses in between like Irish and Swedish – but it only ever gets recognised as vaguely Australian in the aftermath of me telling people that’s where I’m from. In spite of this, Australia is definitely my home; but it’s often in the spaces free of human voices, amidst the Australian landscape itself – taking my dogs for a walk in the park outside my house and hearing kookaburras’ cries predicting rain, or hiking in the bush on the Central Coast where my family has spent every summer holiday that I can remember, shaded by gum trees and great cavernous red rocks – that I feel most at home. •
Tasha May is a first-year English Literature student, and is on the Pembroke Street editorial team.
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before accepting my place, the decision does seem rather reckless in retrospect. In the end though, I never really experienced any culture shock. Yes, England is not as sunny as Sydney, and I didn’t know what squash was and drank it undiluted in freshers’ week but overall, as part of the Commonwealth, Australia retains a fairly strong cultural stamp from Britain.
I can remember, shaded by gum trees and great cavernous red rocks – that I feel most at home. To my surprise, I didn’t find the experience of being an international student in Cambridge alienating – or perhaps no more alienating than the sense of being a bit different or ‘foreign’ that I’ve always been used to. I was born in Sydney and lived my entire life there until beginning university in the UK, but having a (very talkative and loud) American mother and spending my early primary education at Sydney’s International French School had a particularly distorting effect upon my accent. One’s accent, like one’s outward appearance, is something that can immediately signal difference and it
26.
was something people around me picked up on before I was even aware of the concept of an accent. Having assumed I sounded like everyone else did, it was only gradually that I was made aware of my hybrid inflection when I moved to an Australian school. “Where are you from?” and “how long are you here for?” are questions I have long been used to answering. My accent mostly gets taken for American in Australia and the UK, sounds British to Americans, and there are always some odd guesses in between like Irish and Swedish – but it only ever gets recognised as vaguely Australian in the aftermath of me telling people that’s where I’m from. In spite of this, Australia is definitely my home; but it’s often in the spaces free of human voices, amidst the Australian landscape itself – taking my dogs for a walk in the park outside my house and hearing kookaburras’ cries predicting rain, or hiking in the bush on the Central Coast where my family has spent every summer holiday that I can remember, shaded by gum trees and great cavernous red rocks – that I feel most at home. •
Tasha May is a first-year English Literature student, and is on the Pembroke Street editorial team.
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Claiming
by Virginia Gresham-Jacobs
One of the most bothersome things a person can say to me is, “where’s home for you?” In all fairness, I dislike it mostly because it lands - for me, however justifiably - as an overly cute and cosy attempt at conversation. Even if I’m willing to be forgiving, the question seems to want to avoid the ambiguities of the usual, “where are you from?”- yet rests on the idea that home is singular, and means the same thing to everyone: where you grew up. When I’m not annoyed on principle, the question only makes me unsure, because I’m not decided what home actually means, where mine is, or how to make a new one for myself.
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From where I am sitting now, I could easily say that I am either 3,460 or 4,315 or 4,290 or 0 miles from home, as the crow flies. To say that home is different for everyone, or to suggest that we all at different points make new homes for ourselves is not itself anything new. However, in all my many moves to new places, I’ve never felt a new sense of home as supplanting the old one. There are homes that I can’t claim as mine anymore in the legal, economic sense—the house I grew up in that was sold when I left for university, the dorm rooms of freshmen, sophomore, and junior years, the
apartments I rented the summers between, and maybe even the orphanage I spent the first year and a half of my life in. There is the house my parent’s built on a lake at least ten years my senior, the new apartment from the downsizing phase, and my small room on Fitz Street. I will adamantly claim these all as mine, and I realise how lucky I am to have found so many homes in the world. Sometimes, though, I resent my transitional, nomadic life. After I graduated high school my parents made plans to sell the house; and, in the interest of downsizing, anything I didn’t take to university wouldn’t be
illustrations by Amy Teh
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Claiming
by Virginia Gresham-Jacobs
One of the most bothersome things a person can say to me is, “where’s home for you?” In all fairness, I dislike it mostly because it lands - for me, however justifiably - as an overly cute and cosy attempt at conversation. Even if I’m willing to be forgiving, the question seems to want to avoid the ambiguities of the usual, “where are you from?”- yet rests on the idea that home is singular, and means the same thing to everyone: where you grew up. When I’m not annoyed on principle, the question only makes me unsure, because I’m not decided what home actually means, where mine is, or how to make a new one for myself.
