My favorite spot in Little Havana became Domino Park, where Cuban-Americans aged 60 to 90 years fight it out in pick-up games of dominoes. Cafecitos (Cuban espresso with sugar) can be bought on every corner and the best places for salsa music and dancing lay here. meant that Spanish is spoken as the number one language. In hindsight, I should not have been surprised that the largest community of Cuban-Americans in the U.S. A drive down Calle Ocho (8th Street) – the gateway to the center of Little Havana – is like a sudden drop into a different country. It is common for visitors to view Miami as little more than a tourist playground made for Bachelorette weekends and Spring Break beach trips – but when you spend time in the real local community and meet people who have lived here for generations, you discover a world that holds more culture and history than many cities in the United States. Hurricane Dorian eventually passed – missing Miami altogether – and I decided I was ready to give Miami a second chance.įinally back in Miami, I began to explore, and quickly found diverse neighborhoods and a deeper level of understanding Miami. Is this really meant to be? How could we possibly be a match? Bring on the Detroit winter, I am not cut out for this. Thoughts of doubt and anxiety quickly crept in. When the sign on my apartment building said they were about to turn off the electricity, water and lock the doors, I was on a plane home to Texas ghosting my first Miami hurricane season. I recall riding the elevator up to my new apartment with the palm in tow and receiving a disapproving look from a fellow resident who seemed to say “You decided to move to Miami during the peak hurricane season? Good luck!”

While I was buying succulents and an areca palm at Home Depot, other shoppers were stocking up on battery packs and sandbags. After driving 1,347 miles with my mom and just about everything I own (including three pairs of cowboy boots), I was greeted two days into the move by the real Florida – by which I mean a Category 5 hurricane. It was not love at first sight for me and Miami. When I accepted my offer to work in Miami, I was more excited about the job than the location, but little did I know, the city that I had written off as an improbable match would capture my heart. Not having visited any of the VFA cities except for San Antonio, I was feeling confident that I would find a new place to challenge me and help me grow. A chance encounter with VFA during my senior year at UT Austin made me realize a door was open to continue my journey down new and unexpected paths. Travel with family, study abroad and an international internship left me yearning for new people and places with cultures and customs that I could learn about and learn from. That journey to go outside of my comfort zone led me to Miami, and an unexpected love for a city that I had no prior connection to. When I grew up in Waco, Texas, Chip and Joanna Gaines had not yet risen to fame on HGTVs “Fixer Upper” – Joanna was clerking at her dad’s tire store – and while I love my hometown, I was eager to see what lay beyond. If you told me that I was going to move to Miami after college, I would not have believed you.

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