porter square

the neighborhood I live in is called Porter Square. It has the largest escalator/flight of stairs I've ever seen.

That's 117 steps. I've counted them. I walk them from time to time. There's an additional two sets of stairs to get from the surface to the subway--I think there's about 200 total steps.

That's probably about the most notable thing about Porter. The other squares seem to be more interesting/trendy/busy, but I'm kind of glad to be living in a fairly lackluster neighborhood. It means there aren't tourists everywhere all the time and that there's a regular grocery store within walking distance. Also, there's the occasional turkey. I spotted a turkey in the Star Market (grocery store) parking lot one afternoon, and then again several days later in a neighbor's driveway. Apparently wild turkeys make their way into Somerville every now and then. I have pictures on my phone but I can't figure out how to transfer them over to my computer at the moment.

getting places

I've been wanting to write about public transit for a while but it's something that seems mundane when I try to put any structure to it. It's like if you were to ask me about a morning run--there are so many things I find interesting about running every day but once I start to talk about them I realize that they're probably only interesting to me, and I sift out the only things I can think of that might make sense to someone else--"Oh, it was good. I had a little bit of back pain though"--instead of saying "well at first I really didn't want to be running because the wind was against me and I don't like being windburned but then I saw the person who takes the money out of the parking meters and I think the contraption they deposit the quarters into is interesting and I think that homeless guy lives on that park bench because I see him every morning and the traffic is much different at 7am then 8am and that's strange to me and I feel less guilty running through Harvard Square than walking because the homeless people don't expect me to have spare change when I'm running and the river is really pretty in the morning although I'm afraid of getting run over by bicycles so sometimes I run on the apartment side of the street which is interesting too because there are sprinklers that I can cool off in and I wonder why none of these parks have water fountains and the mile between these two bridges seems to be way longer than a mile and a bird has built her nest under the bridge...", on and on for five to seven miles of distractions I found while running.

If you stuck through those sentences I figure you might stick through a few more about other ways of getting from point A to point B.

The thing I find the most strange about living here is how close together everything is. Work, in the city of Cambridge, is about 2.5 miles away from my apartment, in the city of Somerville. Church, in Medford, is three miles away. The middle of Boston is about 4 miles away. In the South cities have gaps in between them, while here they run into each other unceremoniously.

I live near the Somerville/Cambridge city line, so I have seen at least four of these on the streets I frequent. I wonder, why not merge them all into larger cities? Is it really that different to live in Somerville than it is to live in Cambridge? (Two girls on the bus today seemed to think so, at least, as I overheard that one was sad to be moving away from Cambridge to an apartment in Davis Square, which is in Somerville, about a mile north of the Cambridge city line.)

The density of the city is also different than anything I'm used to. I feel like the entire city of Clemson, people, campus (well, minus the farmland), businesses, and all, could probably be squished together and contained in about three city blocks here. There are two grocery stores and probably about 50 restaurants and small businesses within easy walking distance from me. It's overwhelming, really.

It is amazing how long it takes to get to places that are so close together! Work, which I could run to in well under 25 minutes, takes me 30 minutes to get to every day. Getting to the USS Constitution, only 3.7 miles away (which I could probably run in 35 minutes) will take 41 minutes using public transit. Do I want to run everywhere? No. I just think it is interesting to think that I'm faster than a train at getting places sometimes.

There's just a whole different mentality you have to take with public transit, a certain amount of patience and flexibility that you have to develop. The train or bus is not always going to be on time, and there's nothing you can do about it but wait for it or catch the next one, so you never can plan on being anywhere at a precise time as you might be able to do with a car when you have control over the route you take and the speed you travel. One of my roommates got stuck in the subway tunnel for three hours. It happens sometimes. Several times the bus I've been on time and waiting for has driven straight past me, and I've had to wait for the next one. It's infuriating, but what can you do? And everything takes so much planning. Getting from A to C can be a totally different route than from B to C, even if B seems to lie directly in the middle of the two. Buses may take more direct routes but may come too early or too late, while trains will be consistent but may take longer, so you have to weigh route decisions carefully.

