STREET: 02/09 (Hometowns Issue)

The Daily Princetonian

Thursday february 9, 2017

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HOMETOWNS

PAGES DESIGNED BY ANDIE AYALA AND CATHERINE WANG :: STREET EDITORS

For most of the year, we live on Princeton’s campus, but each of us comes from different places. Where is home and what does it mean to us? This week, Street asked Princeton students to talk about their hometowns, which range from Shiraz, Iran to Guadalajara, Mexico. In spite of the physical distance, we found that students share similarities in their perceptions of “home.”

HOMETOWN STORIES: Shiraz, Iran and Hodeidah, Yemen ANDIE AYALA Street Editor ‘19

On Jan. 27, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that limited the entry of any refugee awaiting resettlement in the U.S for 120 days. According to the Department of Homeland Security, “For the next 90 days, nearly all travelers, except U.S. citizens, traveling on passports from Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen will be temporarily suspended from entry to the United States.”

In line with the theme of ‘Hometowns,’ The Street interviewed students Maryam Bahrani ’19 and Neamah Hussein ’17 about their hometowns of Shiraz, Iran and Hodeidah, Yemen, and what being from those countries means to them.

Maryam Bahrani ’19 Daily Prince: Paint a portrait of Shiraz, Iran. What is it like? What is it known for?

Maryam Bahrani: I’m from Shiraz, which is a city near the south of Iran.

The population is slightly under two million. It’s this city that was home to of a lot of poets and gardens. One of my friends from Tehran says that Shiraz is the Paris of Iran — the romantic area.

Walking around the city in the spring, you can smell orange blossoms, there are these paths covered with trees.

DP: What does being from Iran mean to you?

MB: I never lived in areas where there weren’t a lot of Iranians. People warned me, “You might not be treated well.” I knew stories of people who would hide where they were from, but I never felt like that. I was always so proud, and I would always seek opportunities to talk about it, to speak Persian. I’m so in love with the language, Persian poetry.

What does Iran mean to me? Its home, and it will always be home no matter where I will be.

DP: What do you miss the most about your hometown?

MB: One thing I miss most about home is four seasons. It’s never two weeks of spring, a humid summer, and it’s all gone. You feel every season. You smell spring, you see the fall, and I haven’t seen such stark contrasts since being here. I miss how warm and accepting everyone is, you feel the hospitality just by walking around the city. If you visit as a tourist, people will come to you, talk to you, invite you to their houses, to meals out. If you sit on a bus, everyone will talk to you — as opposed to here when you look down and stick to your own place. This concept of personal space is very different. I also spend a lot of time in Tehran as well.

I stay with friends, we hang out, go on

COURTESY OF JACCBOOK.BLOGSPOT

Warm red tones and geometric shapes are key features of the rooftops of Hodeidah, Yemen, the hometown of Hussein.

road trips. I love Tehran so much; it’s so lively at all hours, all the time.

DP: You mentioned being in Tehran,

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The Tomb of Haefez is located in the City of Gardens, another name for Maryam Bahrani’s hometown, Shiraz, Iran.

the capital of Iran. Do you have any favorite stories about your time?

MB: When I arrived this past summer, my friends picked me up. It was late at night. We went on a car ride, driving around. There’s an area that looks over the whole city; it’s a really nice place to look down on. Sitting up there, it’s kind of relaxing — which is kind of ironic, because it’s a hectic city, but being up there it looks peaceful.

Also, because of a lot of the sanctions against the country, the Apple store wasn’t selling any of their products, so there was a big void in the country.

What happened was that people rushed in to fill in those gaps, since there was a lot of need. There were so many startups, there was Iranian Uber and Iranian everything. My friends have started working there. Everyone I talked to had ideas and had ideas. This lobby in a university in Iran is full of these little cubicles, it’s kind of like a silicon valley culture — it makes me think, “I want to be part of this, I want to contribute.”

DP: What do you want people to know about Iran?

