The 18-Month Rollercoaster

It was approximately 18 months ago that Ted and I made some decisions that started a jam-packed, rollicking journey that would mark an Interesting Period of our lives. Here's a brief timeline and some of the main events that have happened in this time:

In these past months, I've learned a few things:

~ Boston is ripe with American history -- one can randomly come across some plaque or stone marker indicating what Important Event (such as where Washington first took command of American troops) related to the American Revolution occurred there. However, there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of information regarding First Nations populations here or pre-contact populations (you know, before the Pilgrims with their hats arrived at Plymouth Rock), so  I tried to find out a bit more about the area. Boston (and I think Cambridge) sits on the Massachusett traditional territory, the tribe the state of Massachusetts is named after. I've tried to look up information about this particular tribe, but apparently, while there are small bands living around the state, the people were nearly wiped out during post-colonial contact. Their language (and the word Massachusetts) is a dialect of Algonquin. Here's a map from Wikipedia:

~ Massachusetts has a form of socialized healthcare and has for some time. It's a point of pride, apparently.
~ I've mentioned this one before - the immigration process is a painful exercise in waiting... which I whine about despite coming to the U.S. under good circumstances and carrying a Canadian passport (the point being that this very likely makes it much easier for me than someone carrying another sort of passport or identification).
~ Apparently, one needs a Social Security Number (aka "a social") in order to do a number of things such as: apply for a job, get a driver's license, apply to see if one is eligible to take a social work licensing exam, get a bank account (although, we were able to circumvent this somehow), do volunteer work (they need your social to run a check on you), etc. One cannot get a social until their immigration stuff is done. See above point.
~ A surprising number of people do not know what you mean when asking for a washroom. One should request a bathroom.
~ Boston has a super great food scene. I'm glad I had a full physical, including blood pressure and cholesterol check earlier this year. Who knows what the numbers will be the next time I have a check up.
~ Reconnecting with old friends, even ones you haven't seen or spoken to in years (even since junior high school), is always lovely and fun. You get to hear all the interesting things that have happened with people in those intervening years. It's never boring.
~ Job-hunting, particularly when one is trying to pursue new-ish areas of social work that have long been of interest, is not the time to be squeamish! Many applications were sent out! Many interviews (in person and via phone) were scheduled! Many diplomatic rejection letters/responses came in.... I started the process tentatively at first and eventually found myself perusing job postings and saying to myself, "well, I don't necessarily fit 100% of the preferences or requirements, but I'm going to apply anyway!". And I did. The worst that could happen, I figured? No response or a "no" (something I was getting used to, anyway). I mean, it still sucked. And some days, Ted would come home to find me being overly-dramatic and bemoaning my life (like I said -- dramatic). I'm sure he was always really happy about that.
~ One in-person, super supportive person in your life can change everything. Ted and I have a great support network. Unfortunately, most of this network is currently not in Boston and while emails and such are fantastic, it's just not the same as commiserating with or bouncing ideas off someone in person. So, we've leaned heavily on each other as we navigated some of the milestones we've recently experienced. I'm not certain I would have survived the emotional ups and downs that have occurred without Ted. I'm sure there were times where he wasn't certain he would survive my emotional ups and downs, either. But, I'd like to think the reverse is true as well and while his emotional ups and downs look very different from mine, I'm sure he had them, too. Having that person also gives us the freedom and luxury of BEING dramatic and wallowing in short-lived dumpitudes before getting our act together (sometimes at the prodding of the other person), acknowledging how blessed we are, and plugging along.

A Summary of Shenanigans

Hanging out at Boston Common

Just after my first Easter in Boston, some of my very favourite people trekked across the country by way of Minneapolis for a quick visit. Despite the months-long separation, we quickly embroiled ourselves in our usual idiotic and funny (to us) shenanigans while racing around, taking in the sights. While the trip was short, the memories will be long - I present a 6 day trip to Boston and New York City in a series of picture collages! 

Day 1 (Boston): While Mac, Cheese, and Crumbs battled jet lag, we took a stroll around Harvard, went on a Duck Tour around the city and along the Charles River where Sara got to DRIVE A DUCK BOAT, and ended the night with watching the hilarious musical, The Book of Mormon.

Day 2a (Boston): Walked most of the Freedom Trail which took us around to most of the historical landmarks in Boston related to the American Revolution, had chowder (chowdah) at Quincy Market and ate cannolis from Mike's Pastry.

Day 2b (Boston): Stopped for midday drinks at the aptly named Frost Ice Bar.

Day 2c (Boston): Continued wandering around the Freedom Trail, including the North End and ended the day by spending several hours at The Bell in Hand - America's Oldest Tavern.

Day 3 (Boston to New York): Spent the day taking the Amtrak from Boston to NYC (about 4.5 hours trip). Our first night in NYC found us down at Times Square!

Day 4 (New York City): Our first full day in New York started with a meal at Katz's Deli, followed by a bus tour of the city, riding the subway, and checking out the neat architecture! We finished with a meal at The National and checking out the Waldorf Astoria.

Day 5 (New York City): Went to Top of the Rock, the Public Library (where Sara re-enacted select scenes from the Sex and the City movie), and Chelsea Market.

