This idea doesn't exist in the Spanish language. You could use the word
hogar, but it's not quite the same.
Home is a concept that I have grappled with over the past few years. Atlanta stopped feeling like home as soon as I left it (caveat: my parents' house and neighborhood still feel like home, but in a different way). I suppose that Athens felt like home, though I don't have memories of actively thinking about it as such. And D.C. immediately felt like home for some inexplicable reason. But Bogotá - well, it took a while.
Perhaps it was because we came here with no plan in mind - no end date, no friends, no jobs, no sense of belonging. We came more for the language and the experience rather than the place. There are things that I actively dislike about where I currently live: the pollution, the traffic, the rain. Many times over the past year or so, I wondered if I would ever come to think of Bogotá as home. I couldn't accept it - part of me always saw home as describing a place that you could see yourself living in for a long time, or coming back to. Having an indescribable emotional connection to a place. Though I have enjoyed all of our time here, I didn't feel any sentimentality about this place.
Until I just came back from a two-and-a-half-week trip to the U.S.
Arriving in the Bogotá Eldorado airport felt like coming home. Taking the taxi cab to my place, laughing at the forever under-construction road. I walked up to my apartment to discover that my roommates had accidentally locked me out and I would need to find another place to sleep that night.
Walking down the street to figure out what I was going to do, I passed by Juancho's apartment. I knocked on the window and he let me in. And that's when I realized - this city is my home. I could walk down the street, knock on a door, and feel completely at ease.
Riding the bus down the Séptima yesterday, I felt sentimental. This city has its problems, but they're my problems. I can hate on it, but if someone not from Bogotá starts to hate on my city, I will get pretty upset. I'm more interested to see what Bogotá's mayor-elect does with his position than Atlanta's or D.C.'s mayors. I'm worried about the construction near our house and how it will affect my commute. I'm going out for a friend's birthday on Friday. Nothing has actually changed from before I went to the U.S. until now other than my perspective.
I realized that "home" doesn't have to be something permanent or long-term. I don't plan on or want to live in Bogotá forever. I don't see us moving back here in the future after we ultimately move away. But right now, this is where I belong.
