I’ve been trying to capture the beauty I see here, but somehow photos don’t do their job very well. This is Gzira, fifteen minutes walk from my apartment. People say it’s five minutes, but for me it’s fifteen at my fastest walk. This is not the best view after all. I walked here with my friend in the hottest time of the day and we didn’t have the strength to walk further to get a better view.

It’s almost two weeks. I became familiar with the buildings of yellowish stones, the smell of cattle during my walk to Maypole bakery, the stronger wind as I get closer to the sea, and a bunch of fluffy cats I frequently see on the street. Perhaps what I like most is the way everyone tries to make you feel at home. As my friend said, most people here look happy.

There’s a question about being a muslim too. At first I was worried, because when my landlord promised to pick me up at the airport, he asked, “will you wear traditional costume as in passport photo?”. Yes, traditional costume. That made me wonder if he had ever seen a woman with scarf here. But it turns out to be ok too. I saw a few girls with scarves in the university. And the advantage of being the minority is, it creates a kind of solidarity. They smile at me. A woman I met on a clinic asked me about halal meat shop. A random guy on the street said Assalamualaikum, which I gladly answered. Back in Indonesia, kalau ada pria ga dikenal yang menyapa, konotasinya hampir selalu buat ngegodain.

My apartment is very nice, but I can’t help but envy my friends’ apartment that happens to be in the same building. They have a balcony, and in the night you can see all the beautiful street lamps and feel the strong, cold wind. In my apartment you can only see a piece someone’s garden from the roofless terrace. And if it rains, the terrace gets very dirty. But you can’t have everything in life.

And my friends, they are great too. None of them is Indonesian, but it’s fine. Even with this very limited spoken English, I can still smile and laugh. So, yes I like it here. I miss my family a lot. I miss my home, I miss my books. And at times it’s so hard to have so many things to handle at once: residence permit, study plan, administration, bank account. But then I think that all of my friends hare are facing the same problems too, and at some point this will all be over, so I throw my worries away.