There is a line in Baz Luhrmann’s song Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) that speaks to me that goes: “Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life… the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.”

When I turned 22, I decided that I wanted to work for the World Health Organisation. Two years after that, I found myself at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland in the United States for my post-graduate studies, sponsored by Universiti Sains Malaysia.

The application process was nerve-racking, yet I never considered what would happen if I were accepted.

Being the top public health school in the US and arguably the world, Johns Hopkins attracts a pool of talented individuals, whom I perceived as a very scary bunch to share a lecture hall with. Between the jet-lag, fasting during Ramadan, and staying in a seedy part of town, I am not shy to say that I was petrified and unattractively stressed out when I first arrived in Baltimore.

Siti Khayriyyah Hanafiah (squatting) with the rest of the Muslim Students Association members of her college, celebrating Aidilfitri away from their respective homes.

But with a self-induced knock on the head, some chance encounters with kindred individuals, a bit of effort, and lots of grace from God, I remembered why I came here in the first place. And I got my groove on.

Comparing myself with either the ex-Peace Corp volunteer who did work in Tanzania and rural India, or the guy who worked at the US Centre of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), or this girl who casually spits out facts and figures, was an easy pitfall to succumb to. My meek, green fresh-from-Hobbiton self would always fall short, so I gave up the comparisons.

Who knows? Perhaps someone compared herself to me and thought: “Whoa, she can sure type fast. And she rocks that hijab!” I convinced myself that the crux of this experience is what I make of the available opportunities, such as speakers at the forefront of their fields, an amazingly experienced and supportive faculty involved in promising researches, interesting courses, and the chance to mingle with individuals who may well be my colleagues in the field someday.

Every day life in Baltimore is slowly and surely creeping into my heart, the chambers that know home best. I am getting used to the morning commute from the pulsing city to the campus, and catching the sun peeking between skyscrapers at dusk on the way back. On weekends, I go for runs with Sarah, my anti-sugar-revolutionary-activist and Jordanian-American housemate. We also go grocery shopping, which I love. I make meals from leftovers, and pluck figs from a tree planted by our 91-year-old neighbour.

Then, of course, there are the occasional things that the city and friends have to offer, like the picnic across the harbour at Fort McHenry, or celebrating Hari Raya morning with breakfast at the International House of Pancakes with members of the Muslim Students Association.

We hung out at the annual book festival, and ended up eating more than book-browsing.

We also went for the last baseball game of the season played on home ground where local team Orioles, actually beat the Toronto Blue Jays with a grand slam (that’s four home runs in one single play).

Siti Khayriyyah Hanafiah getting ready to watch America's favourite game, baseball, with her friends in Baltimore.

My classmates were amazed at how familiar I was with American culture when I sang along to Take Me Out To The Ball Game, and then requested for ice-cream on my Baltimore Bomb pie.

I sweetly replied: “Where I come from, we have television.” And I guess that was my bit of diplomatic relations for Malaysia.

All in all, it’s only been a month of fun new adventures at Baltimore. It has been interesting in the worst of times, and enriching in the best of times. I’m looking forward to getting to know this great land of opportunity and its people even better.

But I do miss kueh teow ladna like mad though.