MB: For me coming in, Iran was home — I had to form the stereotype of Iran by compiling all the questions I got. I was as amazed by the ques-

tions as I was people were to know the answers. People asking, “Are you from a war torn area?,” “Did you feel oppressed?,” “Do you have elections?”

I tell them, “I’ve never seen a war, and I’ve never seen a gun in my life.” “We can vote at sixteen years old.” It’s home.

There are many things wrong with it, and my generation specifically doesn’t agree with most of the things that go on in the government and we want to change it, but at the same time, there is this huge aspect of people’s lives that are unaffected by the government. The government is there, but it’s not the people. I would want every Iranian to be viewed as another person, before anything else.

Neamah Hussein ’17 DP: What is your relationship to Yemen?

Neamah Hussein: I am Yemini by nationality. It is the only citizenship that I hold. I was born there. I lived there with my mother and my grandparents until I was four years old. My family had a perfume business that my grandfather was running. My mother was a dentist there. My grandmother used to work in Yemen as well. My mother’s side of the family has a long See Q&A page S2

HOMETOWN STORIES: Growing Up in Princeton, New Jersey CATHERINE WANG Street Editor ‘19

For many students, the University’s campus is like a second home.

Throughout their four years here, campus transitions from being an undiscovered site to a comforting bubble where fun and work intersect. However, some students who arrive on campus for their first school year have called Princeton a part of home long before the first day of classes.

Students who grow up in the Princeton area recognize the University as a landmark of their own idea of home. Princeton’s campus has always been at the forefront of their consciousness and has been the place of many adventures even before they were accepted. Some

current Princeton students were once the middle schoolers and high schoolers who walk along Nassau Street today. “There was a time in middle school when the cool thing to do was go and hang out downtown, which basically meant walking up and down Nassau Street and getting pizza somewhere,” Dan Sturm ’19, a lifelong resident of Princeton said.

Amy Liu ’19, who has lived in Princeton for 17 years, said that the town “was like a big carnival right in town and there was just so much to do.” She noted that although she didn’t spend a lot of time on the University’s campus, she remembered buying crafts made by students, going to McCarter Theatre to see performances, and watching Fourth of July fireworks in the stadium.

From even the limited time that Liu spent on campus, she remembers one location making an impression: the fountain in front of Robertson Hall. “It used to be a lot deeper. You could go in and run through the fountain in the summer... But too many people started bringing their kids in swimsuits to play there so they stopped doing that,” she explained.

Prachi Joshi ’19, who had lived in the Princeton for ten years until 2016, also explained that she did not spend a lot of time in downtown Princeton or on campus until the last two years of high school.

However, she noted that her favorite things about the Princeton area were the local hiking and nature trails, recalling that she and her friends would go to Baldpate Mountain to go hiking and enjoy the scen-

ery.

According to both Joshi and Liu, not spending time on the University’s campus as children has made the Orange Bubble seem almost as new to them as for other students.

Liu explained that campus still felt pretty different to her. “There’s definitely still this idea of the bubble, even if you step outside and realize, ‘Oh, I’ve lived here all my life.’”

Joshi pointed out that “going to school close to home can be exactly what you want it to. You can pretend like you live hundreds of miles away or you can go home every weekend.”

However, to some, instead of being the ‘bubble’ that removes them from the world, the University’s campus feels like an extension of home. Sturm explained that he initially didn’t want to go to school close to home because “college al-

ways seemed like an opportunity to go and explore, go off into the world, broaden your horizon. Going to Princeton wasn’t that exciting in that respect.”

Sturm and Liu both took a gap year to get away from home for a year. While Liu partook in the Bridge Year program, Sturm worked at a general store located in a National Park in Wyoming, a ski reserve in Colorado, and then traveled in Bolivia for some time. Both noted that these experiences exposed them to a different set of people than the well-educated middle class majority that populates Princeton.

