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One afternoon, I'm sitting on a balcony with my laptop while listening to a relaxing ocean sound that I play from Youtube. The wind blows and gently moves the tree branches in front of me. It also slowly dries the clothes that I washed and hung on a rope an hour ago. The sun shines brightly as ever in this city. It is peacefully tranquilizing my mind as if I'm on a vacation in a remote tropical island. I can see the blue sky and some birds flying somewhere. I wish they could take me with them flying to places because I'm sadly stuck here. Just like everyone else in the world, I'm trying to survive a severe pandemic that has invaded us for seven months. This virus that we all can't see is definitely a serious outbreak. It has been transmitted to 17 million people around the world and more than 650,000 people died because of it. The worst thing is that we don't know when this misery will be over. Well, the vaccines are being made but it won't probably ready until next year which also still a finger crossed.

I've been staying home most of the time for the past four months but it feels like forever. The first few weeks were okay, I kind of enjoyed it because I could be home and chill all days. It felt like the perfect moment to be more with myself and do the things I had always wanted to do but no time for it. I managed to do some great stuff, like organizing my photos from the USA and upload them on Google Drive, which had taken me some time to finally completed it. Besides that, I also did more journaling, meditation, and completed some Netflix shows in order to keep my sanity. However, in the next few weeks, I started to feel some kind of intense emotion. Somehow I felt helplessly isolated, tired, sad, lonely, anxious, overwhelmed, miserable, and all the bad feelings mixed. But those are normal feelings that people naturally have in this difficult circumstance. I'm convinced that I wasn't the only person in this world who felt that way, in fact, most of my friends that I talked to also did. It has been a devastating situation for most of us. Even to this moment, I still find it challenging to cope with what has been going on both physically and mentally. Some days I feel okay like I'm just going with the flow, but other days when anxiety hits me I feel terrible and lost. It's intensely overwhelming and there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. I'm running out of ways to entertain myself at home. Netflix and Facetime no longer help. I guess I'm kind of fatigue with the screen. The city isn't in lockdown, so actually, I can just go out to places if I want to. But the fact that the deadly virus is obviously still out there and I'm unfortunately not immortal so I better not to risk my life.


A lot of times I feel disheartened and unmotivated which leads me to do nothing but grieve. It's funny because I sort of lack of sleep where I actually have more free time for sleeping. Insomnia has been a major issue in the past four months. I can go on with the list of the issues I've been dealing but it won't take me anywhere. On optimistic days, I'm grateful for so many wonderful things in life regardless of the unfortunate matters that happen in between. Grateful is truly an ultimate remedy for every bad moment in life because it trains you to look at the positive things and makes you appreciate more. On good days I daydream of the world is back to normal again where we can go out safely and do things normally. I really look forward to the days where I can hang out to places without a mask, dine in at my favorite restaurants, travel for an enjoyable vacation, normally socialize face-to-face with people, and many more things I'd love to do in a normal and safe manner. But in the meantime let's just bear with all of these a little longer and have faith that fantastic days are coming...
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Day 25 of social distancing due to the Corona pandemic, here I am doing a throwback to my winter break moment when I was in the United States in 2018 to 2019. For the record, I was in the United States as a scholar grantee of an exchange program for ten months. I lived in Orlando, Florida, and studied in a college for two semesters. On my winter break, I and my three Indonesian friends spent our winter break together, and our first destination was the windy city, Chicago, Illinois.

DAY 1
The first day of our winter break was December 17, 2018, and we had planned this vacation three months in advance. Somehow, I had made a stupid mistake just on the first day of the trip. So, I left Orlando at 10:27 am and arrived in Chicago at 12:29 pm. When I landed at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, I texted my friends who I thought would leave Phoenix, Arizona for Chicago at 7:30 am. However, I was mistaken, they actually would leave Phoenix at 7:30 pm and arrive at 12:30 am (midnight). That was a dumb mistake which made me waiting at the airport for more than 12 hours, alone. I was thinking about going out to downtown Chicago by myself but I was kind of afraid as I was alone and I had some bags with me that doesn't sound easy to travel around with. However, I also didn't want to just sit at Starbucks and do nothing for the next 12 hours waiting for my friends, so I finally challenged myself and bought a round-trip train ticket to downtown Chicago. I had no idea where I was going, so I just stopped randomly to any station around the downtown. Once I stepped out of the subway exit, I could finally experience the winter weather for the very first time in my life. It was around 3:30 pm and the weather was -2 degrees celcius. I was freezing but still incredibly happy at that moment. I looked around me and I was fascinated by the landscape I saw: a downtown with a lot of tall buildings, bare trees covered with yellow lights, and people walking in their winter coats with a hot coffee in their hand. It was a scene that I typically see in American movies but not in the tropical country where I come from. At that moment, I really didn't know where to go, so I was just wandering around the downtown and admiring everything I saw. It wasn't easy to carry around a carry-on suitcase, a backpack, and a sling bag on super cold weather alone. So every once in a while I stopped at any stores just to warm myself up as it was warmer inside. That was another odd situation for me because in my country that's totally the opposite; we normally go inside stores because we want to cool down in an air-conditioned room. It was only 5 pm, but the sky was getting dark because it was winter. I also started to feel tired and could barely stand the cold weather, so I got to the nearest subway station and headed back to the airport. That's pretty much my solo tour of downtown Chicago, short but very memorable to me. I arrived at the airport around 6 pm, and the next 6 hours I was just waiting for my friends at a Starbucks before they arrived at midnight. Once they landed, we went to the pick-up point because we had my friend's friend who picked us up and let us sleep at their place.

