Update:

I got a job in Boston working for the same educational publishing company that I interned for in Columbus. With 3 1/2 months under my belt, I feel fairly acclimated to the work, the people and the office and am pretty thankful that I was given this opportunity. It's a job that I really wanted, that I felt qualified for, in a location that I was thrilled about, and it was the first job for which I even interviewed. Pretty fortunate, if you ask me.

Life in Boston has been pretty fast-paced. I lived with my parents in New Hampshire until the beginning of September so that did require about a month and a half of commuting 3 hours a day. Now that I live in Cambridge, a short T ride away from downtown, I have much more free time to explore the city, meet people, get to know people better, etc. etc.

I have met some amazing people at work. In fact, if it weren't for work, I probably wouldn't have more than 2 friends here. Some things that I've done with my new work friends:
Harvey Danger farewell tour concert
Sam Adams Brewery Tour (free!)
Lake Winnepesomething, Cape Cod, Halloween, book/scrapbooking club, trivia nights with four girls from the office.
Running with Leah, my new running buddy--she's training for a 10k in December, I'm training for a half marathon in February
"Sleep No More," a crazy, weird, creepy but AWESOME play

This isn't to say there haven't been some more "down" times and general loneliness associated with moving to a new city. First, my parents moved down south, as in Texas, recently (yes I knew they would be doing this when I took the Boston job) and that's been a little bit of an adjustment. I grew quite used to having them around. The bright side is now that they're gone, I've been able to settle into my life a bit more and embrace the idea of living in an expensive city on a tiny budget. With the 'rents in town, it was quite easy to go home on the weekends to avoid spending money and to accept the offer to buy my groceries. Ok, I really miss that last part. And their company, of course.

Second, sometimes I forget that I've only been here 3 1/2 months and I start to reminisce about having people around me who have known me for longer. Having moved around a little when I was younger, making new friends is not something I'm a stranger to, and there's definitely a positive side to it--you get to reinvent yourself in a way and you have the benefit of having learned from mistakes no one around you has seen you make. I, for one, make mistakes on a pretty frequent basis, so this really is a giant perk. At the same time, I know my friends back at OSU are friends with me despite this. Will new friends be the same way?

The other day, when I was thinking about these few things that were getting me down, the realization hit me that this is what I was waiting for all last year when I was sitting in my apartment in Spain, bored (yeah, even in Spain), and wishing that I had more of a life. Working just two days a week in a place that doesn't seem like they really need you, aka my school in Cambil, doesn't quite satisfy the need I have to be doing something useful. Now, I'm actually working and even though I'm at the bottom of the publishing food chain and it is a fairly straightforward job, I'm actually doing something. I have a life here that can actually grow into permanence, unlike Spain, and I like the life. I can picture myself sitting in the living room back on Calle d/ Adarves Bajos and trying to imagine what I would be doing once I moved back to the U.S. and where I would be living and now I'm just doing it.

This is a long, disjointed post, but I needed to write down that last part in case I forgot about it.

They call it "Grit?"

Reading the Sunday Boston Globe this morning, I came across the Ideas section and the title story, "The Truth About Grit." I saw the word "grit" in the title and at that point I'm thinking it's going to be some kind of article of dirt and how it's not so bad to have germs because it increases your immunity and where the idea of being dirty came from, etc. etc. So maybe I'm a little slow and this word is something everyone is familiar with, but I had no idea that it is a quality in people, which is an ability to work hard and persevere.

Turns out that intelligence isn't the main factor in success but it's this grit idea that is the true indicator. Sure, it helps to be smart and you can't really accomplish too much, no matter how hard you work, if you don't know anything. What it comes down to is that people who have been successful in their life, and I'm not sure how they define success in the article but the way I understood it as is job promotion, project completion, tangible goal reaching (made enough money to buy a house), etc.

You can read the article for yourself so I don't need to continue describing it. Basically, I feel like I could work harder. I've been flying under the radar enough that I know I need to change my habits or else my "slacking" will start to catch up with me.

I want to enroll in some Spanish classes this year to begin formally learning the language I picked up bits and pieces of when I lived in Spain. I also want to stick to a running regime.