28.
From where I am sitting now, I could easily say that I am either 3,460 or 4,315 or 4,290 or 0 miles from home, as the crow flies. To say that home is different for everyone, or to suggest that we all at different points make new homes for ourselves is not itself anything new. However, in all my many moves to new places, I’ve never felt a new sense of home as supplanting the old one. There are homes that I can’t claim as mine anymore in the legal, economic sense—the house I grew up in that was sold when I left for university, the dorm rooms of freshmen, sophomore, and junior years, the
apartments I rented the summers between, and maybe even the orphanage I spent the first year and a half of my life in. There is the house my parent’s built on a lake at least ten years my senior, the new apartment from the downsizing phase, and my small room on Fitz Street. I will adamantly claim these all as mine, and I realise how lucky I am to have found so many homes in the world. Sometimes, though, I resent my transitional, nomadic life. After I graduated high school my parents made plans to sell the house; and, in the interest of downsizing, anything I didn’t take to university wouldn’t be
illustrations by Amy Teh
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kept. Thus, I and all my possessions flew in one big move to New York that first fall. Every year since the first, I pack up and push, carry, and drag all my possessions from dorm to summer sublet and back. Even as I seem to collect places that become homes, I necessarily leave them behind. Whether I might describe my life as home abundant or home without, I can definitively say that I have never been homesick. A friend once described her way of seeing home, and her inevitable homesickness, as something like a bird. More specifically, she reasoned, that without fail there was, like a homing pigeon always a place—singular—in her mind’s eye of return. But even as a child at camp, I never experienced the feeling that a place, or even a place with a set of people, was calling me back. There was always an indescribable feeling of rightness when I return, but it’s never any specific return. Leaving for the Pembroke library and then returning to Fitz Street later gives me the same calm of coming home as the flight I often make from New York to Alabama or vice versa. I have missed people, missed places but it never seemed I could actually leave home behind. Another friend explained to me what he thought he remembered from an introductory biology class about homing pigeons. There is something, he thought, about magnetic fields and their ability to sense their place in
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relation to them. He seemed to think he confirmed my other friend’s view that home was about origins and physical place. But what I see in the pigeon is just proof that home is a feeling. The pigeon supports a one-home sense, but regardless of the scientific how of the pigeon’s flight home, the pigeon experiences a sense of not being right. Whether that manifests in pain or emotional trauma—is that not what homesickness is?—fundamentally the pigeon flies until it feels right.
Virginia Gresham-Jacobs is an English Literature student on exchange from Barnard College, New York.
Maybe, then, if we think about home as not just being a place, but a place where we feel a certain something—a feeling perhaps of rightness, that is of belonging in and to a place—it becomes easy to see how we make homes. I’ve never felt like leaving made a place no longer mine. A place as distant as my childhood house, or as silly as my freshmen dorm room still feel like home, not because I used to live there, but because I claim them as mine and see parts of myself as there. I’ve never thought about the places I am as places I won’t be soon, or places that are only provisionally mine; I’ve always thought of them as mine, and I’ve always felt I belong there. It becomes easy to see, also, how we can hope to continue moving and to continue being at home no matter where we go. It can come from making a place your own, and giving yourself a chance to belong to it. Home can come from believing—not in some fluffy sense, but in actually letting ourselves think—that we can feel right here. •
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kept. Thus, I and all my possessions flew in one big move to New York that first fall. Every year since the first, I pack up and push, carry, and drag all my possessions from dorm to summer sublet and back. Even as I seem to collect places that become homes, I necessarily leave them behind. Whether I might describe my life as home abundant or home without, I can definitively say that I have never been homesick. A friend once described her way of seeing home, and her inevitable homesickness, as something like a bird. More specifically, she reasoned, that without fail there was, like a homing pigeon always a place—singular—in her mind’s eye of return. But even as a child at camp, I never experienced the feeling that a place, or even a place with a set of people, was calling me back. There was always an indescribable feeling of rightness when I return, but it’s never any specific return. Leaving for the Pembroke library and then returning to Fitz Street later gives me the same calm of coming home as the flight I often make from New York to Alabama or vice versa. I have missed people, missed places but it never seemed I could actually leave home behind. Another friend explained to me what he thought he remembered from an introductory biology class about homing pigeons. There is something, he thought, about magnetic fields and their ability to sense their place in
30.
