Wow, the times we are living in. It seems like chaos everywhere. Anxiety, uncertainty, worry, panic. Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, each one is on their personal journey, maybe going through a good time, or sadly, through rough times. The outside world is something we cannot control. But even when we feel powerless, we can control what we do and how we react to the situation. I have refrained from posting part 3 of my trip to New York City, specially out of respect for what such a lively city is going through right now.

🎵 Don't nobody tell me that God don't have a sense of humor. 'Cause now that I want to live, well, everybody around me is dying. - "Leave it alone" by Hayley Williams

We can feel like we can’t share good news because it feels vain, meaningless, disrespectful. But life is not black and white. Life is a multicolored journey that is never just one single thing. Not all is bad. Not all is good. A friend of mine says, “there’s never complete happiness” and that might be true. I am not trying to sell the “always be positive, always have a smile on your face” kind of mindset. It’s not realistic. What I want to emphasize is that we can’t just focus on the bad and the ugly that is happening. COVID-19 is not the only thing happening and hopefully, it won’t even exist in the future . 

I feel worry for those who are in the front line, fighting this pandemic. I have a friend that is a doctor in direct contact with the illness. I have friends and family that have compromised immune systems. My grandfather is 80. I visited him the other day to bring him some groceries, and that’s when it hit. Am I putting my grandpa in danger just by being here? I had protective gear and my worry was so contrasting to the smile on his face because I was there, visiting him. Is during these precise moments that we realize, nothing is one-sided, nothing is completely good or bad. He was not seeing the negative side of the pandemic, he was seeing the positive side, that I had brought him groceries so he wouldn’t have to leave home.

While being there, I felt tired so I took my blood pressure. 90/63.  I took it once again, same outcome. I told him, “Grandpa, this blood pressure machine isn’t working.” He said, “of course it is.” I said, “No, look at my numbers, it is not marking anything above 100. My pressure can’t be that low”. He took his blood pressure. 110/78. The machine wasn’t malfunctioning. His blood pressure was better than mine. I left feeling relieved for him, he’s feeling well. Meanwhile I was worried about me. Why was my pressure so low? I eventually had a virtual appointment with a doctor and we found the cause and I am dealing with it. 

This is just an example about how in this new reality we are living in and that -again- will be temporary- good things will happen as well. We can cherish them without guilt. So take a deep breath and even if it’s a few times a day, try to find those good moments, enjoy them, feel happy about them without guilt. Todo pasa. Everything shall pass, the good and the ugly. I might be posting soon my third part of my travel diary about New York City. Instead of seeing it as vain, I’ll see it as a hopeful post. A tribute to the great city it is, full of people rushing all over. Because I am certain that it will go back to being that. It will not be the same, because after hard times there is always a transformation. But it will go back to be one of the most visited places in the world. And I want to share with you how was my journey there and inspire you to make the trip when it’s safe to do so.

Let’s keep up to date with the news in a healthy way, act responsibly and do our part in containing the coronavirus, keeping ourselves and our families as safe as we can, take the pandemic seriously but also, stop and allow ourselves to disconnect and find the light 🌟 in the dark.

🎵 When there's persistence, You can go farther. Beyond the end. If in the distance, there's more resistance. Try to stay open. Make it your friend. - "Over Yet" by Hayley Williams

I have tried to write this post several times and didn’t know how to begin. I had a few posts written and ready to publish but it didn’t feel right. Not after all that has happened. I even had written one about how to stay happy despite all the wrong -which I will share soon- and re-reading it now feels as if I knew what would happen, without knowing it.

I will go back to my original content, but first I wanted to share my story and why I have been long gone. They say it helps you heal to talk about what has hurt you. So here I go.

On September 2, I landed back in Puerto Rico after a year living my dream between Spain and Germany. I was excited to see my family and eager to start my job hunt, continue with my German classes online and move out. Little did I know. Little did anyone know. Four days later, we were indirectly hit by hurricane Irma, and although the eye never entered the Island, our ever-fragile electricity structure left thousands without power and water supply, my family included. I was glad that my house had survived the storm, and despite a tree falling and breaking our fence, we were alright. Five days after, we got water service back, but our phones and electricity were still long gone. I celebrated my birthday in usual fashion, with a cake and surrounded by the people who I love the most. It’s a great thing that I’ve always preferred it that way.