Sturm returned from his gap year hoping that perhaps the University would end up feeling foreign and exciting. However, he said he learned “this place is always my hometown, and I can’t really erase that.”

The Daily Princetonian

Thursday february 9, 2017

Q&A

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history in Yemen. I grew up in the family home there, with my grandparents and my mom. It was right above the perfume factory that my grandfather had, so that was quite a unique experience. I grew up around packaging and perfume and smelling all these wonderful different Arabic oils and learning about the different musks.

My family is settled in the United Arab Emirates. My grandfather and my uncle identified that there were more opportunities for education and business in the UAE, more so than Yemen.

We moved there when I was about four

years old.

DP: What are your favorite childhood memories of growing up in Yemen?

NH: Fairly regularly in my childhood, I would go with my grandmother to the perfume shop; I would go behind the counter. I felt very privileged to be a person who could go behind a counter in a shop. I would talk to all the workers there, a lot of them would go out and buy me chocolate every once in awhile and give me a piece of candy whenever I was there — it’s sweet little memories like that, where I grew up the adults around me. I didn’t have any siblings at the time, so for me, all my friends were adults who worked with my grandparents and my mother.

DP: Since moving to the UAE how did you stay connected to your Yemeni culture?

NH: When we moved to the UAE, Yemeni culture was always alive at home in the little things. For example, there’s this frankincense that we burn at home for good aroma. That is something that is always present in our house. That particular scent — as soon as I catch a whiff of that, it sends me back to the middle of the bustling streets of Yemen in my grandfather’s shop.

DP: In light of current events, how do you view Yemen now?

NH: Right now, I think of it and it hurts my heart to realize that I won’t be going back to the same Yemen that I left behind. It hurts to talk to people

page s2 about their childhood countries, their childhood hometowns, and all the wonderful memories they have there and to know that a lot of people can go back to where they come from knowing that it is exactly the way they left it. It’s very sad that I don’t think I’ll be able to do that, with the state that the country is in right now. I have a cousin who still lives there, and she had to move cities because of the civil war that is going on right now. It’s unfortunate that everyone from generations who saw Yemen in its heyday, when it was so beautiful and wonderful to live there — it’s just sad that it’s no longer there, that it’s just an echo of a Yemen that used to exist in the past.

DP: What do you miss the most

about Yemen?

NH: There are things that I miss even more, now that I’m not in the UAE anymore either, being even more removed from the Arab culture. I miss the sense of having this huge family around — whether or not you’re blood related doesn’t really matter. It’s just people around you who are constantly checking in and being very neighborly, and people who know you when walking down the street — I miss that.

DP: What do you want people to know about Yemen?

NH: It’s a beautiful country that’s unfortunately going through a very, very rough time. I just hope that people get to see what it was like in the past, sometime in the future.

HOMETOWN STORIES: Walks in the Dayuan of Beijing, China YANG SHAO Contributor ‘20

Coming from Beijing, I grew up in what Chinese people would call a “dayuan” which, translated directly, means “big courtyard.” The word specifically refers to a kind of selfsufficient residential community for retirees from state-owned companies or the military. Built to cater to the needs of seniors who don’t travel a lot, dayuans normally have everything: a few dining halls, a convenience store, a hospital, a library, and even a kindergarten. I guess Beijingers do believe that your living environment shapes who you are.

The main gate of the dayuan I grew up in is in the shape and color of a rainbow. Walking from the gate to our apartment takes about ten minutes.

At the end of a long day, I cherish the time of that walk to reflect on the happenings of the day. The rainbow marks the end of the hustling, bustling city outside and the start of the quiet “miniature city” inside.

There isn’t much to do on those walks, so I look up at the sky and just think. The thoughts I have on my walks have, as would be expected, changed over the years. In middle school, my thoughts were on a boy I liked that had smiled at me or an online fanfic that I had snuck out of bed to read the night before. In high school, I would think about the future of going to college in America or if I liked a guy back or not (I guess some things don’t change after all). During this past winter break, I thought about how friends from home had both changed and not changed and how much authentic Chinese food I had or would consume before I flew back to the Orange Bubble and took my finals.

