Hi everyone!

I hope that you’re doing well and surviving this quarantine period. My name is Reya, and I’m a member of the International Committee. I’m here to give you a small piece of what my life back home looks like during this time!

I’ve come back to Dubai back in March once it was announced that university will be closed, and had I left a day late, I would’ve been stuck in the Netherlands as the UAE announced the temporary travel ban. Though I’m from Indonesia, traveling back there was not an option for my family and I, so we stayed in our home here. Up to recently, the measures were super strict; having to request a permit to leave the house, only 1 person per household is allowed to be out and for groceries/pharmacy only. We were also constantly getting phone alarms in the evening to announce the curfew! Fortunately, it is no longer like this these days, which is great as the number of new daily cases is slowly decreasing here.

As a Muslim, I have started practicing our 30 day fast during this month called ‘Ramadan’, where we refrain from eating and drinking from sunrise till sunset. This has made concentrating on uni work a little hard but I’m trying! (maybe with Netflix playing on the side…) Since we can no longer spend our time during the day eating out of boredom, my family has been tending the garden, cooking and I, of course, have been playing Animal Crossing. I’ve also been reading on some days! It’s been a little hard being home all the time, and I miss my friends a whole lot, but we’ve tried our best to stay in touch and share pictures/videos of what we did that day. I hope this period ends soon so we can all go back to spending time together on campus and doing our regular Babylon activities!
Please stay healthy and safe, and we’ll see each other very soon!