relation to them. He seemed to think he confirmed my other friend’s view that home was about origins and physical place. But what I see in the pigeon is just proof that home is a feeling. The pigeon supports a one-home sense, but regardless of the scientific how of the pigeon’s flight home, the pigeon experiences a sense of not being right. Whether that manifests in pain or emotional trauma—is that not what homesickness is?—fundamentally the pigeon flies until it feels right.
Virginia Gresham-Jacobs is an English Literature student on exchange from Barnard College, New York.
Maybe, then, if we think about home as not just being a place, but a place where we feel a certain something—a feeling perhaps of rightness, that is of belonging in and to a place—it becomes easy to see how we make homes. I’ve never felt like leaving made a place no longer mine. A place as distant as my childhood house, or as silly as my freshmen dorm room still feel like home, not because I used to live there, but because I claim them as mine and see parts of myself as there. I’ve never thought about the places I am as places I won’t be soon, or places that are only provisionally mine; I’ve always thought of them as mine, and I’ve always felt I belong there. It becomes easy to see, also, how we can hope to continue moving and to continue being at home no matter where we go. It can come from making a place your own, and giving yourself a chance to belong to it. Home can come from believing—not in some fluffy sense, but in actually letting ourselves think—that we can feel right here. •
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photos by Disa Greaves
from brussels to reykjavik ...and now cambridge Disa Greaves considers the meaning of ‘home’ for people with multiple cultural identities, drawing on her personal experiences of living in Reykjavik, Brussels, and Cambridge.
‘Home’ can be a tricky word for people who have multiple cultural identities. Since starting university, the question “so, where are you from?” crops up time and again as I meet new people. It sounds like a simple enough question, but I am never quite sure how to answer it. I was born in London in 1998 to an Icelandic mother and an English father, but have since been living in the heart of Europe, Brussels, for the last decade-and-a-bit of my life before Cambridge. It’s a classic case of the ‘Third Culture Kid’- someone who has spent a significant part of their childhood away from where their parents originate from. While living in Brussels, I attended an international school. I followed the British curriculum, my teachers were almost exclusively British, and many of my cohorts were, too. Much like Cambridge, it was a bubble,
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with my whole life centred around this community of Anglophone, multicultural students. We all had similar backgrounds and mixed nationalities; had moved around various countries due to expat parents, with a quasi-English and little-bit-of-everything culture. Because while Belgium was where we lived, we were not Belgian at all. Spending all our days immersed in English inevitably meant we did not truly identify with a large part of native life. This was the norm back ‘home’ in Brussels, but is less the case in Cambridge. Here, people are either British or international (and it is hard to identify with either when you’re sort of both). When I first meet casual acquaintances, often I just resort to the generic ‘London’ answer - which is not totally untrue and spares the long explanation. Other times, if I’m in the mood to
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photos by Disa Greaves
from brussels to reykjavik ...and now cambridge Disa Greaves considers the meaning of ‘home’ for people with multiple cultural identities, drawing on her personal experiences of living in Reykjavik, Brussels, and Cambridge.
