During the pandemic, I wanted to overcome my boredom by planning a sleepover at the last minute and inviting my friends to hang out again.

To start off, it was difficult getting my friends Ashley and Jasmin over since Jasmin’s mom thought that if they’d stayed for too long, they might get my baby cousin sick. My friends weren’t infected or anything but her mom was cautious. It would have been easier before the pandemic since we weren’t worried about possibly affecting others’ health. Because of this, my sister and I convinced our mom to message Jasmin’s mom to reassure her that it’s alright for her to stay over. Although it took some time to persuade and nervously wait, her mom allowed her to go. Keep in mind, I moved from the city of Bell to Whittier at the beginning of April so picking my friends over in Maywood was farther this time.

From the minute our Zoom ended, we waited until 3:00 PM to go pick them up. First, we picked up Jasmin in front of her apartment complex and went to pick up Ashley in front of her house. We didn’t feel a bit anxious about not wearing our masks through the ride because we knew and trusted that each other was healthy. When arriving, Ashley and Jasmin got their belongings out of the trunk and went straight to the bedroom to drop off belongings. We chilled and talked for about two minutes before my mom barged into the room to tell us that we should eat right now instead of later.

There were many options of Filipino food my mom had cooked and bought—to list a few, there was macaroni salad, taro cake, chicken barbeque, and pancit. Pancit is a Filipino dish that’s made with rice noodles mixed with vegetables and chicken. My friends were not overwhelmed at the choices due to them already knowing that my mom would make excessive servings. After that, the four of us headed back to my bedroom and chit-chatted about our lives until night time arrived. We decided that it would be fun to scan through our middle school yearbook to recall our memories from Nimitz Middle School and watch horror skits on Youtube.

The following day, we went out to go buy boba before bringing Ashley and Jasmin back home. Although we have communicated a lot on social media during this extensive quarantine, it was nice to interact with them again while forgetting about the pandemic’s existence at the same time.