DAY 2
The next day we woke up early and got ready to explore Chicago. Our hosts who gave us a place to stay were really nice guys from Pakistan. They even made breakfast for us and gave us a ride to Millenium Park, where they also accompanied us wandering around there. That day the weather was very nice, it was sunny and not too cold. It was already winter but there were still some colored trees left from the fall. Chicago has many beautiful architectural buildings that I have never seen before. We visited the iconic The Bean statue that was made from stainless steel plates. This statue is called The Bean because of its shape that resembles a bean. I loved the view of the surroundings that was reflected in the stainless steel statue, very fascinating. Around the Millennium Park, there were many beautiful architectural buildings. I just fell in love with Chicago. After that, we walked around the Chicago River that is colored green every year on Saint Patrick's Day. There were a couple of small boats for tourists who wanted to sail through the river. After a few hours of walking around the city, we stopped at Chick-fil-A for lunch. After that, we continued our journey around downtown and stopped by at the souvenir shop to buy some souvenirs. In the evening, we walked around Millenium Park again and we saw people ice skating on an ice rink around The Bean. It was only 4:45 pm but it was getting dark and we started to feel the colder weather. So, we took a subway and return to our friend's apartment. Traveling during the winter wasn't easy for me because I couldn't really stand the cold weather. Maybe because I didn't get used to it and I was tired of walking. I got hungry and tired easily. Overall, I loved my trip to Chicago, and definitely would love to come back again next time!



Stopped by at a store just to warm myself up



In front of The Bean statue



At the Millenium Park



Me with my travel buddies and our Pakistani hosts
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Here is my first blog post in 2020. I should have written some blog posts a few months ago, but I haven't been really in the mood for writing. Actually, I wrote some blog posts but I didn't really finish them, so they just ended up in the draft that I never posted. Now, here I am social distancing in my room due to the Covid-19 pandemic that has been spreading across the world. Hence, I'm using this time to be more with myself by writing on my blog. A bit of throwback to where I was last year when I was on my exchange program in the United States. I remember during the spring I was quite busy traveling across the states. So, I traveled to Fort Lauderdale and Miami for spring break; then at the end of March, I flew to Charlotte, North Carolina to attend the South Region Model United Nations (SRMUN) which was an incredible new experience as I met intelligent students during the conferences; and the next week after that, I flew to Houston, Texas for another retreat event from the exchange program. Now that I miss it, I want to write a detailed throwback about my spring break...

DAY 1
March 2019, my friend Diana and I decided to go to Fort Lauderdale and Miami to spend our spring break there. We left our city, Orlando, by bus around 9am in the morning and arrived in Fort Lauderdale at 3pm in the afternoon. It was probably way too early to go to the beach since the daylight saving time had begun so the sunset would be an hour later which around 7:30pm, but we just went straight to the Fort Lauderdale Beach as that was the only destination we planned to go in Fort Lauderdale. Surrounded by several tall buildings and cafes, the beach was fascinating with clean white sands and soothing palm trees. There were also many other spring breakers sunbathing on the beach mats by the sea with books and music. In the meantime, Diana and I enjoyed our beach picnic by eating noodles, laying on a sheet, taking a bunch of pictures, and just relaxing with the ocean breeze. It was a perfect beautiful day at the beach. Upon sunset, we strolled around the beach where there were a number of bars and girls dancing in bikinis. We were so tired but also happy, then finally we took a bus to Hollywood, a city between Fort Lauderdale and Miami because apparently, that is the city where we found the most affordable Airbnb for our stay.