‘Home’ can be a tricky word for people who have multiple cultural identities. Since starting university, the question “so, where are you from?” crops up time and again as I meet new people. It sounds like a simple enough question, but I am never quite sure how to answer it. I was born in London in 1998 to an Icelandic mother and an English father, but have since been living in the heart of Europe, Brussels, for the last decade-and-a-bit of my life before Cambridge. It’s a classic case of the ‘Third Culture Kid’- someone who has spent a significant part of their childhood away from where their parents originate from. While living in Brussels, I attended an international school. I followed the British curriculum, my teachers were almost exclusively British, and many of my cohorts were, too. Much like Cambridge, it was a bubble,
32.
with my whole life centred around this community of Anglophone, multicultural students. We all had similar backgrounds and mixed nationalities; had moved around various countries due to expat parents, with a quasi-English and little-bit-of-everything culture. Because while Belgium was where we lived, we were not Belgian at all. Spending all our days immersed in English inevitably meant we did not truly identify with a large part of native life. This was the norm back ‘home’ in Brussels, but is less the case in Cambridge. Here, people are either British or international (and it is hard to identify with either when you’re sort of both). When I first meet casual acquaintances, often I just resort to the generic ‘London’ answer - which is not totally untrue and spares the long explanation. Other times, if I’m in the mood to
33.
to hold the conversation, I’ll say “Iceland,” which invariably garners a few “oohs” and “aahs,” or the classic “I went there for a geography trip once!”
I’ll say “Iceland,” which invariably garners a few “oohs” and “aahs,” or the classic “I went there for a geography trip once!”
Funnily enough, the place that I’ve spent the most amount of time in Belgium - rarely gets a mention on first encounters. It seems a bit unfair, since my formative years were spent there. But the whole ‘life-story’ seems a bit of a heavy answer for a question that wasn’t asking for an essay.
that the physical home we have there has been the only home I’ve sustained for my whole life. Regardless of not truly ‘belonging’ to any of the places I call home, be it my room in Pembroke, Brussels or Reykjavik, I feel very lucky to be able to have this dilemma. People often say the language you think and dream in dictates where you’re really from, and I often switch into thinking in Icelandic from English after spending a substantial amount of time there. It can be frustrating not to have a clear national identity, but this has made me able to cultivate a meaningful connection to more than one country… a first world problem for a ‘Third Culture Kid’. •
But the whole ‘lifestory’ seems a bit of a heavy answer for a question that wasn’t asking for an essay.
Disa Greaves is a first year Land Economist, and the Pembroke Street blogger.
Iceland, strangely enough, is probably where I feel most at home. I’ve been going there since I was 3 months old, multiple times a year and often for a month at a time. I suppose this has created some sense of stability. My mum always refers to our trips as ‘koma heim’ - going home. ‘Home’ is what everyone in Iceland refers to the country as, and so do I. Maybe it’s the intimacy of a small city that I know so well. Maybe it’s the people - some of my best friends and closest family are there, so I feel invariably at ease and happy there. Or maybe it’s the fact
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to hold the conversation, I’ll say “Iceland,” which invariably garners a few “oohs” and “aahs,” or the classic “I went there for a geography trip once!”
I’ll say “Iceland,” which invariably garners a few “oohs” and “aahs,” or the classic “I went there for a geography trip once!”
Funnily enough, the place that I’ve spent the most amount of time in Belgium - rarely gets a mention on first encounters. It seems a bit unfair, since my formative years were spent there. But the whole ‘life-story’ seems a bit of a heavy answer for a question that wasn’t asking for an essay.
that the physical home we have there has been the only home I’ve sustained for my whole life. Regardless of not truly ‘belonging’ to any of the places I call home, be it my room in Pembroke, Brussels or Reykjavik, I feel very lucky to be able to have this dilemma. People often say the language you think and dream in dictates where you’re really from, and I often switch into thinking in Icelandic from English after spending a substantial amount of time there. It can be frustrating not to have a clear national identity, but this has made me able to cultivate a meaningful connection to more than one country… a first world problem for a ‘Third Culture Kid’. •
But the whole ‘lifestory’ seems a bit of a heavy answer for a question that wasn’t asking for an essay.
