like books i stole from the library...

this is long overdue. I must admit, endeavoring to begin a blog the moment I arrived in a new city awaiting my appraisal and judgment was a bit overzealous of me. The past month has brought its fair share of joy and sadness, but I'm starting to feel more hopeful about my life here. To recap, here are a few highlights and lowlights from the past month:

Highlights

1. Successfully breaking into my home just in time to save a delicious loaf of banana bread from being ruined. I cracked my room-mate's window and climbed through, that's right, I'm MacGyver.
2. The abundance of love that has been sent my way in the form of packages, postcards, thoughtful notes, goodies and CD mixes to make me feel like the west coast is not so far.
3. Not-so-surprise visit from my momma for her birthday. Uncannily lovely weather while she was here.
   
4. My mom relating everything that happened the weekend she was here to her birthday, as in "Look, fireworks...for MY birthday," or "A parade...for MY birthday. Boston, you've really outdone yourself." (Mind you, she was here the weekend of Columbus Day and this is one patriotic city, being involved in the American Revolution and all. Any chance Boston has to celebrate, they do.)
5. Eating cannoli at Mike's Pastry.
6. Sort-of snow. It didn't stick.
7. Finding out I can have my groceries delivered when it's snowy and cold outside...or even when it isn't.
   

Lowlights

1. Enduring 3 midterms in one week.
2. Getting sick in the middle of midterms in one week.
   
3. Being sad and missing California.
   
4. Holding a "you're an alcoholic" semi-intervention with a room-mate.
5. My iPhone falling into the toilet. (post-bummer high: getting a new phone)

Truly, the past few weeks have been difficult. Perhaps the subconscious reason behind my refrain from writing was the fear of composing the seriously unattractive emotional outpouring common to so many blogs. Here is something I wrote on the T while thinking about what to write in my next entry...

Here I am, transplanted from the sunrays of my beloved west coasts, with its tall redwoods, glorious sunsets, and beaches more akin to those I've strolled along in Hawaii. I'm attempting to figure a life at both ends of the continental Us. And as Ben Gibbard's soft refrain slumbers in my ear, I think I agree. I need you so much closer. Whether that "you" is the eternal You whom I praise and seek to give all of my mind, heart and soul, or the many yous who sit on my fair western coast, or the new yous I've met in Boston who, though mere miles way, seem otherworldly because of the stifling clutter of the city. So, I try to forge my bi-coastal life and attempt to fall just as much in love with the east as I am with the west.

I remember feeling sad, alone and unsure if I could ever love this city. But all of my writing from the past weeks is infused with hope, granted by God alone no doubt. And this hope finds its feet in simple actions of my days. Already, my life is ordinary here, but it has bits of the special, the extraordinary that give me joy. I so enjoy riding the subway through underground tunnels and surfacing in what seems to be a new world, although it is just an extension of the one I left before going subterranean. I love that I am reading Jane Austen's Persuasion while doing so. And while the sunset is not quite that of California, it is beautiful. Today, the sky was mostly filled with dark solid clouds, but where the sun punched through, a small clearing, the sky appeared as if the cotton fluff that fills pillows had spilled out over it, painted in the most brilliant hues of orange and coral. And I thought it wonderful, and it spoke of hope, the little remnant that is all I need to get through.