About Me

My name is Caroline, and I don’t have a hometown.

My dad was in the Air Force, and we had very little control over our home address.  I was born in Texas, spent a few years in South Dakota, where memory escapes me; five years in Japan, where all my memories are flooded with either cherry blossoms or snow forts; two and a half wonderful years in Southern sunflower-covered Spain; three years in Georgia, where the people meant more than the location; and finally, the last seven years in the good ‘ole Sunshine State, first 6 years in Cocoa Beach, and the last year in Tampa.  Whew.

When I was much younger, I always yearned for a hometown, a “house I grew up in,” my own backyard.  Instead I lived in a world of white walls and beige duplexes.  My family was always a thousand miles away, I always had to change schools shortly after finally making a place for myself, and I had more pen pals than friends I could spend the afternoon with.  I was too young to appreciate all the wonderful places I got to see.

Since then, I’ve graduated high school, earned my first  college degree, had my first legal drink, and had some serious change of heart.  Not that Florida is my favorite location, because it certainly isn’t, but I wouldn’t have ever made it here had I not been everywhere else.

And so the point of this blog; after many young years of begging for a hometown, I’m giving up my cozy college apartment in sunny Tampa for a 6 month expedition with my wonderful boyfriend, Jon.  Of course, all for college credit too.  We will be spending 3 months attending Alliance Française in Nice, earning 13 credits in French language.  The three months following will be spent working at 5 different organic farms, in 5 different countries: Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Germany, and Ireland.

Needless to say, I’m glad I never found that hometown feeling.