I have come to realize that what really defines me as a dayuan child are these walks. They are unique occurrences; nowhere else can I be close enough to home to feel secure, while still far enough to feel adventurous, to roam around a little and let my thoughts roam as well.

These walks aren’t always a solitary experience. Sometimes I have companions, my parents and my grandmother.

Walks with my grandmother are slow

COURTESY OF YANG SHAO ‘20

Above: The main gate of Shao’s dayuan is in the shape and color of a rainbow. Below: Growing up in Beijing, Yang grew up eating tanghulu sticks.

and quiet. The pathways for pedestrians form a mile-long circle in the dayuan, and we go along the circular path hand in hand, step by step. Topics are simple: how the weather has changed, how I should dress more warmly, and whether I prefer pork ribs or shrimp for dinner. My grandma always says yes to my request for popsicles or “tanghulu,” a traditional Beijing sugary snack. As I hold my tanghulu stick like it is the greatest treasure in the world, grandma looks at me like I am her greatest treasure.

Walks with my parents take place at night, after they come back from work.

Under the warm glow of yellow street lamps and colorful lights of the rainbow gate, we walk on the same circular pathway to talk about inconsequential matters like how good the dinner was, or life-changing topics like “how I met your mother.” Walks with my parents record a coming-of-age story that probably began with my dad entertaining my childish curiosity about Mayan alien myths and continues on to the never-ending topic of how the three of us — the best team ever — become our best selves as we enter new phases in our lives. My coming to America has been the biggest transition we have faced.

I guess I’m one of those Beijingers that believes in how environment shapes who we are. Growing up in a dayuan has made me more reflective and bonded me with my family in ways I don’t believe would have been possible in any other setting.

On campus, instead of walking from the rainbow gate to our apartment, I hike from Frist to Rocky under the starry night sky of Princeton. I miss the Orange Bubble when I’m in my dayuan in Beijing, and the dayuan when I’m in Princeton. These two places are so different, but they are both places where I can be introspective. They are both a kind of home.

As an international student here at Princeton, sometimes I feel strongly that I am somewhere in the middle, not out in the world yet also no longer at home. When I get stressed or nervous, I like to think that I am simply on a four-year long walk in the dayuan. I take the opportunity to let my thoughts and dreams drift to places I want to reach. And I walk on.

HOMETOWN STORIES: Amherst, Massachusetts LYRIC PEROT Staff Writer ‘20

Departing the whirlwind of Princeton on school breaks never fails to provide a return to childhood. At the same time, it provides a poignant reminder that, as a college student, I’m caught between two worlds — childhood and adulthood — often without a firm foot in either.

At school, scrolling through Facebook memes about exams, sleeping at odd hours of the day, and receiving emails from professors reminding me about item 937 on my list of things to do, I can’t help but daydream about entering my house, smelling my favorite home-cooked meal wafting in from the kitchen, and feeling that — in a world of seeming chaos — at least some things never change.

Driving back to the state of Massachusetts from Princeton, I hungrily soak up the sight of old Victorian houses and large run-down tobacco barns perched next to corn fields, a sight for sore eyes after a long drive through suburban New Jersey. After arriving and fielding initial f lurries of questions from my parents about how my life away from home is, I quickly settle into my old high school routine, which, admittedly, is just like college minus all of the “real-life obligations” of my college career (i.e. a lot of naps, midnight snacks, and Netf lix marathons).

Home offers a peaceful break to recharge from the fast-paced college scene. It is everything I an-

COURTESY OF LYRIC PEROT ‘20

Perot’s hometown Amherst, Massachusetts is recognized as a college town with five colleges: Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and UMass Amherst.

ticipate it to be and yet something manages to break the antique serenity every time: tall, creatively designed collegiate towers looming over the otherwise unobstructed skyline.