Fort Lauderdale Beach, Florida
DAY 2
On the next day, we packed our stuff from our Airbnb in Hollywood and left for Miami. After we arrived in Miami, we went straight to our new Airbnb in Miami because we wanted to put our stuff since we didn't want to carry our backpacks while we were strolling around the city. Following that, we went to Ocean Drive to wander around and buy some souvenirs. As we were hungry, then we stopped at an authentic Cuban restaurant called Havana 1957 on Española Way. It was a pretty unique restaurant with Cuban decorations as well as the Spanish-speaking waitresses. Fyi, in Miami, the Hispanic or Latino population accounted for 70 percent of its total population. The Hispanic or Latino originates from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, etc.

It was a really hot day, so after we had lunch we went on a walk around Miami and found a lovely park called Soundscape Park. The park was beautifully built with palm trees and unusual flower-hung architectures. We eventually made it to the iconic Miami Beach. As predicted, the beach was packed with spring breakers swimming in the sea, including my friend, Diana. As I was waiting for her swimming, I went up to one of the lifeguard houses and I could see the view around me: a crystal clear sky and the blue water shore, which was such a wonderful view I saw from above the lifeguard house. People were sunbathing, reading a book, dancing with loud music, and enjoying their drinks. It was a wonderful sunny day at Miami Beach.

Since we planned to take a boat tour around Biscayne Bay, we left the beach earlier and took a bus to downtown. In order to take the boat tour, we went to Bayside Marketplace which is located along Miami's waterfront where we took the boat tour from. We eventually arrived there and immediately went to the ticket place of the boat tour as the last boat tour would be at 7pm, and it was just 2 minutes to 7pm when I glanced at my watch. The price of the boat tour was $32 which was more expensive than I had expected; I thought it would be $20. I was actually really broke that time as I still had to spare some money for my other trips in the next few weeks. However, when I thought about it again, I realized that this could be my once in a lifetime moment to get on a boat tour in Miami, so without any hesitation, I eventually bought the tickets. Right after that, at the very last minute, we got on the boat. We were lucky because we could sit on the corner-back seats on the second floor of the boat, and it was a perfect spot for a boat tour. The boat tour took about 90 minutes, and we got to see the sunset during the boat tour. The boat tour was narrated by a local guide who also spoke Spanish. He explained to us interesting facts about the billion-dollar houses owned by celebrities, billionaires, athletes that we saw during the boat tour. Luxurious mansions with a swimming pool, garden, and even a yacht lined up next to each other. A boat tour in Miami while feeling the ocean breeze was another terrific experience of enjoying a sunset. The horizon I saw across the bay was breathtaking. The view was even more stunning at night when I saw city lights emerging from downtown Miami. I can't describe it enough of how awesome the boat tour was. This was probably the best thing about the Miami trip. Following that, we walked around the Bayside Marketplace where we could find tourist shops, cafes, and restaurants. After a really long day, we eventually went back to our Airbnb.

Soundscape Park, Miami
Miami Beach, Florida
Downtown Miami, Florida
DAY 3
On the last day, we left our Airbnb and wandered around in Little Havana and Calle Ocho. Before we arrived there, we had to take a very long walk to get to the bus stop. It was super tiring, but well I took it as a morning exercise. Little Havana is well known for the tourists' favorite places to visit as it offers the authentic vibe of Cuba, not to mention the interesting murals along the streets, non-stop lively Latin music drifting through the air, as well as the restaurants and coffee shops. The neighborhood is home for  Cubans, Nicaraguans, Hondurans, and other immigrants from the Caribbean and Latin America. Calle Ocho (8th street) as the heart of Little Havana is also an interesting place to explore. Giant rooster statues, symbols of the area could be found all over Calle Ocho. I also happened to stop at Máximo Gómez Park that is known as Domino Park where elderly men sipping Cuban coffee and playing dominoes, and when I walked outside I could see the Calle Ocho Walk of Fame, which honors more than two dozen Latin stars who have left an incredible mark. As we were tired and hungry, we dined in at another Cuban Restaurant named La Esquina de la Fama. I ordered a yuquita frita which was simply fried cassava. The restaurant has a very unique vibe with brightly colored designs and interesting arts on the walls. After having our little breakfast, we took a Lyft taxi to Bayside Marketplace to catch our bus to Orlando. So that's the highlight of my spring break moment in Fort Lauderdale and Miami. It was a truly remarkable trip that I really enjoyed.

Calle Ocho, Little Havana, Miami
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Nur Hayati - Surabaya, Indonesia
A little dreamer in a little messy world.

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