No home owners here (insert happy song)

Our house sold today. We've been waiting for this for the past 2 years and it's slowly sinking in that the wait is over. I think it might be a sad day if we didn't have something exciting waiting for us. Actually there is a bit of a quiet realization that something good has just officially ended.

It tempers the excitement a little, just enough to be thankful for what was given to us.

I'll miss the sunsets.

The ocean in the backyard and all around.

There won't be any of this where we're going but there will be other things to appreciate. The last few weeks have been really eventful when it comes to formulating plans for our near future. We've been offered a position as caretakers of a property right next to the Monastery. It's a beautiful hollow ("holler" if you're from around there) surrounded by big hills and mountains. Our job will be to mow the lawn and keep the driveway cleared of fallen trees and to be present so others don't feel they can come destroy the houses on the property as the owners live in a different country and will only be around a couple of times a year. It couldn't be more perfect for us. It'll give us time to settle ourselves in the area without making a huge investment too quickly. It'll only take us 3 minutes to get from the house to the Monastery which was one of the things we really wanted. I've also been offered a soapmaking position at the Monastery. I'm really excited about this too.

Apart from all this future-planning business we've been keeping quiet. Matthew has really been enjoying work since the beginning of his second term. The place is still crazy and I would still advise everyone to stay clear of that hospital but he's adjusted to its ways and its patients. He feels he understands their situations better and it makes him appreciate them a lot more. His schedule has been easier on him too with more time off in a row. I've been reading and knitting and baking. All in all we're very pleased at our stay here. It's been good for us. We still haven't seen all that much of the city when it comes to museums or tourist traps but we're fine with that. I think this has been a time of preparation for what's coming .

Yarn Bliss...

Yesterday was a beautiful day and I decided I would spend part of it discovering a beautiful yarn shop. It turned out the shop wasn't as ascetically pleasing as others I have seen but the yarn selection more than made up for the lack of aesthetics. The yarn shop in question is School Products. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves (the pictures aren't that great but look at the stuff on the walls and on the tables!!!!)





I spent an hour looking, touching and imagining what it could all become. They have a lot of Karabella yarns (That's mostly what's on the walls) but then there's weird blends of fibers like cotton/cashmere and other cotton blends I had never seen. They had lots of exotic fibres like yak and camel yarns. They also had some Koigu and other well know yarns but the thing I liked the most was their cones of yarn. You get lots of yarn at a really good price. I could have bought so much stuff but what would be the point of going back if I had taken everything I wanted all at once? And I have to go back. Here's what did come home with me.


Both are 100% merino wool. There is enough grey tweed for 2 sweaters and maybe a few little items, and the light yellow/green yarn is for a secret project. I'll have plenty of that left for different items as well.

Ingrid start saving up yarn money!

Lights, Sights and the Green Lady...

So a few weeks back we were visited by Forrest and Patsy. It was a good time for all of us to get more familiar with the city as we had ambitious plans. The first night was spent discovering Times Square. It was wild.


I'd like to know what the energy consumption is for that area alone!


The next day we decided to go visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We bought our tickets thinking we would hop on the ferry right away. What a surprise when we realized that we couldn't see the end of the waiting line! We seriously thought of returning our tickets and getting our money back but then we decided to wait a while and see how fast/slow the line would go down. It turned out we only had to wait 45 minutes to get on the ferry, I hear some of you saying "only 45 minutes!?" Seriously this was the longest waiting line I have ever seen and when we took bets as to how long we thought we would wait one of us said 3 hours, so 45 minutes was a breeze. The ferry ride reminded me of the Princess of Acadia, the ferry connecting Digby NS to Saint John NB. It was cold, windy and smelled of the ocean - nice. It only took 10 minutes to get to Liberty Island. As we approached we could see the Statue getting bigger and bigger. It was somewhat impressive but I was more charmed by the ride on the water than anything else.


Because we hadn't reserved tickets in advance, we weren't allowed to go to the top of the Statue but that was fine. We walked around the island and got to see the Lady from all angles.


It was interesting to learn that the outer shell of the statue is only the thickness of two pennies! I thought it would be much thicker. The interior is a large spiral that solidifies and supports the shell. Ever wondered what the back end of the Lady looks like?



After the walk we made out way back to the waiting line. We only waited 25 mins that time. The ferry took us to Ellis Island.




