Belonging, Nowhere and Everywhere

Medha Sharma

“You laugh a second too late.”

It happens so quickly that nobody notices. During my first week at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, I slipped into a tutorial a few minutes early, hoping it would be easier to find somewhere to sit. A tutor made a joke. The room erupted in laughter almost instantly. 

I understood every word they had said, but not the cultural reference behind it. By the time I pieced it together, the conversation had already moved on. I smiled anyway, letting out a quiet laugh a second too late. 

It seemed insignificant, but studying abroad teaches you that belonging often reveals itself in moments so small that nobody else notices. 

People imagine homesickness as missing familiar streets, home-cooked food, or family celebrations. Sometimes it is. But what surprised me most about moving from India to Wellington wasn't how much I missed home. It was how much I missed the version of myself who never had to think before speaking. 

At Te Herenga Waka, international students make up almost one in five of the student population. We arrive carrying more than passports and suitcases. We bring languages, habits, family expectations, favourite foods, inside jokes, and versions of ourselves that have been shaped somewhere else. When we move, those versions don't disappear. They simply become harder to access. 

Sometimes, what you miss isn't a place. It's yourself: the version of you who never had to explain your name, who instinctively understood every joke, who never paused before speaking because every sentence came naturally. You don't realise how much of your identity is built around familiarity until familiarity disappears. 

When I left India, I knew I would miss my parents. I knew I would miss Diwali, street food, noisy family dinners, and hearing Hindi everywhere I went. What I didn't expect was how much thinking everyday life would require. Back home, conversations happened without effort. Here, I started rehearsing simple sentences before speaking. Would this phrase make sense? Did that joke land? Was I speaking too fast? Too softly? Was I saying “yaar” too often? 

People were kind; that was never the problem. The challenge wasn't unfriendliness. It was constantly translating not just language, but yourself. 

You begin explaining things you never thought needed explaining: how to pronounce your name, why your family calls every evening, why you still celebrate festivals that no one around you has heard of, why your lunch smells different, or why you instinctively compare every supermarket bill to what it would cost back home. 

None of those conversations are particularly difficult, but together they become exhausting. Not because people are asking too much, but because every explanation quietly reminds you that the ordinary parts of your life are no longer ordinary. 

Some of the hardest moments aren't dramatic. They're almost invisible. I remember walking into one of my first tutorials and noticing that people already seemed to know each other. Bags had been placed on chairs to save seats, and small conversations were already happening before class had even begun. I chose an empty chair near the back and opened my laptop immediately, pretending to read the course outline while everyone else kept talking. 

Nobody was unfriendly. But there's a particular loneliness in being surrounded by people and still feeling like you're arriving one conversation too late. 

The same feeling followed me outside the classroom. Learning Wellington meant learning everything again: which bus went where, which supermarket was cheapest, how to walk up Kelburn Hill without questioning every life decision that brought me there, where to buy vegetables that reminded me of home, and which café stayed open after evening classes. 

Little by little, routines replaced uncertainty. The city hadn't changed. I had. 

Independence also looked different from what I imagined. Before moving overseas, independence sounded exciting. It meant freedom, adventure, growing up. In reality, it often looked much quieter. It looked like buying groceries while I was sick because nobody else could do it for me, cooking dinner after a long day of classes even when takeaway sounded easier, and figuring out rent, electricity bills, and doctor's appointments without asking my parents to step in. 

Part-time work became another part of that independence. Financially, having a job helped, especially when every grocery run, bill, and unexpected expense seemed to add up. But there was another side to it that I hadn't expected. 

Balancing classes, assignments, and shifts could be exhausting, and some days I would leave home in the morning for university, head straight to work afterwards, and return late at night completely drained. There is something particularly difficult about coming home after a hectic day and opening the door to an empty house. No one asks how your day went. There is no dinner waiting, no familiar noise from another room, no one to complain to about the shift you just had. 

You put your bag down, make something to eat, and prepare to do it all again the next day. On those evenings, independence can feel less like freedom and a little more like loneliness. 

It also meant calling home and hearing the familiar question: “Have you eaten?” 

Sometimes the answer was yes. Sometimes dinner was just toast because I was too tired to cook. I rarely admitted that part, not because my parents wouldn't understand, but because I didn't want them to worry from thousands of kilometres away. 

Wellington has a strange way of becoming familiar. At first, the wind feels relentless. The hills feel endless. Google Maps becomes your closest friend. You hesitate before boarding buses because you're terrified of getting off at the wrong stop. 

Months later, you realise you've stopped checking directions. You know the quickest walk from Kelburn to Lambton Quay. You recognise the musicians on Cuba Street. You recommend cafés to new students who have only just arrived. You know which supermarket usually has the cheapest fruit. 

Without noticing exactly when it happened, Wellington stopped feeling borrowed. It began feeling like mine.

If you ask international students when they first felt they belonged, you'll probably hear different answers. For some, it's finding friends who understand both their silences and their stories. For others, it's hearing their own language unexpectedly in a supermarket aisle. Sometimes it's something as simple as someone remembering your coffee order. 

Belonging rarely arrives all at once. It accumulates quietly. A classmate saves you a seat. A neighbour smiles every morning. A lecturer remembers your name. One day, you realise you laughed at the joke immediately, not a second too late. 

There are still moments that catch me off guard. Family birthdays happen without me. Festivals continue. Photos appear online. Life back home moves forward while mine continues here. 

One evening, after looking through pictures from home, I caught myself saying something I had never quite managed to translate into English: “Kabhi kabhi lagta hai ki main yahan hoon bhi aur nahi bhi.” 

Sometimes it feels like I am here, and not here at the same time. 

That's what studying abroad teaches you. You don't simply leave one place and belong to another. You become someone who carries two homes at once. Returning to India no longer feels exactly the same. Neither does leaving New Zealand. You belong to both, and completely to neither. 

People often ask me when Wellington started feeling like home. I don't think that's the right question anymore. Home isn't something that replaces another home. It expands. 

India is still home. It's where my family is, where my childhood lives, and where the first version of me was shaped. Wellington is home too. It's where I learnt resilience, where I discovered that independence isn't a personality trait but something built through ordinary days, and where I became someone who could build a life from scratch. 

Studying abroad changes you in ways grades never measure. You become more adaptable, more patient, more empathetic. You also become someone who carries two versions of themselves: the one who left and the one who stayed. They're not competing with each other. They're simply learning to exist together. 

Maybe belonging was never about choosing between two places. Maybe it was always about making room for both. And somewhere between the late laughs, unfamiliar streets, phone calls home, windy walks through Kelburn, and ordinary evenings in a city that slowly became yours, you realise you are no longer trying quite so hard to belong. 

Belonging was never waiting at the end of the journey. It had been quietly growing beside you all along.