Recipe #1: Creamy Chicken Pasta

Background

 

So I invented this recipe.  I mean not really, because there are probably a million similar ones out there, and I definitely based it off of a cookbook recipe I used to make in CA.  But for all intents and purposes, it is original.  Mostly because I just used the ingredients I happened to have on hand (read: needed to get rid of because it's crazy how fast things expire on you when you live alone.)

Each week, a few friends and I get together for a home cooked meal, for which we alternate cooking.  A few weeks ago, I made a creamy-tomato penne pasta dish which I found on the fabulous Pioneer Woman blog.  (It's really simple and delicious, so go check it out, if only to see the awesome photos.)  

For that recipe I needed penne pasta and heavy cream.  The deal with heavy cream at my local E mart is that they only sell it in giant 1 liter (4.22 cups) containers.  OK, I realize one liter isn't huge, but when it's heavy cream and you're a non-coffee drinker living alone, finishing a liter of heavy cream is a bit intimidating. Especially when it's a dairy product and has an unforgiving expiration date.

So I needed to get rid of my cream.  I also had one piece of chicken left over (we had chicken with the pasta), a bag of penne pasta, a carrot, garlic, onions, and tomatoes.  It was pretty obvious what needed to be done: I would chop everything up and throw it into the cream and over the pasta.  Which is what the recipe is:

Creamy Chicken Pasta

Ingredients:

1 piece of boneless chicken

2-3 tablespoons of olive oil (or butter)

2 onions

4 cloves of garlic

1 carrot

A dozen cherry tomatoes, cut in half or fourths

1 cup of whipping (heavy) cream

salt and pepper to taste (I use a significant amount)

1 bag penne pasta (or any pasta)

How to make creamy chicken pasta

0) Cook pasta according to package directions and drain.  (This step can be done at the beginning or in the middle.)

1) Rub the one piece of chicken with salt and pepper, and heat on buttered/oiled frying pan until cooked through (about 5 minutes on each side).  Set aside.  (Add more chicken or remove completely for vegetarian option.  I just used it because I had it.)

2) Chop up the one carrot and dozen cherry tomatoes into small or medium pieces (see photo below), or whatever size you want on your pasta.  Heat carrots in bowl of water for a few minutes in the microwave until soft.  (also can be done in pot or on pan, but I don't have much space).  Set carrots and tomatoes aside in bowl.

3) Chop up the two onions and four garlic cloves into little bits (see photos below) and saute on low heat on frying pan for a few minutes.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

4) Add cup of cream to onions and garlic and let simmer on low heat for five minutes until cream is reduced.  (If your heat doesn't get very low – mine doesn't – make sure you stir).

5) Add tomatoes and carrots to the cream/onions/garlic and let simmer for 2-3 minutes.  

6) Tear up chicken into small chunks.  Add to sauce on pan.  

7) Throw cooked pasta into the sauce or throw sauce onto cooked pasta.  Stir.  Add salt and pepper to taste (I like quite a bit.)  Serve immediately.

Kill the pink in the chicken.  Pink in chicken is not cool like pink in steak.

they sell these in large bags, so I'm always desperate to use them up.

dramatically lit onions

I freaking love garlic

demented tomato baby

pretty

cream is simmering

adding the tomatoes and carrots

Adding the chicken

I love cream sauces.

I love the colors.  Maybe next time I'll throw in some peppers

creamy pasta with carrots

Reason #123897 I shouldn't be allowed to live alone: I make massive meals and end up consuming large portions of them.

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Behaving very politely at the DMZ

My trip to the DMZ

South Korea, click to enlarge

I live in Paju, which is a large city/county that borders the Demilitarized Zone.  Paju is pretty large, and I'm not in the town (Munsan) directly on the border, but I'm pretty close – about half an hour away by bus. 

My group used the USO (United Service Organization, affiliated with the US military base) to book and provide the tour, which meant that our tour was conducted by some extremely well-briefed army officers.  Our tour cost 96,000 won each (82 dollars), but I believe there are cheaper options.  Wed did everything available and it lasted from about 9-5 (including travel time).  Check out their Korea site for more information on how to book. 

DMZ Tour Rules:

1) Conservative clothing.  No bellies, shoulders, or shorts.  Nothing baggy, no skirts, no open toed shoes.