Amherst, Mass., is known for one thing: being a college town (unless you’re particularly fond of Emily Dickinson, and find it notable that she, too, lived in Amherst). With five colleges located nearby (Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and UMass Amherst), university students and activities have an undeniably big presence in town. Returning to a college existence away from college has made the return home a little more confusing than I imagined it would be.

On one hand, this town is so viscerally linked to untouched childhood memories like spending hours sitting in the reading nook of the library at five years old, surrounded by piles of picture books, taking shelter in the basement after running through the rain. On the other hand, I strongly identify with the f locks of backpack-carrying, sleep-deprived students that I see every time I step outside my house.

I used to speed through the UMass campus on my bike, exhilarated by the idea of zooming past all of the permanently stressed, book-laden adults. I don’t know if I’ve become one of those adults yet, but now reminders of my newfound college life face me at every

corner. Though we live in separate parts of the country, I am drawn to the idea of our parallel lives spent bracing the cold on the way to class, embracing the lure of independence, and feeling overwhelmed by the constant unknown phase of becoming an adult.

As I walk through the swarm of students, I smile at them, trying to make eye contact as if to say, “Hey, I get you, I’m one of you,” despite my mom hovering just to the left of me.

As I watch a group of boys pick up a case of beer, discussing how best to mix tequila, and then overhear two girls chatting about their economics professor, I am tempted to join in. I realize that I’m not the same person I was before I left,

and though my role at home has changed, I am not fully a child or a student. I no longer know all the secret hiding spots in the library, and I no longer run through the rain.

I sit in my bed, listening to partygoers call through the neighborhood streets and to my parents provide running commentary, “Don’t those kids know that they are going to get cold staying out with so little clothing on? ” It occurs to me that returning to my hometown after leaving for college feels like being in the middle of two divorced parents: attached to both, not fully belonging to either, and anxiously awaiting a time when the two can happily coexist.

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Thursday february 9, 2017

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HOMETOWN STORIES: Kaohsiung, Taiwan COCO CHOU Contributor ‘20

If you were to take out a world map, search for the little sweetpotato-shaped green dot to the right of China — beneath Japan and South Korea — and point at its lower half section, you’d f ind my hometow n: Kaohsiung, Taiwan. When people th in k of Taiwan, they most often think of Taipei, our countr y’s capital.

The difference between Kaohsiung and Taipei can be simplistical ly likened to the difference bet ween South A merica and North America, Californ ia and New York, suburb and cit y, strol l and power-walk, or areca trees and sk yscrapers — we operate in different universes of human interaction.

Where I grew up, human connection was def ined by a touch of k indness and cou rtesy, or more accu rately in Mandarin, ren qing wei. There’s not a lot of hurr y in the suburbs of Kaohsiung. Neighborhoods are fu l l of chatter and laughter, as people sit on their armchairs and greet the passersby and the neighbors across the street. Children come out and play in the communit y park and teenagers show off their basketbal l skil ls on the court.

My aunt and I used to always ride our bikes around the tow n, buy ing ingredients for my grandmother’s heart y dinner or simply enjoy ing the feeling of the w ind blow ing against our faces. Sometimes we would park our bikes on the main shopping streets and watch the traff ic below the areca trees.

My family’s house is located on a mountain, and it wou ld usual ly take us th irt y m inutes to drive up the cur ved paths to get home. Six years ago a highway was opened up for tourists that cuts the distance in half, but we continued to take the old route to enjoy looking at the v il lages along the road as we drove up.

It is important to note that this particu lar mountain is a local attraction, because it (as in the entire mountain) is run by a family

COURTESY OF COCO CHOU

According to Chou, the bustling night markets of Kaohsiung, China are filled with vendors of everything including: jewelry, clothing, games, appliances and local lottery.

business. Somewhat of a secluded civ i lization, the mountain hosts ever y thing from hospitals to schools, hotels, amusement parks, shopping mal ls, restaurants, mov ie theaters, and residential housing.