I can say all of this and it doesn't really mean anything. I just need to start acting on things like this, things I know to be true and want to change.

Ode to the United States way of renting

Lots to update on since I last wrote a long time ago. First of all, I have a job! I am starting work in Boston this Monday, as in tomorrow, and I'm very excited. I had a total of two interviews with this company before I was given the job. It was the first set of interviews I've had since returning, as well, so that was pretty awesome!

But after receiving a job in a new city comes the frustration of apartment searching. Not only that, but I am currently living in Southern New Hampshire with my parents and will be commuting to work (via train thank god) until I find a place. The commute, even though I won't be driving the whole way there, consists of driving to the commuter rail station about a half hour from my house, taking the commuter rail for 50 minutes, then catching a subway to my actual stop at work. All in all, including leaving the house ridiculously early so that I'm not late on my first day, it equals about 2.5 hours of commuting.

Now, my apartment search has been easy in the sense that I'm able to go look at places. I'm using craigslist room/shares search because one: I can't afford to live alone and two: I don't know anyone here and it might be nice to have a roommate around every so often. The search has been hard in that I don't know much about the city and am also used to living close to the center of everything (thanks for that Spain) so I'm a bit picky. I want a place that is, if nothing else, close to a coffee shop. Well I shouldn't say if nothing else...that's on the list of things I want but don't need. What I need is someone who is willing to have a pet rabbit in their apartment and perhaps a place that will let me rent a parking space.

My point with this post is not to go into my own pickiness but to talk about the differences between renting in the US and renting in Spain. I have no idea how it is anywhere else in Europe, but in Spain, in order to rent (and if you have no contacts in the area) you must go to an agency. This is similar to rental companies in the US in that they have a certain number of apartments to show you. However, it is different because the company does not own the apartment; they are providing services to the owner of the apartment in exchange for money on both end of the contract. That is, the rentee has to pay about half a month's rent to the company and so does the renter. Another problem is that there are many many many many agencies. When my boyfriend and I were over there looking for places, we were particular in that we wanted a one or two bedroom apartment. That was it. That was our only particular. And they came up with only a few apartments to show us. Stereotypes and unfairness towards foreigners also has to come into play here, but the main point is that there were not many to look at.

Really it wasn't a bad experience although we did not like having to go through an agency. This is something I have to remember as I'm searching for apartments now, because it really has been pretty easy. Even if I were to avoid craigslist and contact apartment agencies I think it would going as well.

Plus it's nice understanding what the landlord is saying now.

On My Reading List

In April, I traveled to Pais Vasco, or the Basque Region, in Spain with a few friends who had flown in from the U.S. That region of the country has been made famous by ETA, the terrorist pro-sovereignty group that has killed over 800 people since it's founding in 1959. Yesterday, the most recent fatal attack occured in a town just outside of Bilbao, famous for it's Guggenheim Museum, in which a police officer was killed. Usually, the attacks are non-fatal, such as the attack in October at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, and sometimes attacks that are not intended to have victims end up being fatal, such as the bombing of Madrid's Barajas Airport parking garage bombing in 2006. The group is viewed in understandably bad light by the rest of the world and even the residents of Pais Vasco are mostly unsupportive of the group that brings shameful fame to their culturally significant little corner of the Bay of Biscay.


Most of what I know I learned from a good friend of mine who studied the violent nationalist group in college and wrote her thesis on the violent nationalist group ETA versus the non-violent nationalist campaigns of the Catalan region in Spain. Pais Vasco has an extremely culturally rich as well as tragic history. The oldest European language, Euskara, is from there and developed independent of all other languages as no base language has been identified as one whose structure Euskara has adopted. During the Spanish Civil War, Franco chose Guernica, a tiny city in the region, to give to Hitler as a gift to test his Blitzkreig military strike concept, causing devasting life loss and destruction to a city that had done nothing do deserve it.

Getting now to the subject of this post, on my reading list is "Basque History of the World," written by Mark Kurlansky. I'm looking forward to learning more about their history and culture so that I have a better idea of who they are, and am not just thinking about them in terms of their connection to ETA.

