Home away from home

Reading hubby’s latest MMR blogpost on homesickness brought to mind the homesickness I felt when I was in KL in Med School many moons ago. Not only the overseas students feel homesick you know. It helped a lot that my sis (who was senior to me) and brother were both in KL but still, it was just not the same as being at home. And in those days there was no computer, internet, mobile phone etc. to keep in contact. (YP asked me before whether we were living in caves!) I used to write home almost every week (snail mail) and the awesome part was that my Dad used to write back just as regularly to me. And not to forget the times I used to call home collect, using the Med Library phone. That sure helped keep me through the bouts of homesickness that I used to get. Hubby could never figure out why I would bawl my eyes out everytime I had to leave to go back to KL for a new term… right up to Final year!

In those days there was no North-South highway so a journey back home to Alor Setar via the old trunk road would take a good 8-10 hours. And our final exams were held fairly soon after Chinese New Year each year. No wonder I never went home for Christmas or Chinese New Year all those 5 years except for one Chinese New Year, which took something like 12 hours with the bad traffic! Fortunately for both of us, hubby stayed with a family of a school friend and they became our home away from home. We spent most of those holidays with them and they treated us like part of the family. Truly something both of us appreciated all thorough Med School and up till today.