These are the reasons why I will forever be tethered to Morocco. The country gave me the greatest pain, one I'm still working through today, one I still cannot properly verbalize. But it also gifted me with resilience and with the strength to find the people who truly lift me up and created a home and family that I will have wherever I go.

It wasn’t until after I left, then went back to visit to break iftar, that I came to realize just how many things I missed and took for granted while living with my host family. Here are just a few of them.

This week, the Chinese community arounds the world celebrates Chinese New Year. We herald in 2019 as the rest of the world did over a month ago, but more importantly than the practical function of this holiday is what it represents for the over 1 billion Chinese around the world. Chinese New Year is a holiday that celebrates family.

Almost a month has gone by since I arrived in Rabat and, frankly, I am still waiting for the city to feel like home. Balancing four classes, two internships, language tutoring, and attempting to make new friendships on top of mentally, physically, and emotionally adapting to Moroccan culture has proven itself a hard monster to slay. I don't want to convey a dishonestly romanticized picture of what cultural shock looks like in practice.

I recently came across a friend of a friend's Facebook post in which he recounted that, during his own study abroad program, a man called out "Ni Hao!" to him on the streets, assuming he was Chinese. We'll call him Ryan. Ryan went on to explain to this man that he was an American and happened to not be ethnically Chinese either in the man's native language. Impressed, the man took him on a tour of his city and to his house for tea afterwards. In short, a friendship was born.