Some time ago, I was reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, a collection of short stories about Bengali characters transplanted from India onto American soil. Lahiri opens the book with a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne: "Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.”

As a Minnesota native, I don't consider my original home worn out soil--there are always fresh faces and new places to explore, and close family and friends are only worn the same way your favorite blues jeans are--but Hawthorne's words ring true. I have struck roots into Ecuador, China, and now South Korea, where I live with my husband Dae-Han – the unaccustomed earth in each of these places has nourished me, helping me to flower time and again.