Where Are We From?

It's always interesting to note where everyone is from when a group of our friends get together. At today's lunch, everyone in attendance lives in Costa Rica. There were 4 people from Texas (I tried to add myself but they all said that 10 years residence there did not a Texan make!), 1 originally from Washington state, 1 from Maine, 1 from Michigan, 1 from New Zealand, 1 from Boliva and 1 from Costa Rica. It's interesting that there is always some confusion over the question of "Where are you from?" Although many people answer this by saying where they were born, others refer to where they grew up or where they've spent most of their lives. My friend Emma says she's from Bolivia, although I happen to know that she has spent most of her adult life in Virginia. I think her husband Jon usually says he's from Virginia, where he spent most of his adult years, although he grew up in Washington state. I'm still trying to figure out how to answer this question. It's true I was born in Maine, but since my family moved to New Hampshire before I was a year old, it seems kind of weird to claim it as my "home." New Hampshire makes a little more sense since I grew up there, but I haven't lived there since I was 17 and that doesn't feel like home, either. At times I seem to be a New Englander and at others, not. Some people here seem to think I should say I'm from Florida because that's where we lived immediately before moving to Costa Rica, but I never felt a part of Florida. I'd like to claim Seattle, just because it's one of my 2 favorite cities in the United States, but I didn't really live there long enough to earn it (1 year) or San Juan Island, off the coast of Washington State, where I lived for 4 years. In my adult life, I've also lived in Japan, the Philippines, Mississippi, Texas. "Home is where you hang your hat," they used to say before we all started going bare-headed. I certainly feel like this is my home, but when I try to get away with saying I am "from" Costa Rica, I am always told that I have to be "from" somewhere in the United States. Now if I could just figure out where.