Oh no, I said it. And I can't take it back.

What can I say?

It was a long day, I was tired, I wasn't thinking straight and I said I wanted to go home.

State College is about 9,000 miles away from my home, Cyprus, a tiny island in the Mediterranean Sea.

But that's not the home I was referring to. I just wanted to go home, to my apartment on East College Avenue.

I wanted time to pause, rewind and erase the word I said. But it was too late because the truth was that State College felt like home.

Despite my current familiarity with State College, I never would have thought this place would feel like home at some point.

When I first came here the culture shock I experienced made my days heavy with homesickness.

Everything was so different here.

I was in a place where sweatpants and flip-flops were the dominant dress code.

There was an unwritten rule saying that every weekend college students must get drunk, and drink to party, not party and drink.

The food portions were huge and everything was swimming in thick sauces. Lemon was used only in tea, not salads -- who ever heard of that?

Students boasted about being Greek and living the Greek life -- what is that all about?

I still don't get where that came from.

Everything was just so different to what I had been used to.

I had come from a place where the term casual doesn't exist as a dress code. We dress up even if all we're doing is going to the supermarket. I didn't even own a pair of flip-flops.

I was used to plain food, legumes (once a week), or a salad every day to accompany either fish (once a week) or meat (twice a week).

People thought I was anti-social for declining to join them for dinner, but really I never thought dinner was an actual meal of the day.

And how about the whole 21-to-drink rule? What was that all about? At home there is no such rule (or if there is no one knows about it) and people go out to party and then drink to socialize. In Cyprus people intend to go out at 11 p.m., which really becomes 1 a.m. because no one keeps to time, and the night goes on until 5 or 6 a.m.

Even coffee shops close early here.

What was this place? How was this ever to feel like home? I counted the days till break, when I would get to fly back home.

My home in Cyprus is an apartment flooded with sunlight every day. My backyard view is the Mediterranean Sea, because I live right on the beach. In the summers it's too hot to bear, and in the winter we think it gets cold. Fall lasts about a week, and spring a little less than a month. Everything is dry and hot for most of the year.

And there's sun every day.

So when people find out I am from Cyprus I always get the same question: What are you doing here?

My answer is always the same: I ask myself that every day.

In the mornings when I wake up to the bitter cold winter days of Pennsylvania I think of only one thing: the beach, the hot sun, sun-bathing and getting a little sun-burned. That's the only thing that keeps me going.

So when I called State College home it felt odd, but it also felt somewhat true.

I have been here for three years and it has started to feel like a second home to me. It feels as though I have two lives that don't meet -- one in Cyprus and one here.

I miss Cyprus when I'm here, and then I start missing State College when I'm in Cyprus.

So "why Pennsylvania?" everyone keeps asking me.

As I walk around my apartment wearing two layers of long-sleeved shirts, a sweatshirt, two pairs of pants, a scarf, a woolen hat and a blanket wrapped around me, I know this is not the warmest home.

Not even close.

But somehow it's beginning to feel like somewhere I belong.