On October 11, 2018, Hurricane Michael hit my home state of Virginia after traveling up the whole east coast. Over 20 people died, flooding occurred everywhere, and almost 1.3 million people were left without power. The day after, my university let out for fall break. Little did I know that I would come home to a county where 25,000 out of a total population of 30,000 people were out of power, including my family. We, meaning my family and I, had no power for a couple of days.

As a University Student, my main concern was how I was going to get my homework done because everything requires a computer and/or a printer and/or a phone, and all three of those require – you guessed it – electricity. Another thing that requires electricity in my house is running water. Yet another thing that requires electricity is a refrigerator, which houses most of our food. Stoves and air conditioning also need electricity. We couldn't shower, wash dishes, watch TV, or heat anything up for meals. Sounds awful, right?

And yet, it was not all that bad. We got some cases of water bottles and found a way to wash only the necessary dishes. Because almost everything essential in our house needs electricity, we just had to find ways to work around the power outage. We flushed our toilets with the drainage water next to our house and my father kept a campfire going all day for every day we were out of power. We invited our neighbors over and had s'mores and mountain pies, which are my absolute favorite campfire foods. One night my mother made dinner that we could cook over the fire and we just sat at our picnic table and joked around.

For the first time in years, my siblings and I spent those days outside. I got to free-read for a while, my siblings played with the neighborhood kids, and my parents chilled out by the fire. We got to relax for a couple of days and make memories that we would not otherwise make, such as burning multiple foods and watching my sister and her friends use old boogie boards to cross the six-inch-deep drainage pond next to our house. I do not by any means wish to go without power for that long again, but I learned that anything is bearable, as long as I am with people I care about, which made the whole experience worth every second.