Hello everyone. I come to you with a sad heart once again. I will explain later. I’ve been pretty emotional all weekend. Even discussing it now hurts. In the meantime, I will catch up to where I left off from my trip. I can’t believe so much has happened since then. It makes me anxious to know what the future might hold for me; let alone my friends and family. Let’s recap.
I left England on September the 18th to come back home to Chicago. I made it in work that Tuesday the 19th. It was nice to be back ,but there were disturbing news coming from Mexico. An earthquake hit, and it was a big one. Here in Chicago we have a huge Mexican community, so needless to say, a lot of my friends were worried about loved ones back home. But that’s not all. My friend reached out to me to warn me about Hurricane Maria. Yes, another hurricane was coming straight for Puerto Rico, and unlike Hurricane Irma, this one was going to make contact on Wednesday. At first I thought she was joking. I felt bad because she was very anxious about Irma and Puerto Rico got lucky with that one. This time it was a different story.
That Wednesday at work, we were hosting our annual Hispanic Heritage breakfast. Our committee got together early in the morning and started to decorate the atrium. Looking back, I remember my co-workers hugging and consoling one another about the events that took place. Friends were asking each other about families in Mexico and Puerto Rico. Once we were ready, people from the firm came down to have different variations of coffee from different Latin American countries as well as sweet treats such as panes dulces and churros. It dawned on me how much we love this place and how much it meant for us to put this together so people could enjoy their morning. It also got me wondering if people noticed too, how much we love being here, especially with what’s going on in politics. Do people here value us as much as we value them? Then Maria happened.
I’m very saddened by the slow response that Puerto Rico has received. Not to mention, I’ve sent two care packages to my friend’s dad and he has yet to have them delivered. I’ve tried using sites such as Amazon, and Walgreens to deliver goods out there but to my surprise, have had trouble using his address in Puerto Rico. It took over a week for post offices to be opened, not to mention having flights go in and out since the airport’s tower was severely damaged. I had a co-worker fly out to search for her mother that weekend, only to have her flight get delayed for days in Florida. I luckily had the chance to get some supplies for her before she left. When she did come back a week later, she had horror stories of desperation. What she saw out there changed her. It will never be the Puerto Rico she had remembered.
I kept in touch with my friend daily on the whereabouts of her dad. Other co-workers did not hear from loved ones either for days. It was an agonizing ordeal seeing my friends try to get some form of communication. Luckily in the end, my friend’s dad reached out to her, but that was after 2 weeks of nothing. Everyone around me was hurting.
I got a chance to hang out with my friends over that weekend I had been back from vacation. One of them was flying out to Tokyo for her birthday and we all came over to help her pack. It was nice being able to be around friends and vent out our frustrations. On Monday I went to The Violet Hour to catch up with a friend over drinks. He wanted to hear about my trip. I also had to apologize over an incident that had happened that Wednesday when Maria hit. He understood that he caught me at a bad time. It was nice making amends. Sometimes, you need to…
Cocktails at The Violet Hour is always a good idea.
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