You look around Lexington, Virginia, and you can’t help thinking, what in the world is a Latin girl from Miami doing here?

Growing up in Miami, Florida, everyone around me more or less looked and talked like me. Our family held the same traditions and had the same exact sayings. Cubans dominated the scene, which made it easy to fit in; we all used the same slang and ate the same food. Being brunette, brown-eyed and tan was absolutely the norm.

Now, I’m moving somewhere where it’s the complete opposite, and I was sort of freaking out. I know the people at my school are sweethearts, but nobody ever wants to be the odd man out. Nobody ever wants to be in a crowd and be the only one someone could pick out as being “other." College freshmen are looking to fit in with the crowd, not stray from it. I wasn’t sure how I was going to adjust to this new identity or culture, and I was going to have to do it all without mom and dad holding my hand, which makes it 10 times as terrifying.

But something happened this afternoon that settled my fears almost immediately.

I’m staying at the Robert E. Lee hotel while I move in, a wonderful, small resort just a few minutes from my school. While walking to our room on the second floor, I passed a desk with a laptop and a coffee mug on it. The mug was adorable; it’s shaped like an owl, with big orange eyes and blue and orange accents around the body, and even little painted feet sticking out. The back is decorated with polka dots, which just so happens to be my desk theme for my dorm.

I commented in passing on how adorable the mug was and how much I loved it. My parents both gave me the look. I collect coffee mugs, and have a box of 30 of them sitting in the back of my car waiting to somehow get moved into my dorm room. I knew exactly what the look meant, too. You have more mugs than any sane human and there is no reason to eye another one for the rest of your life.

We dropped our stuff off in the room, went to explore Lexington for a while, and then came back to shower and get dressed for dinner with my roommate and her parents. A few minutes after we got back, there’s a knock on the door, and my mom answers it. I hear a few whispers, and then my mom calls me over to the door.

Standing in the doorway is a pretty blonde woman who works at the hotel’s restaurant, Rocca (I won’t mention her name because I didn’t get her permission to). In her hands is the mug I was eyeing, and she holds it out towards me, and I stare at her.

“Really?” I ask, and she nods and smiles. I take it in my hands.

“But I have to tell you the story about that mug,” she says as I admire it. “My best friend loved owls, and she loved the color pink. There’s no pink in the mug, but it is an owl. She passed away two years ago, and I want you to have this last piece I have of her.”

I was speechless. I stumbled through a few words of thanks and hugged her, and off she went.

I have no idea why she would do that. I have no idea why she would entrust me with something so incredible. I am going to treasure this mug with everything I have, but I am going to treasure the feeling I got from that interaction even more.

Going to college is the scariest thing I’ve ever done, and I’m doing it very far from home in what feels like a different world. Something so simple meant the absolute world to me. This was someone who has never met me, knows nothing about me, who reached out and shared something incredible and personal. And that gave me such an immense amount of hope.

Now I know that it doesn’t matter that I’m going to look different or talk different or take a while to grasp Southern culture. Because there are people like that in the world, who unknowingly make someone’s day with the simplest of gestures. She gave me hope that even though I’m doing this alone, away from everyone I love, I’m going to find new people to love and to love me. I’m going to find people who are willing to go out of their way to make others happy. I’m going to find people who are going to help make this place a real home for myself.

The smallest of interactions can touch people in ways we never imagined. A simple smile could be the only smile someone receives for an entire day. A compliment on an outfit could lift someone’s self-esteem that they thought was forever shattered. Someone giving me a mug made me feel like everything is going to somehow be okay. Feelings are the most powerful force on this Earth, and everyone should work on channeling the positive ones that can change others in ways we never predicted.

And I now have a physical representation of an incredible feeling that will sit proudly on my dorm room desk as a reminder of the good in this world that is going to get me through the bad.