A week and a half after Irma, Monday 18, we saw light at the end of the tunnel as personnel of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority were repairing power lines near home. And then the news came. María, a hurricane CAT 5 would hit us on September 20, and this time it would be bad. It would enter the Island and cross it. I was helpless, sad, mad, frustrated. I remember clearly how I felt that my world was crumbling down and I could do nothing about it. It had been already difficult -so I thought- making the transition from living in Spain and later Germany, to coming back to Puerto Rico.

Then, María happened. I tried to sleep all night but the noise of the wind was deafening. I didn’t feel scared; few things scare me in this life. I had just shut down, I wanted to feel numb. I had my closest family with me and I knew the others would be safe. I had to believe it. The hurricane hit for 12 hours. When it was safe to go out of the house I was staying at, my parents decided to go home to see how things were. I thought that my house was probably gone, so I needed to be there for support. I had a flashback of the worst day of my life, when amidst the sadness that was pulling me down I put on my bravest face and stood while others broke down. Would I have to do it again? Was I strong enough?

Driving home in our car semi-flooded, water on my feet, I saw the devastation. I had never seen anything like that. My memories of hurricane George, CAT 3, were harmless in comparison. All the utility poles had fallen on the road, trees had no leaves, homes had no roofs. My mother kept on driving and, as I saw that houses like mine were down to pieces, I was expecting the worse. As we were closer, my heart pounded faster. It felt like an eternity. And then we finally arrived.

My house was still there. The roof was still there, most of it. I felt a relief I hadn’t felt in so long. I looked right and saw my neighbor’s home, crumbled down like it was made of paper. I felt lucky. The luckiest person in the world. We then saw a tree that had felt down on the back of my house, right were my room was. We went in and the living room was flooded, stinking like a swamp. The walls were completely damaged but still there. The rest of the house was fine. Somehow the tree didn’t tore down the wall. Our rooms, beds and belongings were there. Intact. I tried to calm down my family, who were clearly affected by the living room nightmare. I’d say, “this was nothing, we still have a home”.

The weeks that followed were the most difficult we have ever faced. No power, no water, no communication. The government’s inability to cope with the situation, the lack of an emergency plan -in an Island that is at risk of hurricanes every year- just made it all worse. Without power, we needed gasoline for generators. However, the distribution of gasoline and diesel was a mess, making people wait in 10-hour lines to get gas if they were lucky. No gas meant no generators to power supermarkets, which meant limited access to food. No power meant no city water supply. Damaged roofs and destroyed properties meant hundreds of people without jobs. Broken bridges meant isolated communities. It was a chain, one problem caused another, a snowball that grew bigger than all of us.

The sun was shining bright, making visible our torn country, our mistakes, our wounds, our fragility. Not just our land, but also our spirit was shaken by the catastrophe. People were scared, mad, sad, desperate. But the good in the people will always prevail. Good neighbors, good strangers would make up for the bad. We shared the little we had. And people shared the little they had. A bottle of water, a bit of gasoline, a power cord from one house to another to use the neighbor’s generator, plenty of hands to cut the fallen trees at home, neighbors helping you install tarps on your roof while it was raining. 

Two months later, we are still far from alright. It will take a lot more, probably years, to go back to “normal”. Sadly, my plans to continue with my online classes and job hunt were far from viable at the moment. How could I help my family without a job? And how could I find a job when those who had one, lost it? With tears in my eyes, I packed my bags, my hopes and dreams, and moved out temporarily. It hurt like few things have hurt me in my life. Never had I realized how much I needed to be home, until I was forced to leave.

I left my heart in Puerto Rico and a promise to go back for the holidays. I don’t care if there’s no power to light up the Christmas tree, my family will be all the light I need.

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Due to the postal service delays, the best way to help is through a monetary donation. Through

Unidos for Puerto Rico, an initiative led by the First Lady of Puerto Rico, Beatriz Roselló, with the support of the private sector, you can donate money that will be used to buy products locally to help my Island.