Day 6 (New York City): Our last morning was spent biking around at Central Park before capping the trip off by enjoying some wine on the train back to Boston!

Practically Locals!! (Reprise)

I'm back on the grid! I'm no longer an anonymous (well...actually, I am still anonymous, but you know what I mean) person who has to truck around her passport for ID purposes wherever she goes! I got myself some bona fide U.S. identification bearing my name, face, signature, and in one case, my fingerprint.

My passport reassures me that I'm still Canadian, though. Phew! :)

Besides the ID thing, I've slowly been attempting to integrate into the community beyond the neighbourhood and restaurant/eatery explorations we still do and the visits to the wine store across the street.

I'm volunteering at the little community centre near our place that have various neat programs that run out of it for kids of all ages. I get to help out with middle school aged people who are at once hilarious, sassy, naive, worldly and terrifying. It's a community centre in a true sense: it's been around for ages and generations of families have gone through here; it's an old building that you can tell has been added onto over time, making it look a bit like a building that's been cobbled together; there's a weekend market that happens here with fantastic locally grown/harvested/made veggies, seafood, cheeses, etc.; and it really feels like a meeting place for the neighbourhood.

Just beyond that tree there is an art piece titled "Inner City Totem"

Also, to feed my love of learning languages (although, I don't have a natural aptitude for it), I've started taking Spanish lessons! At this point, I can have a super basic conversation as long as it doesn't deviate from asking basic questions (names, where one lives, how someone is), listing members of the family, listing random foods, and occasionally asking at what time something is (when I can remember how to formulate the question). And I can count to 50. Ta-da! Learning!

Also, I can list random nouns. Makes for riveting conversation, no?

See? I'm practically a local!

Hasta luego (<-- learning AND applying new skills).

Seen Around Beantown

In the last couple of months, we took in a couple of notable Boston sights: the New England Aquarium and the Museum of Fine Arts. These were great indoor activities for a few of those blustery New England winter weekends.

New England Aquarium:

The Aquarium had a really neat set-up that was both engaging and beautiful with a large penguin exhibit right in the centre. There was also a Giant Ocean Tank - a huge cylindrical tank that rose from the floor up to the ceiling (about 4 floors) - that was filled with various sea-life and served as a coral reef exhibit. Plus, they had a couple of "touch tanks" where we got to feel rays as they swam by and other little critters.

These fun guys greet you outside 
the entrance!

This picture doesn't do this ENORMOUS
 guy justice...

                     

     

          

Overall impression: Thoroughly enjoyable, although I was sad to see few to no amphibians/reptiles. While the New England Aquarium had wonderful exhibits, it did make us realize how large the Vancouver Aquarium is.

Museum of Fine Arts (MFA):

A museum that has a bit of everything from the well-known great masters such as Monet, Manet, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Titian, to ancient artifacts and weird and whacky contemporary pieces. There was also a fairly decent exhibit on First Nations art, in both traditional and contemporary styles. 

Fun fact: museum admission includes a free 'repeat visit' within 10 days which was a handy little perk that we took full advantage of. We ended up spending about 7.5 - 8 hours over 2 Saturdays at the MFA after we got over our shock at how large it was (something neither of us were expecting for some reason). 

Our favourite exhibit was the one showcasing John Singer Sargent. His portraits were amazing and so full of life, which even an art rube like myself could recognize. We also played our own private game of searching for Very Ugly Painted Children. There were many. May I present, the winner:

Our very favourite piece, judging from the amount of giggling we did (because we're super juvenile):

Super happy fun times and a bit of Americana

One weekend late in November, a really very good and fantastic friend named Nikki came to Boston for a 19 hour visit (yes, you read that correctly).

The friends, along with Nikki's luggage, visited Quincy Market and Fanueil Hall where there were a gajillion people present for the lighting of Boston's giant Christmas tree 

They met new characters and ate delicious Italian food in the North End, including cannolis from Mike's Pastry.

 They had a couple of drinks at the Bull and Finch and pretended everyone knew their names (daaah, da, da, da!).

 The next day, after some frantic cabbing and amusing misreading of signs and dates, they took a tour of Fenway Park.

During the tour, they found themselves in the media room...

                                  
   
... And, despite it being a very cold and blustery day, on top of the "Green Monster".

 

Even the non-baseball fan of the trio (that would be me) found the tour super fascinating and learned a lot of the rich history of Fenway Park and of Boston.

The tour, and Nikki's visit, ended with some fun cheesy photo ops, Nikki being hit on by a sweet elderly man, and a chance to try one's pitching arm.

Didn't miss his calling...

  

The end.

Acculturation

I'm going through an acculturation process. Nothing really ground-breaking or unique there, but I figured I'd put it out there, anyway. The supposed four stages of it are: the honeymoon phase (optimism and idealism abound!); the hostility phase (frustration, confusion and discontent abound); the humour phase (reflection of experiences, beginning to relax, and the ability to laugh about the situation and feelings of confusion re-emerge); the home phase (renewed feelings of optimism). I currently yo-yo between variations of stages 2 and 3. Of course, the immigration/visa/employment seeking stuff (which go hand-in-hand-in-hand for me) is the biggest contributor to the feelings of "stage 2" frustration that can wallop me on the head and put me in a sour mood (which Ted can probably attest to. Poor guy.). Probably also has to do with the whole shifting sense of identity thing. 

