Ah, summer vacation. Nine days of enjoying roller coasters and escaping from the heat and humidity of Orlando. Nine days of getting to explore new theme parks and a visit over the border to our northern neighbors, Canada. It was a much needed vacation, and I got to spend nine days with my dad doing what we love. Most times when we go on vacation, other vacationers would make friendly conversation by asking where we from. When we told them Orlando, they would be confused as to why we left the theme park capital of the world to go to other theme parks. But on this trip, the responses were different, much different.

One night, the room above us had very squeaky floors, so we were up quite early. So, considering I wasn’t going to be getting any more sleep, I decided to check Twitter before we got going for the day. I was bombarded with tweets from news sources about singer Christina Grimme being shot. I was speechless. I saw her in concert on my birthday and even had gotten a picture with her after the concert. Knowing that the shooting happened at a concert in Orlando was crazy, but thinking that it could have happened sooner, at the concert that I had attended, was scary to think about. It was heartbreaking to hear that she didn’t survive and passed. She was such a sweetheart at the concert. Some of her die-hard fans were at the concert and she recognized them and had conversations with them, thanking not only them, but everyone for supporting her. The headliner of the concert, Rachel Platten, even brought her back out on stage during her portion of the concert to sing together. I didn’t think that things could get worse in Orlando, but I was so wrong.

Once again, I was awoken early and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I checked Twitter. Tweet after tweet after tweet filled my timeline about a shooting that had taken place in Orlando at a nightclub. Reports of what was happening was filling my feed. I was so confused. This wasn’t something that happened in real life. This was stuff that happens on TV shows. It was so surreal to hear about. It made national news coverage in Canada. Their local news stations were covering what was happening back home. No longer were people surprised about the fact that we had left Disney World for Canada’s Wonderland when they heard we were from Orlando. Now, they felt sorry about what happened back home. It was crazy. It didn’t even feel real. We used a vacation as an escape from what was happening back home. It was all over Twitter and Facebook, everywhere. Being in Canada, we had to turn off our data, so while we weren’t at the hotel, we couldn’t see what was going on. We could just pretend everything was OK, just for a little while. There was this show on in Canada that was all practical jokes and it was lighthearted and fun to watch. A nice distraction from everything that was going on back home. I was saddened to hear about everything that happened and my heart broke for all the families and friends affected by the shooting. I was just so amazed at how Orlando came together and even though I wasn’t here, I am proud to call Orlando my home.