Broken American Dream

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people, including me, were forced to change their minds.
Before explaining the impact of the pandemic, let me explain my background.

Why I went to Los Angeles?

I was born in Japan and studied there until I graduated from high school. I started learning programming when I was a high school student and participated in a computer club.
As I thought of a career as a programmer, I decided to go abroad.
The first reason for that is to interact with many geeks like me in a U.S. university.
The second reason is since the job market in the U.S is much larger than that in Japan, I thought I could find a job with a high salary.
With those expectations, I arrived in Los Angeles in the summer of 2018 without any acquaintance.

Life in Los Angeles

I experienced many problems in the first few weeks in Los Angeles.
The first problem was that I had to find out a place to live immediately.
After I started to live in one shared room, I had to do everything by myself while I had never lived alone.
Moreover, although I had a little confidence in English, I could not understand most of the native Americans' English in the first few terms.
However, as I get used to living there and began to communicate with other roommates, I came to enjoy living there and studying at a college until 2020.

COVID-19 Impact

After the end of the fall semester in 2019, I went back to Japan and celebrated Happy New Year. And to get ready for next spring semester, I left Japan at the end of January.
In February, the COVID-19 began raging all over the world, so all classes in my college became online.
On April 8th, I decided to go back to Japan since living in a shared room would be dangerous and I could take better health care in Japan if I caught the virus.

Shut-in Life in Japan

After I arrived at Haneda airport in Japan, I spent two days at a hotel close to the airport. By the way, Since I am an indoor person, I enjoyed the delicious food and the nice room there.
Also, just in case, I stayed 2 weeks at a short stay apartment.
After I came back to my home, I had spent most of my time at home.
Since I thought the virus would disappear in the summer, I did not think of my future so seriously.
On the other hand, U.S became chaotic not only because of the virus but also because of racial problems.
Since I thought America a great country, I began to rethink my life.

Realization

Since going to an American university became difficult, I continued rethinking the primary reason why I decided to go there. The answer is mentioned before: To get along many geeks.
When I joined in one tech event in Japan, I realized there are many geeks already in Japan, moreover, I can meet with people all around the world online.
I realized I do not have to learn in U.S. right now.
So, I decided to look for a job as a programmer, and learn computer science n a university later.

Conclusion

To summarize, I came to Los Angeles with the hope, which was broken by COVID-19, so I started looking for a job in Japan.
Thanks for reading.