How I'm experiencing acculturation. Yup. Those are my true, sometimes irrational (re: stage 2), thoughts.

A bit of a digression:

The short of it is, to work here, I need a certain type of visa; not a green card or anything quite as ornerous as that, thank goodness. I even have a couple of options: 1) as a Canadian with a certain level of education in my field, I'm eligible for a TN visa; 2) as someone who entered the country affiliated with my husband who already has a visa that allows him to work (in my case, a J-2 visa), I can apply for authorization to work, go through that process and ultimately get approval (and a document that says so!) to work under the J-2. Just last week, I had my biometrics taken: I was fingerprinted and my picture was taken as part of this process for the J-2 visa. It took all of 5 minutes, but this appointment came after weeks of waiting. And at the end of that appointment, ZERO information was given to me until I turned back and asked what was next. At which point I was told to wait for something in the mail that will either be a document that says I'm fine to work (or further steps I may need to take.). My visa process is actually easy and yet there are still hoops to jump through, the paperwork to wade through and fill out, and a lack of communication -- I can't even imagine what the process must be like for people applying to immigrate or applying for asylum or any number of more difficult applications.

                         
I expected this acculturation experience somewhat and therefore we do what we can to make the ongoing transition smoother: we continue to explore the city, we have a routine going, and like a diligent person who is living in any new country or city, I try to keep up with current events (and then relay the headlines to Ted like some sort of personal news ticker). I start my mornings by watching the local and national news while having coffee...which inevitably leads to me getting all worked up over topics like the Affordable Care Act, the Tea Partiers (and finding out that Ted Cruz was born in Canada), the ongoing gun control debate...

I'm not a complete stranger to the stages of acculturation. I went through a version of this when I did my internship in Masaka Town, Uganda, complete with a meltdown that consisted of tears and feelings of anxiety about what I had gotten myself into and anxiety over seemingly simple things such as walking around town by myself during the first few weeks that I was there. This eventually mellowed into feelings of being comfortable, feeling connected to my host family, becoming more optimistic, happy, and loving what I was doing. But that process made sense. For me, Uganda really was an unknown country and Masaka Town was very different from Vancouver, BC. I guess I sometimes give myself a hard time about going through this process because despite being able to rationalize it and despite expecting it, I'm still somewhat surprised by how marked my feelings can be -- and this is due to my preconceived notions. I mean, unlike Uganda, the U.S. isn't exactly completely unknown to me - it's part of the same continent, there are some historic cultural ties due to a shared colonial history, both countries have English as their dominant language, etc., etc. The U.S., to my mind, has always been our neighbour to the south with the permeable (to Canadians) border, the accessible cross-border shopping, the hockey teams we love to hate, and the attitudes we sometimes like to mock (see previous paragraph). Obviously, there is more to this major American city and my thoughts and feelings about living here are constantly evolving.

Well, I tell myself that surprised or not, it's happening. I like to think that I've been pretty positive overall (notwithstanding the incidents where I've taken my frustrations out on Ted. Ha!). Nothing to do but hang on for the ride while drawing from my upbringing of good ol' fashioned Chinese stoicism and at the same time, taking the time to laugh at myself. Or, in my particular case (and as my sister put it), I just need to remember to:

Practically Locals!!

I can hardly believe it's been 6 weeks since we arrived in Boston, Massachusetts and 5 since moving into our first apartment in Cambridge. We're just starting to feel as if we live here now, rather than having a lovely extended vacation. It's early days yet, but we've even settled into a daily routine of sorts: Ted does his science thing on campus at M.I.T. and I do my employment-seeking, work visa sorting thing (more on that at a later date....). On the weekends, we go forth and explore different neighbourhoods around Boston and Cambridge. We even stumbled upon a Honk! festival:
















My weekdays include the employment-seeking, work visa sorting thing (again, more on that at a later date...) as well as my own exploration of our neighbourhood. This means I've made use of the post office, found my neighbourhood yarn store, a crafts store, the park, and decided on my favourite coffee shop. Nerd that I am, my happiest "local" moment was when I got my library card:

Ta-da!

Main entrance to the Public Library

An older wing of the library
-- which ironically houses the computer lab

Every now and then, we like to obnoxiously proclaim that "we're practically locals!!!". This means that in addition to having an apartment, a bank account, a credit card, real furniture, and the various insurances we need, we also have a Charlie card (transit card), a CVS card (similar to a Shoppers Drug Mart card), have found our neighbourhood diner, a few pubs/watering holes, sushi place (yes! it's true!), grocery store, wine store, pharmacy, hardware store, and waffle place -- places to which locals, not just tourists, go. Hooray! 

So, without further delay, I present you with pictorial documentation of our lives as new Cantabrigians (<-- I'm even learning new words!):

Cambridge City Hall

Cambridge Rindge and Latin School -- Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's former school

Pretty street nearby

Joan Lorentz Park

Pictures along our street