Coming home is an unexplainable feeling of nostalgia that you will never forget. Who doesn’t like coming back to where they’re from and where they grew up?  Their original “stomping grounds,” and where they made so many lifelong memories, “coming home” is an important commodity in someone’s life.

  For someone that has moved from place to place, coming back to your roots is very important. Coming home is the best mental remedy for the chaos in their adulthood. Soldiers also deal with this feeling on a whole other level. Having the feeling of being with your loved ones after sacrificing your life for freedom is a feeling of relief. The feeling of ease a soldier must have to be home is unexplainable. People from different countries have a similar feeling when they are able to go home. Personally, I’ve known nothing but home. My whole life I have stayed in the same town and the same state, so I have no inside perspective on what it is like to return home. But for Ludi Avagyan, she knows every emotion on what it is like to return home.

  “For me, coming home means being my truest self in every aspect. I’m surrounded by family members who love and understand me on the deepest level. At home, I have family who are bonded by experience, history, and a love that knows no boundaries. I can speak my first language of Armenian, hear our music through the car speakers, and eat my cultural cuisine wherever I go. It’s so liberating to exist in a space that is home physically and mentally. There’s an overwhelming sense of happiness and a feeling of my heart being complete whenever I’m back home and it’s something I always look forward to,” Avagyan said. 

  Most people, if not all, have heard of the upcoming Fletcher Run. An annual run that Kate Fletcher, an English teacher, created and participates in to help benefit students that are less fortunate and show people that anything is possible. So much so that the fundraising for the event has been able to give students that are less fortunate over 70,000 dollars in scholarships over the years. The Fletcher Run has received thousands of dollars from individuals and companies to sponsor the run and give to those students in need. Virginia Brown, another high school English teacher, has a nonprofit organization that is able to even give away a car this year to a student that is less fortunate.

   For Kate Fletcher, running means everything. Over the past few years, Fletcher has run 50 miles around the local track, and ran to the Capitol of Virginia, which is already crazy enough. This year, she is stepping it up to a great extent. For this year’s annual Fletcher run or “Lion Pride Run,” Kate Fletcher will be running to the capital of the United States, Washington DC. 

  The Fletcher Run connects with going home because on Fletchers route to DC she will be going through Falls Church, VA, and will be passing Meridian Highschool. Her original stomping grounds, and her hometown. Not only will she be passing through her hometown of Falls Church, her former French teacher in high school, Ms. Linda Johnsen, will be cheering Fletcher on through her final miles of the run.  

  Home is so much more than where you come from, because for Mrs. Fletcher, her birth place is British Columbia, Canada. She only spent a few years there however, she still considers it the place she grew up in and was born in. When she was young, she moved to Falls Church. According to Fletcher she has multiple hometowns. Originating from Vancouver, she considers her Canadian hometown and Falls Church as her American hometown, so to her she has a lot of “hometowns.” The question is, where does she feel at home? Where is her community and friends ?

  Fletcher says that her home is right here in Louisa County. Even Though she doesn’t live in Louisa, she still considers it her home because that is where her friends, community, and students are.

  “Home is where the people I care about are and is also where we make memories.” Fletcher said. “ When I think about Vancouver though, That’s where my childhood memories are, Falls Church is where my teenage years memories are, and of course Louisa has my teaching memories, so that makes it feel like home,” Fletcher said.