From my bed room w indow I can see the color-changing fair y wheel on top of the ice skating dome, located on the side of the mountain; it is a place of wonder that is stil l f il led w ith a distinct aura of the suburbs and ren qing wei.

As an elementar y school student, I wou ld go dow n the mountain ever y weekend to v isit my grandparents’ home. My family wou ld strol l onto the shopping street and dine in restau rants that f it our mood, eating wonton and dumplings one day, teppanyaki another, mil let porridge, oyster omelet, and turnip cake some other n ight. We’d watch telev ision in the restau rants, chat w ith the lao ban niang (the boss’s w ife), gobble dow n aiy u jel ly, and enjoy our dinners.

On other nights of the week, we wou ld v isit the n ight markets. On these nights, streets in certain parts of the cit y wou ld

be closed to give way to crowds of people being ushered from one dazzling stal l to another.

These n ight markets wou ld attract vendors of ever y thing from food to jewelr y, clothing, games, appliances, and local lotter y.

We wou ld skil lfu l ly w iggle our way th rough waves of the crowd, stopping at ever y other street corner to tr y an array of guava juice and tofu pudding.

Thinking back now, my memories of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, are

colored by delicious food, crowded night markets, the shiny fair y wheel outside my w indow, bike rides, and most distinctly, ren qing wei, the underly ing human spirit that holds ever y thing together.

HOMETOWN STORIES: Münster, Germany (+NYC, Varna) ANNA WOLCKE Staff Writer ‘20

I’m biking down the familiar cobblestone pavement of the medieval downtown area of Münster, Germany. I feel the little bumps below me causing tingles in my body, and I try to evade the raindrops that are rushing through the leaves above my head. Suddenly, the avenue ends, and I have to face the fact that I will be completely soaked by the time I arrive in the city center.

As I’m struggling through the all too well-known rain, I wonder why, of all cities, Münster happens to be Germany’s bike city. Why would you choose to fill one of Germany’s rainiest cities with thousands of bikes?

Bikes in the cinema, in the shopping mall, in school; bikes that you sweat on wearing your bikini over the summer, bikes on which you fall from icy streets in winter. Never before had I questioned my city’s identity or my fellow citizens’ choice to bike through this gloomy drizzle.

Fully soaked by the cold rain, I try to peer through my wet eyelashes as best as I can and decide to find shelter under a roof for a little while. Glancing at the opposite side of illuminated medieval buildings that Münster is famous for, I come to a realization: why was I complaining about the rain, when the beauty of this city was made up of so much more than seasonal weather patterns? And why was I referring to Münster — the place where I was born — as this city and not my city? When did that happen?

I took my first steps in Münster and proudly smiled into the camera when I went to school there on my first day.

It is where I spent my childhood.

Yet, it was in New York, not Münster, where I first became aware of myself growing as a person. It was my first big adventure. I learned how to say “pillow case” in English; I tried my first cupcake; I made friends with people from all over the world. New York was truly the city that never slept — filled with lights and people and noise. It was the city in which tourists took pictures of me in my

COURTESY OF ANNA WOLCKE ‘19

One of the three cities that Wolcke considers to be her hometown, Varna is a small Bulgarian city located by the Black Sea.

school uniform when I crossed Wall Street on my way to school. It was the city that both frightened me with its squeaky subways and amazed me with novel smells and foreign languages.

Unlike Münster, I proudly called New York my home after only a few months.

COURTESY OF ANNA WOLCKE ‘19

New York City is the city that challenged Wolcke and provided her with a new adventure every day, contributing to her growth.

And then there was Varna, the small Bulgarian city at the Black Sea, where I spent one year as a volunteer.