Holly

This past Thursday, my cat of almost 20 years, the cat I grew up with who I coaxed into loving me after years of pulling her tail and accidentally rocking a chair over her recently declawed paws, passed away. She lived a very long life and for most of it she was in great health. I'm glad to say that she probably only suffered for one week before she died, and that's because she stopped eating. The timing was interesting-- I had been home from Spain a little less then two weeks and Kim and her family were in town. I don't think Kim and I have been around the cat at the same time in over two years. She went with her whole family around her, and I don't think that was a coincidence.

Being home has been an emotionally charged experience in many ways and I was thinking about how being around Holly, petting her and singing to her (she loved Disney music), would always help me sort out my problems and feel better. I think it was that by giving her attention and singing to her I was making her happy and it's so easy to tell when a cat is happy--they purr. That, in turn, would help me feel happy. The singing started when I was about 5 years old and watching a movie, I think it was All Dogs Go To Heaven, and there's a part in there where the little girl sings. Holly had always liked the sounds of a recorder, and I remember that Holly perked up when she heard the singing and so I got the idea that she liked music and began singing to her. After basically torturing the poor cat when I was younger, I had much ass-kissing to do. I also noticed that she liked hearing The Colors of the Wind and so I began singing that song too. It took a little while, but eventually she began to trust me enough that she would let me pet her while I was singing instead of rubbing her neck and face against a corner and purring just out of my reach.

I really had to work to get her to like me and it definitely paid off. Once she was comfortable enough to let me pet her, it was like instant medicine--after all there is such a thing as pet therapy. I always tell people that I like both cats and dogs and while I eventually plan on having both, if I could choose one or the other I would choose cats. They may not be in your face happy to see you like dogs usually are, but they are happy in their own, less energetic, way. Just by letting me be one of the three people in the world who she let close enough to touch her, and by enjoying my less than beautiful singing, Holly showed me that she had let go of my annoying, little kid ways.

Sorry for all the tail-pulling, Holly. I'll miss you!

Just Some Thoughts

I miss speaking Spanish even though I didn't speak it that well. I miss the feeling of being a foreigner, even though it came with many awkward moments (I don't know why I miss it and don't intend on figuring it out). I miss the people who helped me with Spanish and made me feel comfortable in Jaen. Once I find a job and get settled in a place, I plan on finding a volunteering opportunity where I can help people learn English and help them feel part of a community.

Maine

My family and I are spending a few days up in Maine in small beach town called Ogunquit. It looks like what you would imagine from a New England beach: rolling waves smashing against craggy rocks and bursting into coves. There is a path that goes along the beach from our hotel on to other small beachside towns. This morning, I took advantage of the gray, cloudy skies and went for a jog, something I love doing but somehow rarely find the time to do. There’s really something about the ocean air that makes everything more enjoyable, even the feeling of sweat gathering along my forehead. The view reminded me of the movie Life As a House, with Hayden Christianson (pre-Star Wars) and Kevin Klein. While there was no cliff sheer enough to jump off of into the water like in the movie, I imagined that if there were a sunset on the horizon (there wouldn’t be—we are, after all, on the Atlantic and not Pacific) and it were warmer (it wouldn’t be—it’s Maine), I would have had a strong urge to jump into the water.

I’ve been to a few beaches on the Mediterranean: the beach in Nice, France, even though it’s more like a gravel parking lot and not a beach, and the beaches in Marbella and Torremolinos, Spain. A week and a half ago, I was actually at the Torremolinos Beach, and I don’t think there has ever been a period in my life where I go to a beach more than once every few months (if not once every few years). It struck me that while the two beaches, Ogunquit and Torremolinos, are on opposite sides of an ocean, and the one in Spain is technically on the Mediterranean Sea, not the Atlantic, that I was looking at the same body of water. I know, existential moment that has been written about too many times, but it’s one of the first times that thought has hit me with the strength it did. If there’s ever anything to be compared from country to another, it should be the beaches. Some will have cliffs, others will have rocks, and even more others will just slowly fade into the waters to where the sand came from, but they all give that same, majestic feeling of smallness and, at the same time, unification.