My first trip to the United States, and how it quietly changed everything.

It all started with a thought.
Well, to be honest, many thoughts. I’m someone who always has a flurry of them, half of which I barely catch before they fly away. One of those thoughts, however, decided to stick around. A friend of mine, in one of our many late-night conversations, said, “Why don’t you write it all down about your USA trip? It’s one for the record.”

So here I am writing my first-ever piece.
But what is this? A journal? A travelogue? An open letter to my future self? I’m not sure yet. But I’m not going to let definitions hold me back. Let’s figure it out as we go. Let’s write.

A Dream, Wrapped in a Puffer Jacket

I always saw myself living in the States.
Not in a manifesting-it-on-a-vision-board kind of way but more like a quiet knowing, stitched deep into the seams of who I was becoming. I fantasized about film-like moments walking down streets in a puffer jacket and rounded glasses, somewhere between Hermione Granger and Emma Morley from One Day. That girl with a heart full of stories and a suitcase full of hope. That was me.

And Then, It Happened

My trip to the U.S. wasn’t just a journey across continents. It was a sequence of unexpected moments that cracked my heart open in all the right places.

Like running into a childhood friend someone I hadn’t seen in 15 years in a bookstore in Seattle, purely by chance. There were rainbow sightings, techno raves that made my heart race (in the best way), and mountains blanketed in snow that made me feel tiny in the most comforting way.

There was the Fourth of July fireworks not just in the sky but in my soul.
There were long drives, airport hugs, and sunrises that made me forget to take pictures because I was too busy living.

And oh Figma Config 2024, reason I came here in the first place. A conference that felt like a festival. I jammed with Abdul, met incredible minds, and rediscovered my love for design, community, and serendipity.

Philly, Professors, and a Rainstorm on the Road

I stayed with my friend in Philadelphia, seven days of warmth, laughter, and late-night heart-to-hearts. Somewhere in between, I decided to take a solo road trip. From Philly to Pittsburgh. Six hours one way. Why? To meet professors at my dream university – Carnegie Mellon.

That drive was something else.
I met an Amish man at a gas station who showed me how to fuel the car myself (felt like a scene out of a movie). Roamed around the CMU campus, talked to professors who made the dream feel less like a fantasy and more like a plan.

And then came the drive back.
The skies turned dark, it started pouring, and I was shitting bricks. My windshield began frosting up. I couldn’t see a thing. But just when I thought I’d have a full-on meltdown, a couple of kind cops pulled over and helped me fix the defrost. It was terrifying, but the kind of story you don’t forget.

Twelve hours on the road, but every second was worth it.
I came back to Philly, hugged my friend, and laughed about the whole adventure like I hadn’t just lived through a dramatic indie road movie.

The City That Lived in My Head

After a week in Philly, I packed up and headed to the city. The one I had imagined a thousand times, New York.

I had Alicia Keys on repeat in my head the whole time.
“In New York… concrete jungle where dreams are made of…”

There I was – dragging my luggage off the bus, into the subway, and onto the streets of Manhattan. Times Square glowed all around me. I dropped my bags at the hotel and did the most New York thing I could think of: took myself out for coffee. Just like the Wall Street mornings I had seen in movies.

In three days, I walked 75,000 steps, met friends old and new, took video calls in the middle of chaotic streets, and breathed in every corner of that city like it was a long-lost love.

Coming Home to Myself

A year ago, all of this was a distant dream. Now, I’m two weeks away from moving to the very city that whispered home the first time I landed there. San Francisco.

It feels less like a relocation and more like a quiet return.
To a version of me that I had only met in glimpses before. A version that knows how to be brave and soft all at once. A version that dares to begin again.

So here’s to the city, to the stories yet to be lived, and to this beautiful, chaotic, heart-expanding thing called life.

I don’t know what this piece is – But I do know it’s mine.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.