And it may be quicker to walk, or wait for a bus, but what if it is pouring down rain? I'm only home tonight because there was a chance of strong storms and hail that I wasn't willing to risk. I was supposed to be going to a demo night at MIT, but that requires about 15 minutes of walking outside and a 10 minute subway ride, and those 15 minutes in the wind and rain (and possibly hail!) would have been enough to leave me dripping wet by the time I got there. So, no demos for me. The weather is a constant factor in deciding how to get where, and whether getting there safe and sound is even feasible.

There's also the continual variability of the driver (friendly? cranky? overly aggressive in driving?) and the variety of the other passengers that keeps things entertaining. The homeless and/or drunk folks are often the most chatty. If there's a sporting event, the whole train or bus might be cheering together. I think that the T is interesting because it might very well be the most casually social place in the city. Despite the general reserved nature of the folks in New England (people raise their eyebrows when I say "good morning" to them on my way to work) it's not uncommon to strike up a conversation with a stranger at the bus stop or subway. This is especially interesting because so many different people ride the T--different nationalities, socioeconomic levels, and age groups. So it's probably also the most diverse place in the city.

I am so glad I didn't bring my car here because I would have been a nervous wreck trying to drive in all the traffic and general chaos of a city, but I do miss being able to go where I want when I want to and not having to take into account transit schedules, maps, and weather before I go anywhere beyond walking distance. It'll be another two and a half weeks before I am reunited with Big Red (my car) but I am certainly looking forward to it!

memorable

Well, I'm certainly glad I decided early on to not try to do a blog post a day because if I did I would feel like a miserable failure by now. There have been a lot of things happening that I think are interesting, but in the past month or so when I get a spare minute it's been spent doing something else--catching up on sleep, calling my family on the phone, cleaning my ever-unruly room (I am typically a neat housekeeper but there's only so much you can do without enough organizational space for things!), or other mundane housekeeping kind of things. It's amazing how much time the necessities plus a full time job can actually take--from 7am to 7pm I'm pretty much booked, getting ready, commuting, going to work, and making and cleaning up from dinner.

At any rate, there are things that I do want to record about this summer, so here goes.

Last year, when my family went to Kiawah Island for the week (we typically go every year), one day we decided that we were going to ride the Thriller boat. None of us were quite sure how good it would be but Dad was really excited so we started driving into town for it.

On the way from Kiawah to Charleston, it started pouring down rain--not just a summer shower, but cold, hard rain, and wind. The boat ride was rain or shine, though, and the tickets were already paid for and nonrefundable, so we proceeded on to the parking lot. We were all in kind of a poor mood; things that day weren't turning out as planned overall. Once we parked, all of us continued to take refuge in the car, except my middle sister, Victoria. She told us that the trip would at least be memorable, and proceeded to dance in the rain in the parking lot. (This is the way Victoria consistently lives. She has had the most difficult struggle in school of anyone I know, yet she never loses hope and has continued to live with generosity, compassion, hope, and joy.)

The boat ride turned out to be great fun, despite being slapped in the face by the rain and the waves. However, one of the priceless snapshots in my mind, is looking back at my youngest sister, Briana, who we affectionately nickname Squidward for her occasional indifferent-to-negative outlook on life (although she has so many excellent qualities, which I will later write about!). When I looked back at her, she had the perfect Squidward expression on her face and was evidently not enjoying herself at all. I believe that we captured that moment on film and often laugh about it as a family.

Things this summer have definitely not gone as I planned them in most every aspect of life. There have been a lot of days of pouring rain (both literally and figuratively!) that have made it more difficult than it had to be. Some days I know I've been a Squidward and have been turned skeptical and calloused by the circumstances, but in the past few weeks I've been thinking more and more about Victoria dancing in the rain in the parking lot, making it memorable. If it can't be good, it might as well be memorable, so that is what I will aim for.  I want to have enough courage, hope, and sense to step back from the immediate circumstance and see how I can at least make this a good story in the end, becoming a strong character, growing richly, choosing the path of adventure and not wavering when it comes to the things I know are most important.

Thanks, Victoria, for your example. I admire you so much more than you can imagine!

favorite routines in Boston

Obviously, the day-by-day approach is not working out for me. Honestly I think it's mostly because when I sit down to write about what happened on any given day I realize that the only interesting things that happened are probably only interesting to me and not a wider audience, and are therefore not worth writing about, really. So I'm going to take a different approach and just write about loosely categorized things that I think might moderately interesting to people who care about me.