While it was a lively, brimming tourist city in summer, it was a sleepy construction site in winter, waiting for the warmth and the tourists to come back in the next season. There were holes in the streets that made you trip and street dogs that followed you with their noses just a few inches behind your heels. Our toilet was broken, our shower mostly sprinkled

our sleepy heads with cold water. We didn’t even understand the Bulgarian language — but I still lovingly called Varna my home.

While reminiscing about these different lives in the Münster rain, I notice how I created an everyday routine in each place that I lived. I see my brother’s tired face at the breakfast table. I hear the laughter of the man who sold me a smoothie on Broadway every morning before school. I taste my favorite cookies that I bought in the same place in Varna each day after work.

Whether it was in the metropolis of New York or the small city of Varna, I saw the same faces every day, took the same routes, and, in the process of it all, made a tiny part of each city my own. Moreover, I met people in each of these places that I’ve come to love. It was neither New York’s Empire State Building nor Varna’s beach that made me proudly call these places my “hometown.” It was the people I shared my life with.

When the rain passes, I finally leave the shelter and walk into the restaurant where my friend is waiting for me. Behind the sheets of Münster’s rain, she greets me saying, “Welcome home.” I smile and nod her way.

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Thursday february 9, 2017

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HOMETOWN STORIES: Guadalajara, Mexico SANTIAGO AGUIRRE Contributor ‘18

“¡Guadalajara, Guadalajara!” is the opening line of one of Mexico’s most famous mariachi songs and is also the official hymn of my hometown. Affectionately called “La Perla de Occidente” (“The Pearl of the West”), this city is the birthplace of some of Mexico’s most legendary symbols.

Mariachi music can trace its origins back to my city: Across its plazas and within its restaurants, one can see elaborately dressed men and women singing songs of love, war, and fun times. The only thing more recognizable than mariachis in my hometown is tequila. Created over two centuries ago in the neighboring city of Tequila, this iconic drink is a part of townspeople’s everyday life and a pillar of the local economy. Guadalajara sits proudly between two of the few regions in the world authorized to produce tequila, a short train ride away from the old distilleries in the city of Tequila. One need not mention the variety of local dishes in Guadalajara that make great companions to both the music and the drink.

This is just the tip of the iceberg if I were to list reasons why Guadalajara holds a dear place in my heart. I left the city shortly after I was born due to my father’s work, and, ever since then, Guadalajara

has held this special charm associated with my early memories, full of mystery stemming from my lack of familiarity with the city and my curiosity to explore it. It speaks volumes that even after living in Mexico City for more than 16 years, I still consider Guadalajara as my hometown. The feeling of walking down the streets of Tlaquepaque and hearing the mariachi bands playing on the terraces of the restaurants is one of a kind.

One of my fondest memories in Guadalajara was a gastronomical adventure. I had always remembered my dad talking about a small taco stand next to a roundabout in Guadalajara’s main avenue. After years of trying to convince him to take me on his next trip to Guadalajara, I finally got the chance.

The place was not much of a looker; picture a cart just like the hot dog carts in New York, except for attended by a portly mustachioed man. We sat down, and my dad ordered food for all of us. Little did I know that this was not a carnitas or a barbacoa shop; a minute later we were greeted by a stack of tortillas, a bowl of salsa, and a cow tongue the size of a small baby!

I’m not a picky eater, but seeing a full tongue in my plate still weirded me out a bit. Regardless, I managed to turn my shock into appetite, and we starting telling stories at the table while enjoying the SANTIAGO AGUIRRE ‘18:: CONTRIBUTOR feast. We ended up getting back to Guadalajara, Mexico, the birthplace of Aguirre, is called the “la Perla de Occidente” (translated:“the Pearl of the West”). our hotel at 8 a.m. Studying abroad, I haven’t had many opportunities to hang out with my family, and it felt only right that we would have such a great night to catch up in the city where I was born.

