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).

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