I am the type of person who likes structure and routine. To me, there's something comforting about knowing what to expect each day and being able to separate things out into little sections of time for various tasks. So here are the routines I've fell into since I've moved to Boston.

I have a skylight directly above my bed, and I've always been one to rise with the sunlight, so for my first two weeks here I woke up at promptly 5:06AM each morning, struggled to get back to sleep for a long time, and then finally got out of bed at 6 or so. That got old real quick, so last Monday I walked over to the Family Dollar, bought a roll of aluminum foil, and taped sheets of it over my windowshade. I've been sleeping until 7 or so since then, and taking some awesome naps in the middle of the day as well.

I get up and eat breakfast (breakfast of choice lately has been bagels, although I bought some frosted mini wheats this week that I'm pretty excited about), put in my contacts, and brush my teeth. I put on gym clothes and pack work clothes in a bag. Then I pack lunch. I bring my lunch every day because it's a whole lot cheaper than going out anywhere. CRA caters in lunch for meetings a lot, so usually once a week or more I get a break.

When it's nice out, I walk to the bus stop at a local park, walking through residential areas and passing by a community garden, an elementary school, and a really neat park composed of all this netting where kids can go climbing up and down it. When it's not nice out, I have to make one of the scariest street crossings ever and get to the subway station, which then takes me to another subway station where I catch the bus to work.

I work out first thing in the morning, usually only for a half-hour or so because I wasted too much time laying around in bed in the morning, haha. The gym at work has a few treadmills and an elliptical. When the weather is nice sometimes I run around Fresh Pond, which is very pretty and has nice, paved, shaded trails and some water fountains along the way.

After showering and getting dressed, I usually get to work around 9, and then I work until 5:30.

Every day we meet up in the kitchen for lunch. My lunch always looks much tastier than whatever everyone else buys at the grocery store :) Usually after lunch I make a cup of coffee using the Flavia machine. I have figured out the technique for the perfect cup of coffee: cover the bottom of the cup in a thin layer of sugar, pour in two half and half cups, then brew a cup of French Roast over top of it. Mmm. So far I only like the French and Espresso roasts...all the other blends I've tried have been too weak.

After work there really is no routine. Some days I go straight home and make dinner. On nice days I tend to go walking and wander around my neighborhood finding out what's nearby. The evenings and weekends are the times I tend to get most homesick because there's little structure to them. In the evenings I'm kind of afraid to go wandering out alone and I haven't made good enough friends to go hang out with them. On the weekends it's just hard to find enough things to fill up the time. But, I've got a couple little weekly traditions I look forward to.

My favorite thing to do on the weekends is go to the Haymarket. People buy up the produce that the groceries store don't buy and then sell it for really cheap on Friday and Saturday. Here is what I got this week:

That is: a pound of snow peas, the biggest yellow pepper you've ever seen, a bag of spinach, a box of blackberries, a bunch of asparagus, about 3 lbs of green beans, a little over a pound of grapes, and a pound of some interesting fruit (front middle of the table) that I wish I could remember the name of. I paid a total of $9 for all that. Last week I think I got a pound of green beans, seven oranges, ten apricots, three bell peppers, and two pounds of grapes for $8. At those rates I think I'm eating cheaper here than I typically do at Clemson!

The Haymarket area also has a shop that sells Arabic food, and sells goat meat. I want to visit there someday soon because I bet I could find some really interesting things there. Maybe I'll venture there next weekend.

My other weekly routine that I look forward to is swing dancing on Wednesday nights. MIT puts on a free lesson and dance every week. I've been two weeks so far and have had a great time both nights! The crowd is friendly, and the gender ratio is about even so I rarely have to sit out a dance...unless they're dancing something I don't know. There's a lot of "blues" dancing at this dance, and most people are Lindy Hoppers, which I can kind of adapt to, but not very well! Everyone's been really nice, though, and  some people have even been patient enough to teach me a few things.  The first time I went swing dancing I ended up meeting a guy who had lived in Clemson for several years! What a small world! We danced together and reminisced about Super Taco for a long time.

I'm trying to find other ways to fill my time. I read Icy Sparks last week to take up a couple evenings, which I would recommend as a decent read. I'm trying to decide how to get involved in a church group, although honestly I'm having a hard time getting into the work routine and it's near impossible for me to get anywhere by 6 or 7 at night when I've worked until 5:30 and have to figure out dinner and public transit. We'll see if I can work it in sometime this week.