Disa Greaves is a first year Land Economist, and the Pembroke Street blogger.
Iceland, strangely enough, is probably where I feel most at home. I’ve been going there since I was 3 months old, multiple times a year and often for a month at a time. I suppose this has created some sense of stability. My mum always refers to our trips as ‘koma heim’ - going home. ‘Home’ is what everyone in Iceland refers to the country as, and so do I. Maybe it’s the intimacy of a small city that I know so well. Maybe it’s the people - some of my best friends and closest family are there, so I feel invariably at ease and happy there. Or maybe it’s the fact
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home in
transition Jessica Brofsky discusses the sense of impermanence she finds in calling Cambridge ‘home’. photos by Julien Godawatta
I’ve had six addresses in three years. A freshman dorm, an upperclassmen dorm, two apartments, a Cambridge hostel, and a house - not atypical for an American college student choosing to study abroad in their third year. I’ve grown used to boxing up my life, packing and unpacking, rearranging, shifting, adding and subtracting. I have had beds on different sides of the room, my head behind windows crackling with light displaying distinct views. Usually I have the same bedspread, the same photographs and postcards on the walls, and the same tins on my desk filled with pens. Despite how quickly I seem to slip into new places, when I am settled, the space doesn’t feel so transient. Things are different in Cambridge. The distance between me and my family is greater and my suitcase is smaller. This space is emptier and came with stock sheets and a comforter and curtains. It isn’t my design. But in every other way it feels the same. I am used to it now, the way I cross the room every morning to use the sink and then back to my drawers. I am used to the open floor and the narrow hallways that lead to the bathroom. It is home in its reprieve from the rest of the world. And it is mine. At least for now. But I am nervous that the apparent safety and comfort of my room is preventing me from embracing the fact that I am in another country, from integrating into the university and city in a way that makes it feel homelike. I wonder if there is a rule that states creating a home means sacrificing another.
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home in
transition Jessica Brofsky discusses the sense of impermanence she finds in calling Cambridge ‘home’. photos by Julien Godawatta
I’ve had six addresses in three years. A freshman dorm, an upperclassmen dorm, two apartments, a Cambridge hostel, and a house - not atypical for an American college student choosing to study abroad in their third year. I’ve grown used to boxing up my life, packing and unpacking, rearranging, shifting, adding and subtracting. I have had beds on different sides of the room, my head behind windows crackling with light displaying distinct views. Usually I have the same bedspread, the same photographs and postcards on the walls, and the same tins on my desk filled with pens. Despite how quickly I seem to slip into new places, when I am settled, the space doesn’t feel so transient. Things are different in Cambridge. The distance between me and my family is greater and my suitcase is smaller. This space is emptier and came with stock sheets and a comforter and curtains. It isn’t my design. But in every other way it feels the same. I am used to it now, the way I cross the room every morning to use the sink and then back to my drawers. I am used to the open floor and the narrow hallways that lead to the bathroom. It is home in its reprieve from the rest of the world. And it is mine. At least for now. But I am nervous that the apparent safety and comfort of my room is preventing me from embracing the fact that I am in another country, from integrating into the university and city in a way that makes it feel homelike. I wonder if there is a rule that states creating a home means sacrificing another.
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Coming to Cambridge has been like starting college all over again, as if it is a microcosm of the entire four-year experience. The very thought of completing the work of these six months deeply concerns me since it seems to represent the inevitable end of undergraduate education - something that risks breaking apart my very conception of myself.
