Something very odd happens when you walk around St. Louis University’s Madrid

campus. You feel like you are part of the United Nations, constantly surrounded by a symphony of different languages.

One of my favorite things to do is to sit in the Ashtray (the courtyard-you can guess how it has earned its name) and listen.

In my 10 short days as a student here I have heard, besides Spanish, which is the native language for many students, and English, which is the universal language, French, Portuguese, Chinese, German, Romanian and Bulgarian on a daily basis.

All of this, of course is an incredible thing, I can’t think of anything better than to be surrounded by intelligent and culturally aware people.

But all this diversity also brings up something very curious. The most difficult question for me, and I assume, for many other students here is, “Where are you from?”

Funny, right? That’s the simplest question anyone can ask.

But it is in fact, for many of us, a puzzling question. If you ask any student this question you will get a short autobiography including a list of at least two places they have lived.

I, for example, was born and raised in Bulgaria. While there, I moved around a bit, but most of my youth was spent in one city. At age 9, I moved to St. Louis, where I spent the next 11 years. And now, at age 20, I am in Madrid, where I will spend at least a year.

And after that . who knows? I have taken many things from all the places I’ve lived in and I, in some way, miss them all. It’s really a strange feeling to be “stuck between homes,” so to speak.

This is particularly important because it touches upon the issue of identity. To what extent does the place or places in which we live define us? How much does it become a part of us?

It’s an odd dilemma, a new dilemma that is specific to our century. How easy it must have been to spend your whole life in one place and know that place is yours and that’s where your heart will always be.

Nowadays, that is hardly ever a possibility.

The world is open and there are people drifting along from one place to another, from one country to another, stuck between borders, never quite sure where exactly they belong, loving all places they have been, missing all places they have been.

Globalization, of course, has its up-sides. It’s a wonderful feeling to walk into any Starbucks in Madrid and feel as if I am in West County, St. Louis; it’s comforting in a way to know that a little piece of home in around every corner. I feel as if my heart is smeared all over the globe. There is something frightening about that, an uncertainty, a bit of a void.

But there is also some strange excitement of knowing life will always be like the wind-taking something along, leaving something behind and carrying some sort of mystery about it, in both where it has been and where it will go.

Dorotea Lechkova is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, studying in Madrid, Spain.