Next post: writing about some fun things I've done in the city so far!

boston day three: first day at work

My first day at work went well! Here are some things that are particularly nice about working at CRA:

- this is the first workplace I've ever had that is consistently a comfortable temperature!
- they have a free Flavia machine (makes any kind of coffee/tea/frothy drink you'd like)
- there's a kitchen with hot water for dishwashing
- there are free snacks! poptarts, snickers, granola bars, chips, etc. (I think they're trying to fatten me up)
- they have every kind of office supply you could ever want
- there's a free gym for employees downstairs in the building
- everyone's nice so far

I did orientation in the morning and then met with Peter, one of my coworkers who is the PI of our project. We went out to lunch at Summer Shack, which was delicious. After that we talked a bit about our project and then he sent me to go figure out the math for the physics-based modeling of tissue that we want to do. I spent about four hours in the afternoon trying to get through the math. Unfortunately it is far beyond my expertise, so I spent a lot of time looking up terms and trying to figure out what the equations mean.

I don't remember what I did that evening. Probably mostly went to sleep. There is a skylight directly over my bed and it gets light at 5AM so I wake up with the sun in the mornings, making early bedtimes necessary!

favorite moment: the flounder I had at lunch was one of the tastiest things I've ever had. The plate was first covered in creamed peas, and then a mound of mashed parsnips. on top of that was a broiled fillet of flounder with duxelle on top. awesome.

least favorite moment: probably being overwhelmed by the math

boston day two: fire and water

Memorial Day had the potential to be a really terrible day. I was disoriented and knew barely anyone. My roommates weren't in so the apartment was empty. However, thanks to good friends, it ended up being awesome.

In the morning, I met a roommate's boyfriend to get into my apartment. My room is on the third floor of a house that's split into two apartments (we have the top two floors). There are these really narrow, twisted staircases that are easy to trip over going up and down the stairs. My room is kind of bare but I have everything I need!

After unpacking I ventured out on the bus route to Target to buy some things I needed. I was proud of myself for not getting lost.

Alex and Emily invited me over for an afternoon cookout, where I met several of my coworkers: Brad, Joseph, and James. James is on the same project as I am. Joseph is his brother, and is an intern as well. Both of them are from Easley so they're practically next door neighbors to me! Bethany invited me over for an evening cookout, where I met several of her labmates and housemates, who were all very nice. Most of them are studying in the medical field but I did talk to one guy who had interest in medical applications in virtual reality, so that was neat.

I met some of my roommates when I got in that night, but pretty much went straight to bed so I could be ready for my first day at work. I was delighted to find out that we had central air conditioning (a luxury around here) considering it was in the high 80s and my bedroom is on the 3rd floor!

Favorite moment(s) of the day: fire and water. At Alex's cookout, he was grilling on a tabletop grill set up on a table on the lawn when the automated sprinklers turned on! Friends helped him move the grill and table out of the stream of water. At Bethany's cookout, the chicken breasts had skin on them so the grease drippings caught on fire, leading to massive flames and charred chicken being scooped off the grill with a shovel!

Least favorite moment of the day: being nervous before meeting my coworkers at Alex's cookout. It all turned out okay though!

boston day one: (thankfully temporary) homelessness

So I had wanted to do a picture a day or something for every day of my stay in the Boston area this summer, but mostly I've been too busy actually doing things to sit down and write about them. I'm going to attempt to catch up and then start writing a bit about each day. Knowing me, this will probably last about two weeks and then I'll give up. Oh well. I'll give it a shot anyhow.

It was weird waking up on Sunday morning and not going to church. Patrick and I had stayed up super late watching this movie, The Illusionist, not to be confused with The Illusionist, which is what we thought we were getting from the redbox, and would have probably been a much cheerier movie. Anyhow. I spent the morning packing. We all had spaghetti for lunch and then I left for my flight. I was nervous and crying.

Patrick helped me get my luggage in the airport. My bag was overweight. Turns out that's an additional $95--a total of $120 for the one bag to be checked! I only paid $180 for the entire trip! We shuffled between the two bags to make them both in the acceptable weight range and in a moment of panic checked the second, carry on sized bag as well, costing a total of $60. Still, half the price I would have paid for the one bag. Strange pricing.

