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!
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