What I Miss About Home

Going to the university abroad is totally a different experience for me and for all of the international students who leave a distance from home. Once we have left for another country, it is not that easy to go back to our hometown. During the time we adjust to the new environment, we might miss a lot from home, especially the things we are familiar with suddenly disappear.

First of all, I miss previous classmates either from high school or middle school in China. Some of them also study abroad in the US, the UK, or even Australia, and some of them don’t. I still remember the days we spent together and hope for the day of reunion. Typically, I miss the friends who were in the school soccer team together when I was in high school since I spent the happiest time on the pitch when playing soccer with my teammates. They not only taught me the way of proper cooperation, but also the solution in dealing with some hardships. During the 3-year high school sports life, I mastered the skills of ball control as well as making many congenial friends.

Furthermore, I miss the food from home. The United States is for sure not a place to enjoy the life, not to even mention the places with extreme cold in the winter or the area where there is hidden dangers. For Chinese people, we have Chinese stomach that we will probably feel sick when eating too much western-style food. Although there are Chinese restaurants nearby, but I still miss the home cooking particularly made by my mother. We live by the sea so we cannot live without seafood. Chinese style seafood has mainly 2 ways of cooking, and so do my family. First way is steaming, this method can maintain the nutrition from food as much as possible. Specifically, we put the food over the boiling water, and since the 100 degree Celsius vapor carries more heat energy than that of water, the food is ready to eat just after few minutes with no additives at all! That is the reason why steaming can lock the largest amount of nutrition from the food itself. What if we wish to change the food into more flavorful ones? Braising can be the one of the most desirable styles that we could apply to. Braising always accompanied with soy sauce, a welcomed seasoning in Chinese cuisine, in big fire mode. The final product always shows a tempting color of caramel, which is a lot people’s favorite.

All in all, from the time we made up our minds to study abroad, we knew what happened already before we left our motherland. Missing is missing, but the experience in foreign countries benefits a lot when I meet difficulties in my future life that students who stay in China would never imagine.