Anyhow, we said our teary goodbyes and I went through security. My flight got delayed by about an hour. On the plane a kid behind me kicked my seat and loudly smacked his gum the entire time. Instead of doing anything useful, I sipped ginger ale and played Angry Birds.

Now, on Saturday, I got an e-mail from my subletee (is that a real word?) copied to a couple of my roommates asking them to put the key outside the apartment for me on Monday. Trouble is, I was arriving Sunday. I e-mailed the whole group asking them to please have it ready on Sunday, but there was no reply on Saturday. There was still no reply when I landed in the Boston airport.

I called my subletee and she said she'd text me the number of another roommate, but it turns out she didn't have that roommate's number. I decided to stay with Bethany (my college roommate from Winthrop) for the night--she had met me at the airport to help me with my bags and we just decided that will be easier. Several hours later, no phone call and no key still, and I am panicking. Finally, after much searching and worrying, I got in touch with one of my roommates, and her boyfriend was in town and had a key so I made arrangements to meet him Monday morning.

Other than that chaos, it was quite a pleasant evening. Bethany's house is nice. We ate frozen pizza and sorbet outside. It was almost like old times in college.

Favorite moment of the day: eating lemon sorbet outside
Least favorite moment of the day: saying goodbye to my family

oven sopapilla

Have you ever had a sopapilla at a Mexican restaurant? They're little fried tortilla-like triangles of goodness, usually served with ice cream, honey, and chocolate syrup. Yeah, probably not authentic, but still delicious. I figured out how to make them without the deep frying but equally delicious. I looked online thinking, surely someone has done this before, but it appears not.

I think that oven sopapillas are probably the best contribution to society I will ever make in my life. I am eating one right now. Maybe its deliciousness is overblown in my head because it's the last week of classes and this is good comfort food.

you will need:
a flour tortilla (I use whole wheat)
sugar
cinnamon
butter

I highly recommend honey as well. If you want, you can do whipped cream, ice cream, and/or chocolate syrup. I'm not giving strict measurements because it's really up to you. You can decide how healthy/unhealthy you want to make this dish.

Melt some butter in a cup (I use about a teaspoon). Use a brush to brush it on both sides of your tortilla. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on both sides of the tortilla and rub until it's kind of coated (I probably use about a tablespoon sugar and a teaspoon cinnamon). Put on a pan. Place under broiler until the tortilla starts looking bubbly. Flip and let cook until edges are crunchy. Drizzle with your choice of toppings.

Depending on how you make it, it's not bad for you. I estimate that my sopapilla was about 230 calories. Not bad for a dessert. And I fit in whole grains, and honey and cinnamon are good for you too.

Enjoy.

The past couple years I have not given up anything for Lent. I have a complicated relationship with food in general and giving up any form of junk food leads to me to think more about being skinnier than pursuing Christ, and not eating any type of normal food hampers my athletic training. There's no habits I have that are particularly troublesome or that take away time from spending with God, it's just a lack of discipline in general that gets in the way. Still, I think about it every year.

This morning I was sitting in statistics class with Toni. I had overslept and was still tired and was holding a cup of coffee when I realized that the coffee was something that I depended on instead of Christ. I am not coffee obsessed or caffeine addicted but when I am tired, I think, "A cup of coffee will fix this." And I look forward to my coffee every day. I think about what kind I will brew and when I will drink it. I enjoy how it tastes and smells and its warmth. I am a grad student. This is my fuel.

I think more about coffee during my work day than I do Christ.

How tragic.

And that is why I will not be drinking it during Lent this year. I cannot tell you how much I do not want to give it up. I really want my cup of coffee tomorrow afternoon. If I would have realized that this is what I was going to do, I would have been drinking three cups of coffee a day for the past week, but it just occurred to me this morning. If it were not near midnight I would brew a cup of coffee now and drink it. I will miss it. (Disclaimer: when I go home for spring break, it is tradition for Dad, Victoria, and me to enjoy coffee together, and I will do that because that is not as much of a dependency thing as a family tradition.)

Every time I think about coffee, the most trivial of things, during this Lenten season I will seek to set my mind on Christ, the most significant of things, in my moments of boredom, tiredness, and weakness. May he be honored and adored by this small sacrifice, and may I find joy, satisfaction, and focus as I turn towards him to meet all of my needs.