By Cassandra Chew

NOBODY told me moving back home from overseas studies would be this difficult.

Unlike my summer visits, where being in Singapore was merely physical relocation, moving home meant re-integration - a process I would have preferred to keep at arm's length.

It was not that I resisted being in Singapore. I was more than happy to regain easy access to hawker food, speak Singlish freely and enjoy efficiency at its best.

But to fall right back into everyone else's rhythm of life? No thanks. I wanted my friends to know I am different.

My four years in the United States have been in many ways transformative.

To immediately call Singapore 'home' almost felt like a renunciation of the life I once had; an abandonment of all I've been through with my best American friends.

A week into my life in Singapore, I was homesick. 'You mean you didn't know?' friends who returned before I did teased as I whined about my adjustment issues.

Apparently, moving back home is often thought to be the most difficult part of the overseas experience. Organisations even prepare moving-home manuals for those who spend years abroad.

'It gets better once work keeps you busy,' a friend encouraged gently.

But I didn't want to be distracted.

I wanted to know that I could settle back into life here without losing the person I had become. I didn't want to let go of the familiarity of the place I had abroad.

Facebook and quick e-mail updates had kept me in the loop here, but what would stop my Singaporean loved ones from rejecting the new me?

To my surprise, I found our hearts were still connected in spite of distance and time.

My dreams might have been sown in foreign soil, but it was on home soil that I found a support system like no other.

After four years, I still have a phonebook full of people I can rely on - people who have seen me at my worst, spent years apart from me, and will still be there for me when it matters.

For all these and more, I think it's only fair to them that I finally say: 'I'm home.'

The writer, 25, completed her postgraduate studies in international law and government at Georgetown University

This article was first published in The Straits Times on September 15, 2008.

For more The Straits Times stories, click here.