Home Away From Home
Let's say you grew up in a small town, surrounded by the same surroundings, the same sounds, the same people throughout your entire life. When that happens, it can be very exciting to go to university abroad. Everyone before you has been graduating and moving off to different places for their next big adventure, while you've been stuck in high school slowly trudging through the years.
And then, suddenly, it is finally your turn. You get to leave home and choose anywhere in the world to continue your education. After much deliberation, you choose the sunny island nation of Singapore to call your new home.
Source: SMU Residences @ Prinsep Facebook
It takes no time at all to move into the university's hostel - SMU Residences @ Prinsep, or Prinsep for short. You soon develop a comfortable routine. After classes end, you stay on campus to study or head back to the hostel (depending on whether that 15-minute walk is worth it or not). If you get late night food cravings, you flip a coin to decide whether you should pop by the Al-Jilani Restaurant down the street for some prata or make do with instant noodles. And then the next day, rinse and repeat. For a few more weeks. A few more months. A few more...years.
But there will come a day when your routine goes off-kilter. You jerk awake at 2AM, heart beating wildly, and you know going back to sleep is not going to be an option. There's nothing you can do but sit upright in bed, and stare out the window at the empty deck outside. You see the wind playfully blowing leaves around in the empty street below. On nights like these, you are used to calling a specific someone to drown yourself in mindless chatter that usually helps to chase the nightmares away. But now, that person is miles away in another timezone. You realise quietly that there is a lump in your throat.
Being homesick will come in waves. Some days just happen to be more difficult than others. Yes, we're trying to be independent and responsible adults living this exciting life miles away from home, but at the same time, we cannot help but yearn for the comfort and familiarity of our old lives. But thankfully, at Prinsep, right when we think we are all alone and have no one to lean on, friends who are also miles away from their lives back home remind us that they are here as well, and that we can lean on each other.
The empty deck becomes lively at certain times like clockwork and, odds are, you'll spot a group of freshmen talking along on one bench, while a senior strums his guitar on another. At 10PM, a gang of old friends would gather to play foosball in the lounge. The laundry room is a constant cycle of one person forgetting to take their clothes out on time, and another yelling for the owner of the abandoned clothes. Over the months, you become a MasterChef at microwave cooking and snack stockpiling. Soon, you will collect enough everyday moments to bring a smile to your face anytime you think of Prinsep.
Source: SMU Residences @ Prinsep Facebook
It is the people who make living abroad wonderful, though. The seniors who go out of the way to help you, be it with class assignments or restaurant recommendations; your apartment-mates who make cleaning a fun activity and are always there to listen to your rants; friends who make you a cuppa for the late night assignments that you're up losing sleep over. You find family among those smiling faces as you rush down the stairs to wake them up before your morning class together. Many of my friends, as they get ready to go back home during the holidays, tell me that they will miss Prinsep. It's not strange at all. Once you go abroad for university, you realise that home is not just a place anymore. Home is a feeling of belonging, and how amazing it is that I have two - because I have found a home away from home.