Five years ago, I left South Africa for America. This Fourth of July, watching the fireworks, it hit me differently — a quiet moment of gratitude for the freedom, safety, and opportunity I've found here, sitting right alongside the ache of missing home. This piece is about learning to be patriotic about two countries at once, turning friends into family on foreign soil, and discovering that home doesn't have to be one place. Sometimes it's two, and that's not complicated.