I actually had a lot of trouble finding what to write about. I really could not answer the question: "what do you consider home?" The truth is that for me, home is where the heart is; I can feel at home anywhere- it is an attitude thing. However, I could not write about this because one goal of the essay was to convince the audience of something about that place. I then attempted to write about Australia, but could not find workable examples. After getting fed up with pre-writes for the various possibilities I had in mind, I decided to toss it all and just try a stream of consciousness type of writing based on a subject I toyed with at the back of my mind but never actually pre-wrote for. This surprisingly worked really well; I stuck with that subject and used that extempt writing as a base for examples and flow. The final product is something I'm pretty proud of because it put my jumbled thoughts about myself in words in a nice, thought-provoking way.
I am a visual learner, so I think that if I would have looked through some pictures of the places I've been, then I would have been able to think of good supporting examples. In my essay, I could use pictures from a digital camera to give some background to my examples. A picture is worth a thousand words so I think they would have done a much better job showing the contrasts I talked about in my essay.
For example, in my essay I discussed my relationship with my cousin and how when we were younger I felt completely at home but as I grew older I became more of a tourist. The picture below is of my cousin and I dancing around a kitchen in India. This picture shows how we feel comfortable in our surroundings as well as with each other because we are acting freely in both arenas. To contrast with this picture, I could find a picture of my home in America to show the difference in setting; this will support how I could feel at home in different places because the space and look are very different. I could also find a picture of my cousin and I now that shows how different we are to support the fact that we have distanced.
