Another red X is added to the sea of red marks as I cross out another day that is coming to an end. As five faces stare down at me from my One Direction calendar hanging above my desk, I stare at the big red circle around the date November 27th. Spanning across the tiny, red box for this date, the word HOME screams out to me in big, red letters. Ever since my dad bought me my plane tickets home in September, I have been eagerly waiting for this day to come around the corner like a child waiting for Christmas. As of today, November 13th, it is exactly two weeks until I will be stepping out of the plane at the Long Beach Airport, seeing my family wait for me by the luggage carousel. This will be the first fall that I have ever been away from home for more than three weeks; three months all by myself in Berkeley.

A thousand questions race through my head about whether home will be a foreign place to me. Will my dog even remember who I am? Will my baby cousin be able to recognize that I am her older cousin, not just some stranger visiting? It scares me that when I go home, everything will be different. Although I know that time did not freeze the moment I stepped out of Anaheim Hills, a part of me wishes that everything will be exactly how I left it. As I close my eyes lying in my bed in my dorm room alone, I can picture the sun’s rays touching my skin and filling me up with warmth, the palm trees and eucalyptus trees flying by the car window as we drive along the road towards home, arriving in my old room where for a second, I feel as if I am on my bed surrounded by the pink and brown walls with my stuffed polar bear, Snowy, smiling at me as he is awaiting my return.

Traditionally, my family goes to my grandparents’ house in Santa Ana every Friday and Saturday night to hang out with my grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. As soon as my mom’s silver Audi pulls up in the driveway around 5 pm, my mom, my dad, my brother, and I pile into my dad’s silver Audi and we make the drive to Santa Ana. I can already envision my family as they come racing towards me on Thanksgiving Day, which will be the same as any other weekend except with twice as much food as usual to fed 25 people. As soon as I cross the front porch to get step inside the living room, my family will be ready to pounce to give me a giant bear hug and squeeze me as if they never want to let me go ever again. Questions will fly from all directions and everyone will talk at once to me, as they all want to know certain pieces of information about my new life. How is college? Do you eat enough? Are there any special boys? Maybe I should practicing what I am going to say like studying for an approaching midterm. I know my grandma will be in the kitchen, brewing up soup for me: there is always a main dish for everyone but my grandma specifically makes me soup each weekend just for me. She makes different soups each weekend: cabbage soup, bitter melon soup, tom yum, pho, bun bo hue, and many traditional Vietnamese dishes, my favorite thing to look forward to each week.

After feeling like a celebrity and answering the many questions my family had for me and filling up my stomach with delicious home cooked food, I round-up my girl cousins and we congregate in “our room,” the guest room located in the back of my grandma’s one story house. I am the oldest out the four with each cousin being one year younger than the next: 17, 16, 15, and the youngest one is 8. We always hang out in “our room” lying down on the bed while playing with each other’s hairs and gossiping about our personal lives. Laughs, smiles, happiness, and sadness are shared around the room as if nothing has changed since I left. Everything feels perfect and familiar. The loud, rambunctious talking of my family as they talk louder than one another to get a point across, the smell of freshly boiling chicken broth and banh mi, my one year old cousin running around the house in her pink, floral diaper weaving through out legs as we all stand together around the granite island in the kitchen. This is what it feels like to be home. I never want to leave. Suddenly, I hear an alarm ringing, signaling me to wake up. I don’t want to leave this place, but the ringing is constant in my left ear as I roll over and look at the clock: 3 pm, time to wake up and go to English class. Only two more weeks.