Likewise, my good friend and blogger extraordinaire, María Elena from Ambinity, wrote a post about Hurricane María lessons and shared a list of other ways to help Puerto Rico, so I invite you to visit her blog as well.

Time flies. I feel like it was yesterday when I was desperately trying to fit everything into two suitcases and move away. Yet here I am, seven months later.

So many things can change in a short span of time. You can grow up in a way you never expected. You suddenly realize you can live with a lot less, you trust strangers, new acquaintances become your family. You let go off of things you thought you couldn't be without. But with freedom often comes uncertainty. What does the future hold?

We can have dreams and plans but things don’t always work out the way we think. Instead of dreading in the past -which we cannot change- and obsessing about the future -which we can’t totally control- we need to live more in the present.

P.S. Here's a photo of my most recent "living in the moment" experience: a last-minute trip to Munich to attend the Champions League match, Bayern-Real Madrid. Even though my team lost (and I was heartbroken for 3 weeks) I don't regret going. If I move back to America, chances are I won't be able to do this again, at least not in the near future. 

A few days before moving out, I was watching some TED talks about happiness. One of them was What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness, a research conducted by Harvard University. It has been going on for 75 years! I’m not going to describe the research completely so you can watch it for yourself here, but among all the people they studied, at the end of their lives, what brought happiness to them was the meaningful relationships they had. Not money, not career success, not their personal belongings, but the relationships they had with their friends and family.

Why am I speaking about this? Because sometimes we focus so much on university or work that we stop nurturing the relationships we have with the people around us. Believe me, at the end of the day, relationships are the one thing that will get us through. I moved overseas, and what was the thing that kept me from going momentarily insane? Connecting with my friends and family. Distance is nothing. Distance can be a mile or 1,000 miles. It’s a matter of perception. My family and friends from back home, friends I had here, even acquaintances made a difference in my emotional health. 

Never take a relationship for granted. No title (“friend”, “uncle”, “cousin” just to name examples) is going to stand the test of time if you don’t cultivate a relationship. Not just be grateful for the meaningful relationships in your life, make keeping them and nurturing them a priority. You will see that at the end of it all, those are what have brought happiness to your life. 

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Have you read about the study or watched the TED talk? What do you think of it? Leave a comment below or tweet me at @ krystel_k. I want to hear your thoughts!

I hate goodbyes. I try to avoid the feeling of knowing that I will not see someone or something for a prolonged period of time. One of the things I loved the most when I was starting to learn Italian and French was that in those languages, you don’t use the words addio nor adieu. Both mean bye, respectively. Instead, they use the equivalent of phrases such as “Until next time”. Bye is just a word they say when they are sure they won’t see the person ever again and it’s usually related to someone passing away.

I’m like the French and the Italian people. I don’t say adiós. So now that I am moving away to Europe for a year, I have been saying until later to people, places, moments, and routines that have been a part of my life. Is in these moments when we realize what we have because we know everything will change. Is in these moments when we cherish what we used to consider normal, the usual. Late chats and laughs with the family, coffee in the mornings that I didn’t have to brew myself, looking up my siblings around the house because I haven’t seen them for a long time (when that long time has been actually 4 hours), the unstable but warm weather of my Island, the familiarity of a place I haven’t been far from, for more than 15 days.

As a fan of The Office, naturally one of my favorite quotes of the show is:

It’s so true. The present is the “good old days” so enjoy it now. It’s the details, the small things we are so used to having around that make our life complete. Sometimes moving on means parting ways with those. But more often than not, it doesn’t mean that they won’t happen ever again. While I am cherishing and absorbing and creating memories of every single aspect of my current life before it changes, I am also acknowledging that it is not the end. Some people believe in life after death, and that may be mostly because as humans it is difficult to deal with the reality of not seeing a loved one once they are gone. Life after dead means saying “until later” and not “bye”. I understand now.

So since I am moving away, I won’t say goodbye to anyone nor anything. I’ll casually say “see you later”, walk on and head into a new adventure. It’s not the end. It’s a beginning and I’ll be back.