Hi, I’m Melly (caramelly), and in this video I take you with me as I go home to the Philippines after being away for 2.5 years while doing my third year of a physics PhD in the U.S. It’s a quiet, cozy, sit-with-me kind of reflection—about the 30 hours of travel, the humid air and familiar chaos, and the warmest smiles I’ve missed for so long. I talk about how time stretches when you’re homesick, and how being far from everything familiar can make you question where you really belong. But the real heart of this vlog is what happened once I arrived: I was surrounded by love, yet the house I grew up in didn’t feel like “mine” anymore. I slept in my old room and still felt like a guest—like a stranger in the place that raised me. And then, right when it was time to leave, I realized I also missed Detroit—my apartment, my routines, my solitude, my new people. I share the takeaway I landed on: home isn’t a fixed point. It shifts with us—sometimes it’s a place, sometimes people, sometimes a feeling—and sometimes it’s simply where I’m at peace with myself.