2) Absolutely no gestures toward N. Korea/N. Korea soldiers when at the DMZ.  Our guide's mantra went like this: "Do not wave, gesture, point, or attempt any communication with N. Korea."  Basically don't give N.K. an excuse to start some friendly fire.  This rule was rather one-sided: our tour guide told us that the North Korean soldiers liked to amuse themselves with flicking S.K. off, or miming slitting throats.

3) The U.S. and S.K. will not be held responsible for your death/injury at the hands of NK.  Really.  I signed the paper.  Actually, just read the paper for the actual rules.

        







































Stepping into North Korea at the JSA (Joint Security Area)

The only place on the DMZ where you can actually (safely) step foot into North Korea is in a small blue conference hut (the MAC conference room), half of which is in N.K.  Two S.K. guards were posted inside with us, and we quietly walked around, taking photos and nervously laughing about our location. 

When an S.K. or N.K. tour group (yes, N.K. also finds the DMZ profitable) uses the room, the other side stays out.  Our guide told us that he'd been on tours where N.K. soldiers made faces through the windows or stood up against the windows with binoculars, staring in at the group.

Notable moments in the MAC room include NK soldiers blowing their nose/wiping their foot on the US and ROK (SK) flags, prompting a switch to small flags inside a plexiglass cover.  Also, there was once an 11 and a half hour meeting between the sides (nick-named "the battle of the bladders") which lasted so long because no one wanted to get up to go to the bathroom first.

I didn't bring my camera into the MAC room because I didn't realize we were allowed, so the following pictures were taken by my friends Anel and Area:

blowing a kiss to the ROK soldier on duty in the MAC room at the DMZ

our group standing in North Korea.  or possibly South Korea.  I forget which side is which.

And of course, my iphone:

Area approaching the guard

ROK guard in the MAC room

Hey buddy

outside view

I want to say that this is North Korea and I didn't just take a totally random scenery shot. 

My wonderful friend Area planned and booked the trip, and wrote a great blog post about it which has lots of historical information.  Check it out.

And if you want a video of a tour pretty similar to ours:

Dorasan station: Area chilling in front of the unused train that connects NK to SK

DMZ sign at the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel. Ross and I have gone native with our poses.

About to look across into N.K.

With 10 minutes to kill, we're obviously going to make a DMZ sign with our bodies.

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When cross cultural exchange backfires

Recently I have been teaching two kids privately after school for 40 minutes.  A giant (and apparently important) 6th grade exam is coming up, and most of the kids are in extra lessons after school.  When I saw the students who were coming for help in English, my first question was "Where are the other fifteen 6th graders who can't read?"

Apparently those kids are bad in other subjects as well, so they're using their extra help time elsewhere.  This makes me feel a slight bit better - I'm not actually destroying many of the kids in my classes: they are generally poor students. 

Today after class, the kids wanted to hang out in the English room for an extra 15 minutes before their next class.  I agreed, and showed them a couple of Mr. Bean clips to kill time.  Which led to cultural exchange backfire #1: teacher showed us a video with nudity in it!

Ummm.  Yes.  Guilty.  I totally forgot that in the hilarious Mr. Bean clip where he goes to the pool (see above) ends in him losing his swimming shorts and includes a close up of his naked behind (ironically one of the words we're learning: in front of, between, behind).  This isn't a huge deal, but it was totally unexpected, and Korean attitudes toward sex/nudity are pretty conservative.  I'm pretty sure the sensuality of Mr. Bean's butt is somewhere between shredded paper and an oak tree, so I think I'm in the clear. (Yes those were weird examples, but try and think of something completely non-sensual.  Difficult, right?)

Cross Cultural Exchange Backfire #2 

After I shared my Mr. Bean videos, the 11-year-old boy I tutor got really excited about sharing a video with me.  This seemed fine, especially as it was a music video, and I'm interested in gaining an appreciation for Korean music.

I cannot for the life of me find the video he played me, but it's probably best that I don't share it here.  It was a sort of melodic rap, and the video consisted of a series of childlike pencil sketches on writing paper.  First a sketch of an unhappy guy.  Then other kids.  I think they were making fun of him.  A woman appears.  He grabs her.  Suddenly there is red crayon everywhere, which is supposed to be blood.  A sketch of a knife covered in blood.  It continues.

