What location in the world do you feel you identify with the most? A friend asked me this today, a loaded question I feel I don’t have enough experience\u00a0to answer. But it did prompt another question.<\/p>\n
What makes a place a home? Is it the physical space that you\u2019ve filled with things that you love\u2014or simply accumulated over time? Is it the amenities around you? Is it your family or friends? Relationships? The fact that you grew up there and feel a kinship or familiarity to the block, the streets, the buildings?<\/p>\n
In the last five years, I\u2019ve lived in several different places: New Jersey, D.C., Sydney, Johannesburg, Maine\u2026and now Detroit. If I didn\u2019t move states or cities every year, I changed apartments at the very least. So building and amenities don\u2019t really do much to make a place \u2018home,\u2019 for me. I\u2019ve learned the art of packing tight so I fit all my travel trinkets and photographs in wherever I move. Those love-filled tidbits of my life make a physical space in a building a home.<\/p>\n
Coming to Detroit was a whirlwind move. I was offered a fellowship and a job, and in days, hopped in my car with my most-treasured, most necessary things to drive from New Jersey to Detroit. But before I even reached the city, I had several phone calls from complete strangers, friends of friends or colleagues, offering me advice on where to live and how the neighborhoods of Detroit work.<\/p>\n
When I touched down, the guy who would become my roommate worked on my schedule to show me his (our) place, staying up late on a work night to answer my never-ending questions about the city, the loft, and the downtown life. A fellow fellow–and now one of my best friends–housed me until I found an apartment.<\/p>\n
Each time I\u2019ve moved, feeling at home in a place always stemmed from how I was welcomed. How quickly I slid into the humdrum of the city\u2019s routine. How seamlessly I became a part of the people\u2019s stories, and they a part of mine.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve met a group of people I can\u2019t wait to get to know: colleagues, fellows, and the good citizens of Detroit. They\u2019re easy with a smile, easy to offer a hand, and genuine. Change is usually good. This time, change has been great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What location in the world do you feel you identify with the most? A friend asked me this today, a loaded question I feel I don’t have enough experience\u00a0to answer. But it did prompt another question. What makes a place a home? Is it the physical space that you\u2019ve filled with things that you love\u2014or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-livedetroit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}