Another great memory in my hometown was from last summer, when I had two of my roommates from the University come over for a small tour of Mexico. A week into our tour, we arrived at Guadalajara to stay for three days, which proved to be too short. I introduced them to one of the greatest comfort foods that Guadalajara has to offer, the torta ahogada, roughly translated as “drowned sandwich.” This meal consists of a sandwich prepared in a special hoagie called a “bolillo.”

The hoagie is usually stuffed with pork or beef, avocado, and other

vegetables. After the hoagie is made, you proceed to “drown” it in a special hot sauce. You don’t want to eat this with your hands. Don’t ask if we tried.

After taking care of our stomachs, we went to downtown Guadalajara to look at the cathedral and the town hall. We heard mariachi music every where as we walked across the town, while I showed my friends the “proper” way Mexicans dine and drink their tequila.

It is always nice to spend time with people you care about at places like Guadalajara that are so full of vivacity and meaningful traditions.

Every time I go back to Mexico, I make an effort to go visit home, and I urge you to give it a try next time you go south of the border.

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HOMETOWN STORIES: Germantown, Maryland CATHERINE WANG Street Editor ‘19

For ten years after school ended, regardless of heat, rain or snow, I would make the same seven-minute walk home. There were days of racing home to find acceptance letters in my mailbox, days of walking at a snail-like pace to continue a debate with a friend who accompanied me home and days of silence only broken by the wind.

But every day, without fail, I would walk down Richter Farm Road to the entrance of my idyllic suburban community.

Toward the end of my senior year of high school, as the days of making this walk were winding down, the road itself became an inspiration for my art.

I would paint that curved path in different seasons, tangled tree branches first bare, then blooming with flowers, then turning golden and brown. It was not until later that I recognized that I might have been reflecting on the passage of time for a reason.

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to see compiled snapshots of me walking down that road every day for 10 years. At the beginning of the walk, I would be a tiny third grader with a disproportionately large backpack and a Harry Potter book in hand, but as I progressed down the path, I’d grow older as the trees grew and changed colors. The only thing that wouldn’t change was my large backpack, which would only get heavier (although it did become slightly less disproportional as I grew taller).

After 10 years, every inch of the path itself is paved with classic childhood memories and their corresponding emotions. There is joy from flying down the sloped hill on my bike in the cool evening air. There is apprehension

CATHERINE WANG:: STREET EDITOR

of the large black dog who barks at me every time I was within a twenty-meter radius — her owners could tell me she was actually very friendly and just excited to see me. There is hunger from smelling the tantalizing wafts of stirfry that my neighbors were cooking up.

There is exhaustion from lugging home three textbooks on the second day of school in 90-degree heat.

Those seven minutes seemed insignificant on the days where I rushed home to start my homework, but they gave me a strange sense of ownership over the street. It was weird to go out-

side every weekend and see minivans from all over the state causing traffic as parents sent their kids to soccer games at the SoccerPlex, which I could hear from my house.

Even weirder was the one evening a year when I’d see my usually empty sidewalk overcrowded with strangers pressing shoulder to shoulder as they made the annual trip to the park for the Fourth of July fireworks celebration.

Unfamiliar kids would run down the street without paying any attention to their surroundings, gleefully kicking soccer balls while their parents shout-

ed at them not to go too far.

The area was foreign to them because they only came here once a year and the road itself would probably be a distant memory obscured by the vivid memories of barbecues and colorful fireworks displays. For these people, this road was unfamiliar, a place where children could get lost in a crowd and not be able to find their way home.

For me, walking that path feels like going home because that is what it has always meant for me. I could probably walk it blindfolded and still find my way to my front door. I do now wonder

if that will always be true.

The longer I am away from home, the longer it takes to adjust back to certain habits, like remembering how many steps are on the staircase when I’m walking in the dark.

When I went home over Intersession, I walked that exact path again, wondering if I would feel as though things had changed. I did not feel as though they had and found myself thinking that while I might forget small details and habits, it might be impossible for me to feel like a stranger walking on a street that leads me home.