I turned it off about halfway through and looked at my little sixth grader who liked the song so much.  He is skinny and short, with nerd glasses and a goofy grin.  Adorable.  I asked about the dead woman - "Teacher?" "No. Girlfriend." That made me feel a bit better.

"Why?" I asked, and then Google translated (이유).  


He typed something into Google translate that came out as "I like scary sad fdjaklhgfkdlsghjl" (Google translate's forte isn't Korean.)  


"Why?" I asked again.  (Why do you like this violent video when you are so cute and sweet and young?)

He typed again.  "Just dafshkj."  Just.  Just because. 

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Cooking at home in Korea: The banana bread incident.

I have decided to start sharing some of my cooking adventures on here.

A warning.
 
I have a love-love relationship with food, and a love-hate relationship with cooking.

It's like my relationship with art – I love looking at paintings and admiring photos, sculptures, etc.  This love, in turn, makes me want to create and contribute to the world of art.  But I have no technical ability.

I also love food.  But I'm occasionally disastrous in the kitchen – like the time I exploded a glass oven dish while making chicken Parmesan.  Or the time I burnt myself while making spaghetti.  (I used rags as potholders and one of them caught on fire from the stovetop flame).  And then there were the 3+ times I botched chocolate chip cookies.  (They basically came out as scones.)

I am not deterred.  I love eating, and I love eating food that I've cooked.

Cooking in Korea.

In Korea, the GEPIK ESL teacher's apartment generally comes fully stocked with everything except an oven (or toaster).  Instead of a toaster, I got a rice cooker, which would be awesome except I eat a massive portion of rice every day for lunch, and never feel like making it in my time off.

So I scored a toaster oven.  Specifically, a terrible awful toaster oven that can't even cook toast.  Or rather, it can't cook an entire piece of toast.  It has no problem burning the top and leaving the bottom fluffy white (no wheat bread to be found in my neighborhood).  Naturally, after I discovered it couldn't handle toast even on the proper settings thatanannonymouskindchatboardpersontranslatedforme, I chucked toast from my diet and put the toaster in my cabinet, never to be used again.

the confusing settings

Until I decided that I really wanted banana bread and maybe I had been mistaken about the ineptitude of my toaster oven and after all banana bread is totally different than toast so maybe it would come out much better and I had three black bananas in my freezer and that was clearly a sign so I might as well try because what's the worst that can happen.

The batter was delicious.  I should have stopped there, but I was worked up into a frenzy of tasty banana sweet goodness.  So I placed it in the toaster oven to bake.  After a couple hours, I had succeeded.  It was a beautiful golden brown creation that smelled divine.  Underneath the top layer, it might have been a tad underdone, but on the whole it was excellent.  Then I got nitpicky.  I decided that I didn't want to eat bread that 90% batter, even if the batter tasted like batter on The Food Network probably tastes.  (Really.)  So I cut off the layer of cooked bread on top and shoved it into the middle so that the batter could cook.

A few hours later, I had a broken up, partially burnt, partially underdone, scraggly loaf of banana bread.   Sigh.  

the toaster oven banana bread fiasco

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Gepik Training 2012

Gepik Training 2012.

The first time I heard there would be a three day GEPIK teacher's orientation, I had four main questions:

1) Would I learn anything useful?
2) Why were they training me two months after I started teaching?
3) Would this be an opportunity to meet people? 
4) Would the food be good?

I was pleasantly surprised by the answers.

Our GEPIK training group (B3)

An Overview

Orientation was three days and two nights.  It consisted of 10 mandatory sessions, two optional sessions, and open evenings.  For some of the sessions we were in large auditoriums with the entire group of GEPIK elementary teachers, and for some of the sessions we were split into smaller regional groups (of about 20). 

Did I learn anything useful?

Yes.  There were sessions covering classroom management, team-teaching, material integration, multimedia usage, and more.  There were funny lectures – one speaker told us to invest in a microphone for our classrooms to assert our godhood, informative lectures – I learned some great classroom attention grabbing techniques, and, yes, boring lectures – nobody could figure out why, as Elementary teachers, we needed all the details of the NEAT English test. 

I'm particularly grateful for some of the websites and various classroom game ideas that were shared in the sessions.

The timing of the orientation

Even though I had already been teaching two months, I still learned some useful classroom management stuff, and Korean culture/life information.  I imagine it would have been an overwhelming amount of information if I had received it my first week here.  Doing orientation a bit after my arrival helped me to visualize some of the tips the speakers were giving.  Still, if it had been a little bit sooner, it would probably have been more relevant, as at least 40% of the information was already familiar to me.