So my room becomes a way of escaping that obstacle: a place where I don’t have to worry about feeling like I belong. And like the start of college, Cambridge has meant new people in a new place, a different set of rules, academics, terminology, spelling. There are magical Harry Potter-esque dinners called ‘formal halls’, a seemingly endless flowing supply of wine in the college bar, and imposing gates to which I hold a set of keys. There is a keen interest in fire safety, and doors that open in curious places. I have a newfound sense of clumsiness and insecurity about how to dress and behave. I don’t know how to read people here...do they actually want to talk to me or are they just being polite? Is what I said interesting and new, or totally misinformed, tired, and lame? So my room becomes a way of escaping that obstacle: a place where I don’t have to worry about feeling like I belong.
I am not sure if, by ignoring where in the world it is located, this makes my room more or less of a home. I often think about all the lives that have inhabited these spaces, who have also called them home. The rooms were constructed to house someone for a short period of time and they have seen all sorts at their most private and honest versions of themselves. They’ve heard late night conversations with friends, families, significant others. They have seen visitors, like me. When a friend visited, she remarked on the eerie nature of these college grounds - the way they present an alternate world where things grow without messy uncontrollable entropy, but instead within a perfect mould. It is almost outside of nature, outside of the cultural rules I have grown used to and into. It seems a place independent of nationality, a place cultivated for something else. It is tucked away behind medieval walls and it does not embed itself into the city. I, too, sometimes feel like I have found a place here without necessarily feeling like a part of it, if that makes any sense at all. It is funny how often and how loosely we seem to use that term - ‘home’. Aside from the more permanent residences in college and with my family, I’ve also called hostels, friends’ houses, hotels, and Airbnbs ‘home’. It feels almost like a mistake, like a slip of the tongue - but sometimes we can mean it, too, in whatever sense of the word we want. •
I often think about all the lives that have inhabited these spaces, who have also called them home.
Jessica Brofsky is an English Literature student on exchange from Cornell University
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Coming to Cambridge has been like starting college all over again, as if it is a microcosm of the entire four-year experience. The very thought of completing the work of these six months deeply concerns me since it seems to represent the inevitable end of undergraduate education - something that risks breaking apart my very conception of myself.
So my room becomes a way of escaping that obstacle: a place where I don’t have to worry about feeling like I belong. And like the start of college, Cambridge has meant new people in a new place, a different set of rules, academics, terminology, spelling. There are magical Harry Potter-esque dinners called ‘formal halls’, a seemingly endless flowing supply of wine in the college bar, and imposing gates to which I hold a set of keys. There is a keen interest in fire safety, and doors that open in curious places. I have a newfound sense of clumsiness and insecurity about how to dress and behave. I don’t know how to read people here...do they actually want to talk to me or are they just being polite? Is what I said interesting and new, or totally misinformed, tired, and lame? So my room becomes a way of escaping that obstacle: a place where I don’t have to worry about feeling like I belong.
I am not sure if, by ignoring where in the world it is located, this makes my room more or less of a home. I often think about all the lives that have inhabited these spaces, who have also called them home. The rooms were constructed to house someone for a short period of time and they have seen all sorts at their most private and honest versions of themselves. They’ve heard late night conversations with friends, families, significant others. They have seen visitors, like me. When a friend visited, she remarked on the eerie nature of these college grounds - the way they present an alternate world where things grow without messy uncontrollable entropy, but instead within a perfect mould. It is almost outside of nature, outside of the cultural rules I have grown used to and into. It seems a place independent of nationality, a place cultivated for something else. It is tucked away behind medieval walls and it does not embed itself into the city. I, too, sometimes feel like I have found a place here without necessarily feeling like a part of it, if that makes any sense at all. It is funny how often and how loosely we seem to use that term - ‘home’. Aside from the more permanent residences in college and with my family, I’ve also called hostels, friends’ houses, hotels, and Airbnbs ‘home’. It feels almost like a mistake, like a slip of the tongue - but sometimes we can mean it, too, in whatever sense of the word we want. •
I often think about all the lives that have inhabited these spaces, who have also called them home.
Jessica Brofsky is an English Literature student on exchange from Cornell University
39.
home
in absence
Over the past year or so, I’ve lost a sense of where ‘home’ really is. I embarked on an accidental gap year, went to Cambodia for three months, and returned to the UK to find everything had changed. I started with no savings and no real idea of what I was going to do for twelve months, and the prospect of organising my life for an entire year was a mammoth task. Coming up with various plans of visiting places and friends was all well and good, but the reality was that I was too disorganised to get a job early enough to fund them. And so I signed up for International Citizen Service, a government-funded volunteering programme for three months, which seemed like it would be relevant to my degree and fill a travel void - but little did I know how it would change things for me when I came back. I can’t say I particularly enjoyed my gap year: it seemed rather dull and disappointing in comparison to stories of my friends travelling the world, and adjusting back to a routine at university wasn’t easy. My time away was rewarding but challenging to say the least.
Kate Goodrum recounts her gap year experiences in Cambodia, and how her sense of perspective on ‘home’ has since changed.
40.
The host home where I stayed was in a rural, remote part of Cambodia. No one in my new family spoke English (and my Khmer was basic at best), so communication and getting to know the people who had so kindly opened up their home for me was difficult.
And I was hugely homesick. I saved up $10 a week to buy credit for my secondhand Nokia brick phone that I purchased at a market in Battambang (yes, it had Snake), all for a fifteen-minute call home. My attachment to home only grew as the time away went on, and I would count down the days until I’d be back in the UK. But returning home was not what I had expected. There was a sadness that came with leaving, and the pain of saying a rushed goodbye to a family whom I couldn’t quite express my gratitude towards in words. There was the long flight home, and the anti-climax of arriving back in Heathrow. My first sight was the car park.
There was a sadness that came with leaving, and the pain of saying a rushed goodbye to a family whom I couldn’t quite express my gratitude towards in words. There were no more Asian skies, with palm trees and sunsets. It was grey. It was raining. Walking into my house was odd - everything looked the same and different, familiar and unfamiliar. Soon the novelty of home comforts wore off. I was no longer excited to use a bath or a normal toilet, and I soon got used to eating everything possible but rice.
41.
home
in absence
Over the past year or so, I’ve lost a sense of where ‘home’ really is. I embarked on an accidental gap year, went to Cambodia for three months, and returned to the UK to find everything had changed. I started with no savings and no real idea of what I was going to do for twelve months, and the prospect of organising my life for an entire year was a mammoth task. Coming up with various plans of visiting places and friends was all well and good, but the reality was that I was too disorganised to get a job early enough to fund them. And so I signed up for International Citizen Service, a government-funded volunteering programme for three months, which seemed like it would be relevant to my degree and fill a travel void - but little did I know how it would change things for me when I came back. I can’t say I particularly enjoyed my gap year: it seemed rather dull and disappointing in comparison to stories of my friends travelling the world, and adjusting back to a routine at university wasn’t easy. My time away was rewarding but challenging to say the least.
Kate Goodrum recounts her gap year experiences in Cambodia, and how her sense of perspective on ‘home’ has since changed.
40.
The host home where I stayed was in a rural, remote part of Cambodia. No one in my new family spoke English (and my Khmer was basic at best), so communication and getting to know the people who had so kindly opened up their home for me was difficult.
And I was hugely homesick. I saved up $10 a week to buy credit for my secondhand Nokia brick phone that I purchased at a market in Battambang (yes, it had Snake), all for a fifteen-minute call home. My attachment to home only grew as the time away went on, and I would count down the days until I’d be back in the UK. But returning home was not what I had expected. There was a sadness that came with leaving, and the pain of saying a rushed goodbye to a family whom I couldn’t quite express my gratitude towards in words. There was the long flight home, and the anti-climax of arriving back in Heathrow. My first sight was the car park.
There was a sadness that came with leaving, and the pain of saying a rushed goodbye to a family whom I couldn’t quite express my gratitude towards in words. There were no more Asian skies, with palm trees and sunsets. It was grey. It was raining. Walking into my house was odd - everything looked the same and different, familiar and unfamiliar. Soon the novelty of home comforts wore off. I was no longer excited to use a bath or a normal toilet, and I soon got used to eating everything possible but rice.