Socialization

I was actually surprised at what a diverse group we were.  A multitude of ages, nationalities, ethnicities, and backgrounds were present, which made for some interesting discussions and well represented the variety of English speakers sprinkled across the globe.  Because our groups were divided by region, we were able to get to know people in our areas a little bit better.  At night, we bonded over belting cheesy noraebong songs (I pretty much filled my lifetime's quota of Bohemian Rhapsody) and playing pool/ping pong/monopoly.     

Meals

The food was pretty decent – everything was buffet style – and three free meals a day (in a non-prison setting) is always a plus.  Our first night was a carb-fest of french fries, spaghetti, and rolls (among other dishes).  Breakfasts were basic, and included options of rice, cereal, and kimchi.  I think all the meals had vegetarian options, but even if those were limited, there was a grocery store at the resort. 

Overall

The GEPIK orientation was an enjoyable three day break from teaching.  It was also a useful one; I've integrated some of the classroom tips and used some of the sites/material that were suggested in different sessions.  I thought the GEPIK coordinators did a great job at preparing lectures that were both broad and specific enough to meet the needs of a diverse group of people.  In one of the sessions, I learned that if you don't swipe your card at the end of a bus ride, the next bus charges you double.  If nothing else, I'm glad I went to the GEPIK orientation for that bit of knowledge – it's saved me around 60,000 won a month.     

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Creating a music video with my sixth graders

Music is a key component of ESL teaching – or any teaching for that matter.  Sticking a tune onto information is a terrific memory aid, and I still remember song lyrics I learned in 2nd grade.  About a year and a half ago, I discovered The Beatles are the ultimate pop band for teaching English.  I'm not sure what it says about a band that a vast number of their song lyrics are ESL-friendly, but I've always been a huge Beatles fan, so I like to think of it as beautiful, universal simplicity. 

Check out the following ESL Beatles lyrics:

You say yes,
I say no,
You say stop,
and I say go go go.
Oh no.
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello.
Hello, hello.

And

Love, love me do.
You know I love you.
I'll always be true.
So please love me do.

These songs are just asking to have a few fake sign language gestures slapped on and explained to low level English speakers.

They come up with some weird poses

**

Our sixth grade classes are terrifying, with unnaturally high percentages of ADHD and English haters (different than English apatheticers).  However, SH and I are slowly starting to understand the personality of each class.  6-1 likes busywork and translating.  They aren't big on games.  6-3 likes drawing and singing; they aren't big on writing.  6-2 is...currently a lost cause. 

So on Friday we had 6-3 draw pictures to decorate lyrics to a song about calling someone.  It's in Korean and English, and includes most of the key phrases from Unit 6.  Here's the video (the freeze frames are not glitches, I just didn't take enough time to make them look cool):





  

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Why I decided to teach ESL in Korea

Sexy Korean men...was not on my list of reasons for moving to Korea.  Not that I didn't find Korean men attractive; I just already happened to be in a relationship.  So, in fact, the man situation in my life was actually working against my move.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Sometime in 2010 I realized that job hunting in California without a car as a fresh liberal arts college grad was not my ticket to a successful career.  (On a related note, my plan to take Hollywood by storm through never finding an agent or going to an audition was not my ticket to fame and glory.) 

I was also getting antsy. As in, location antsy.  As in, I no longer desired to live in America. So I sat in my room playing bellydancing music and reminiscing about my childhood.  I became overly enthusiastic about meeting Middle Eastern shop owners, and paid frequent visits to my fellow TCK friend where we cooked Ethiopian food and reminisced about being evacuated from civil wars and fires.  (OK, there was only one civil war, and the fire was in California.  Still.) 

The antsy thing thing happens to me every few years and I blame it on my childhood.  And also my personality.  Basically on anything that allows me to pass on the responsibility for my psychological demerits.

Anyways, my original post-graduate plan had been to get a job in a writing field.  Or possibly join the Peace Corps.  Grad school also sounded like a good idea - maybe a bit of international relations to ease an entrance into NGO or State Department work.  Grad school also sounded good because I'm an excellent test taker.  (It's probably my strongest skill.  So, if I'm going by pure skillset, I should get into the perpetual student field of academia.)