41.
My friends and family didn’t understand anything about my time away. I couldn’t describe the sights or sounds of everyday life for the past few months, and it began to feel like a huge part of my life had become separated and compartmentalised. I lost a sense of what a lot of my friends were doing. Most had settled into their new university towns, dispersed across the country. Others that remained in Norwich had new jobs, new work friends, new priorities. Some younger friends were still at my old sixth form, but I felt more distanced from them than ever. I’ve always had different friendships groups dotted around the country, but returning home made my friendships feel more fragmented and dispersed than ever.
42.
I was hit with reverse culture shock, and was never sure what to say when friends asked “How was Cambodia?” and expected a quick and straightforward answer. It had been difficult to keep in contact with most people whilst I was away. With a drastic time-difference and
“I was hit with reverse culture shock” no personal internet access, I’d only managed to regularly message an exboyfriend and a couple of friends by cycling to the one café with WiFi at 6am, our conversations overlapping as they stayed up later and later at university. As my year out came to an end, my life back home had changed.
photos by Kate Goodrum
At university, you get asked where ‘home’ is on a weekly basis. I always say Norwich, because people don’t want a long-winded answer about how you live in a tiny village and actually have to plan out in advance how you will get to and from the nearest city. I’ve always loved Norwich and I’m quick to defend it and tell everyone how amazing it is, but recently I feel like I am becoming less and less connected to it as I spend more and more time away. It’s still so much fun to go back to, and I enjoy catching up with close friends in our usual spots.
But my favourite places are becoming increasingly full of new faces. Younger locals fill the cheap pub on a Tuesday evening, and new arts students fill my favourite bar during the warm summery days. The so-called ‘Cambridge bubble’ has again made it harder to keep in contact with lots of people, and so ‘home’ is becoming increasingly a physical place rather than a notion connected to groups of friends and family. •
Kate Goodrum is a first year Land Economy student at Pembroke.
43.
My friends and family didn’t understand anything about my time away. I couldn’t describe the sights or sounds of everyday life for the past few months, and it began to feel like a huge part of my life had become separated and compartmentalised. I lost a sense of what a lot of my friends were doing. Most had settled into their new university towns, dispersed across the country. Others that remained in Norwich had new jobs, new work friends, new priorities. Some younger friends were still at my old sixth form, but I felt more distanced from them than ever. I’ve always had different friendships groups dotted around the country, but returning home made my friendships feel more fragmented and dispersed than ever.
42.
I was hit with reverse culture shock, and was never sure what to say when friends asked “How was Cambodia?” and expected a quick and straightforward answer. It had been difficult to keep in contact with most people whilst I was away. With a drastic time-difference and
“I was hit with reverse culture shock” no personal internet access, I’d only managed to regularly message an exboyfriend and a couple of friends by cycling to the one café with WiFi at 6am, our conversations overlapping as they stayed up later and later at university. As my year out came to an end, my life back home had changed.
photos by Kate Goodrum
At university, you get asked where ‘home’ is on a weekly basis. I always say Norwich, because people don’t want a long-winded answer about how you live in a tiny village and actually have to plan out in advance how you will get to and from the nearest city. I’ve always loved Norwich and I’m quick to defend it and tell everyone how amazing it is, but recently I feel like I am becoming less and less connected to it as I spend more and more time away. It’s still so much fun to go back to, and I enjoy catching up with close friends in our usual spots.
But my favourite places are becoming increasingly full of new faces. Younger locals fill the cheap pub on a Tuesday evening, and new arts students fill my favourite bar during the warm summery days. The so-called ‘Cambridge bubble’ has again made it harder to keep in contact with lots of people, and so ‘home’ is becoming increasingly a physical place rather than a notion connected to groups of friends and family. •
Kate Goodrum is a first year Land Economy student at Pembroke.
43.
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