I'm not sure when Korea came up in a list of life possibilities, but it was hardly a surprising idea – I had a college friend who was currently teaching ESL in Korea, and I was also interested in the Korean culture.  L.A. has a strong Korean-American community, I had a Korean-American roommate (who was and is a superstar), and I was working at a tutoring center which was basically an Americanized hagwon filled with Asian-American students.   

Teaching in Korea is an attractive prospect to recent college grads for quite a few reasons.

1) It's a guaranteed full time job in an otherwise questionable economy.
2) It pays pretty well, especially when perks are taken into consideration - Free roundtrip airfare, free housing, low/no taxes, subsidized healthcare.
3) It's an opportunity to travel and live overseas.
4) It's a better resume filler than the part-time/waitressing work that many grads do while looking for a job.
5) It's fun.  (Subjective, yes.)  You get to hang out with kids, make international friends, eat weird food, and shake your world up.

 

My third graders.

So, with these reasons in mind, two of my roommates and I started discussing the possibility of teaching ESL in Korea.  (These roommates also happened to be my best friends, which is a potentially wondrous and disastrous thing – mixing friendship with rooming – but that's for another post that I'll never write.)

I moved to Sweden.  Roommate #1 moved to DC to work on the Hill, and roommate #2 got a full time job and engaged.  They both had decided against the idea (in favor of becoming adults), but it still sounded attractive to me, especially when I realized that Sweden involved nine months of icy darkness.  So I convinced my newly minted communications grad brother (if ever a major needs a job, it's communications), to join me, and he and his then girlfriend began the application process with me.

He is now teaching with Americorps, but his (ex) girlfriend did make it over and is living in Busan.
Her blog title is much better than mine.

And that's my story.  My reasons are pretty typical - a love of traveling, an enjoyment of working with kids, a desire to save money while thinking about my next plans, and an interest in Korea. 

I would definitely say that if you don't like kids or are pretty inflexible, teaching ESL here isn't the best idea for you.  OK, and no-one is going to describe themselves as inflexible, so let me put it like this: if the idea of having work/classes/meetings constantly changed on you at the last minute makes you feel sick to your stomach, Korea isn't for you.  Really.

Also, if you have a serious bf/gf, go the Hardy Boys route and knock them out with chloroform and take them with you.  Long Distance sucks.

(No, Frank and Joe never chloroformed anyone, but everybody they came across did.  I knew that word at a very young age.  Thanks Franklin Dixon/ghost writer.)

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Stages of Culture Shock

I wanted to this post right, I really did.  I was going to do a bunch of research and cite sources and integrate quotes from sources, and go all out.  Instead, I started to read the first scholarly article about culture shock that appeared on Google, and I got overwhelmed.  Mostly by the nonuserfriendly format, but also by the realization (after skimming a few paragraphs) that this was one of several theories on the stages of culture shock. I regoogled for a simpler format, and the next article I saw was titled Plasmodium falciparum erythrocytic stages in culture.

All of that to say, the information I bring you today will be based largely on personal experience and Wikipedia.  You are warned.

According to Wikipedia, there are four phases of Culture Shock: 

• 1.1 Honeymoon phase
• 1.2 Negotiation phase
• 1.3 Adjustment phase
• 1.4 Mastery phase

The Honeymoon phase is exactly what it sounds like – the idealized and exciting beginning of your new relationship with a country (in this case, Korea).  Everything is so fascinating and so thrilling and different and you're so happy to be out of your homecountrywheretherewasnotrueappreciationofyournaturalabilitytospeakenglish.  You very seriously consider kidnapping a few of the local children who are unbelievably adorable.


The Negotiation phase happens around three months in, when you start to realize just what you've committed yourself to – a strange land where people stare at you and eat stupid food and speak some sort of nonsense dialect and can't even properly replicate American fast food without adding their own twists (corn on pizza???).  Your life is filled with slow motion shots: You shaking your head as your students cannot remember a single word of yesterday's lesson; your co-teacher tapping you on the shoulder to tell you about a surprise meeting; the chicken guy staring at you blankly as you try to explain your order.  Everything is frustrating. 


The Adjustment phase (month 6-12) is when life starts to normalize and you accept your routine and other parts of the experience.  Kimchi starts to grow on you, you've figured out some functional communication skills, and you've made friends – friends, mom! – and you no longer get lost on every form of public transportation you use.  You shrug off or smile down the stares, and you learn how to use local ingredients in your toaster oven to make tasty creations.  If it doesn't feel like home, it doesn't feel so foreign either.  


The Mastery phase occurs when you are fully comfortable in your new culture.  Thinking about your life in your home country feels distant, and it almost feels strange to go back.  


**

You stick out as an expat.

Those were my interpretations of Wikipedia's descriptions as applied to Korea.  While, like most theories, they serve as a useful general guideline, they definitely haven't corresponded with my time here yet.  I think they vary greatly from person to person, but I also think that they are extremely fluid – at any point in your new country you might feel like a mix of all four phases.  For example, I still feel positive and enthusiastic about being here (phase 1), while occasionally getting frustrated (phase 2), and feeling strangely adjusted (phase 3); and my old life feels very far away (phase 4).


But, of course, I personally have had some advantages.  I have lived overseas before, I have lived away from family before, I was blessed to meet some great people early on, and I have an unnatural amount of endorphins or something – I generally enjoy myself.


Still, the whole business of working/living overseas is a strange one.  It's hard to describe – especially to people who have never traveled aside from vacations and destination weddings and class trips.  Committing to something for a year or more is enormously different than visiting somewhere for a week, or even a summer or semester.  A year is a countable fraction of your life.  It means decorating your apartment and joining a gym and figuring out bargains when grocery shopping.  There might be an end in sight, but it's four seasons away.  It's Thanksgiving, Christmas, Independence Day, birthdays, and weddings spent away from family and friends.  And working in a foreign country is different than studying or vacationing – it's communicating with locals, and dealing with different corporate practices, and getting a bank, cell phone, internet, etc.  


We probably all need therapists

Because living overseas is a crazy mix of emotions that don't make sense, and are hard to sort.  Also, most of us are kind of weird.  Like not just "leave your country for an adventure and money" weird, but fully, certifiably, "couldn't make friends or date in my home country so I'll test out Korea and they'll accept me because they'll attribute my weirdness to my foreignness" weird.  OK – I actually haven't met too many crazies, but I hear they're out there.  


Back to my original point: I generally feel conflicted when I stop and think about my life here.  I really like it.  I like my job.  I like Koreans.  I like most of the food.  I like my apartment. I like my friends. I could make a giant list of what I like.  But I miss a lot of things. And some of them are identical to my like list: I miss food variety. I miss my friends. I miss my non-early morning job. I miss my family.

And then, this is where it gets confusing: I know that the things I miss are not real things. They are memories of things.  My non-early morning job was parttime and was not cutting it.  My family is absolutely nuts. My friends have their own lives now.


Also, I know that the things I don't like aren't so different than in the States.  9-5 office jobs in the States are soul sucking.  Though my co-teacher springs last minute things on me, I like her and she is far better than having a nasty boss back home.  Things in Korean culture that seem bizarre or illogical are totally trumped by every DMV experience I've had in America.


I really do miss food variety though.


My experience has been a generally positive one.

Sure I get scared by the constant yelling in the supermarket and the drag racers who moonlight as local bus drivers.  I get tired of the language barrier and overwhelmed by the difficulties of everyday tasks like reading menus and hunting down baking soda.  But I'm learning so much about myself, about culture, and human nature.  I've met a spectrum of Koreans – wonderfully kind, very nerdy, strangely rude, shy, friendly, etc. – the same people you meet everywhere.  It's hard to imagine how different life here would be if I understood the language and could communicate with my neighbors and co-workers, and read the local news, and navigate effortlessly.  

I know that there are many legitimate horror stories about both public and private positions in Korea; contracts constantly changed, non-existent co-workers, schools that insist on hunting you down at the hospital if you take sick leave, etc.  On the other hand, there are many wonderful jobs that offer a great quality of life and working conditions.  I think the majority of jobs lie somewhere in between: good benefits, decent co-workers, but some annoying conditions that are livable.  That's life.  

If you are reading this as a homesick foreigner, cheer up.

Things could be worse.  You could be in my situation – I don't have a home to miss.  I grew up in six different countries, went to college in California, and my family is currently in Europe.  When I miss things about America, I'm generally referring to California, in which I have lived a total of four years.  My driver's license is Texan, my grandparents are in Connecticut, and my siblings are in the Midwest. 

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