The Island served as a federal immigration center between 1892 and 1954. Over 12 million immigrants passed through the island between those years! At the peak of the immigration years, 5,000 to 10,000 people would pass through everyday! Eighty percent of them passed through in a few hours but some remained because of poor health or other issues. Only 2 percent were sent back. They say that about 40 percent of US citizens have an ancestor that entered through Ellis Island. Now the island is a museum. We got to watch a film that was very moving. It was the story of the immigrants that came, told by the said immigrants. They spoke of the hardships endured to get the money for the crossing, the inhuman conditions on the vessels, the fears, the hopes, the loneliness... It's an incredible story.


After reaching the mainland we decided to find some food. We walked with no clear direction or idea of where we were until we came to this -


Ground Zero. We were approched by a yound man who told us about the plans for the new Trade Center. There will be five towers. One of them being built already. You can barely see it in the picture - it looks almost invisible in that light, with the clouds reflecting on it. We found refreashments and continued our walk. We turned a corner and saw this


The Stock Market building. If you ever have any doubts as to which country you are visiting you can always go to Wall street! At that point we were ready to crash so we made our way home. It was a good time. To end are a few more pictures of our day.

This one is made up of three pictures taken and patched together by Matthew. It's the view we had from the ferry. The next one shouldn't need any explanations.

Big news

For those of you who haven't heard yet...

Sold!

At least that's what the sign says. We still have to wait until the closing date (July 23rd) to have the money at which point it will be a done deal. I didn't have any strong feelings until I went to the website to see if it did indeed say "sold" and then I saw the pictures of our house and the emotions rose up. So many good memories with so many of you. It feels great to start something new but it comes at a price.

Matthew's Lot in Brooklyn

This is where Matthew works (thanks for the photo Wiki!). His contract began on Feb 9th. The beginnings were downright scary. He presented himself on Feb 9th for what he had been told would be a 15 mins meeting with his supervisor. It turned out we spent the whole day there. Not only was he to meet the supervisor but he was to fill tons of paperwork and redo everything his recruiting agency had required of him which included a physical, a drug screening test and an exam which took about 2 hours! It sounds pretty easy but when you're misdirected each step of the way... (those who live in Greece will certainly understand this way of doing things :) - we were actually told by a friend that New York is very similar to Greece when in comes to paperwork and organization!)

The first official day of his training the teacher said in all seriousness "you HAVE to come to work ON TIME", "you CAN'T take longer breaks than allowed", "you CAN'T talk on your cell phone in front of your client," and "you CAN'T bring your kids to work." The last rule was repeated 3 times during the meeting! That's when we realized that something was very odd and that not all travel nurses are exemplary workers!

This amongst other things, like being told by a nurse who had worked there in the past, that Woodhull was a great place to loose your nursing license, made us a bit nervous! The first few weeks were an adjustment to say the least. Matthew is doing a completely different kind of nursing than what he's used to. The medical tools are different and much less advanced than what he's worked with in the past, most of the patients live in poverty and suffer from various addictions (lots of heroin, cocaine, alcohol) and many also suffer from mental disabilities, and the 'system' doesn't run very efficiently. Still Matthew works well in chaos and now that he's found his bearings, he actually enjoys it quite much. He's liking the cultural diversity as well which was somewhat non-existent in Yarmouth. He is known as "the white boy" at work and he responds to it.

While we're on the topic, we were told a few days ago that his contract was extended which means we'll be here for a while longer! That's what he hoped for, it's much easier for us to stay in one place than to move and go through all the setting up details again. Yay! This will keep us here until sometime in September.

A Paschal Salutation

Christ is Risen!

West Virginia Mama

I just got back from West Virginia. The trip was a last minute decision but it was a good one. I got to spend a lot of time with friends and to visit the Hermitage of the Holy Cross for a second time.

As we haven't had a chance to explain in detail what our ultimate plans are I'll give y'all an idea of what's been on our minds for a while. This past September, Matthew and I visited the Hermitage as well as a church located in close vicinity to the Monastery. We were told about the two by many people and were looking for a place to settle and this seemed like a possibility so we packed our car and drove the 27 hours it took to get there! We were looking for a place where we could attend more services and give the Church more of a central place in our lives. We weren't disappointed. The monks are welcoming and loving, and the services are incredibly beautiful, prayerful and peaceful. Our experience at the parish church was of a similar nature and so we decided that this was where we wanted to live. Since our house is still for sale we decided to do travel nursing while we wait for the house to be sold. This is how we ended up in Brooklyn.

Back to my trip to WV. Getting there took a bit of patience. The driver of the first bus was apparently new. We didn't realize this, though the screaming we heard from the back of the bus while he was backing up seemed to indicate that he almost hit something/someone and therefore hadn't mastered all the skills necessary for the job. I quickly forgot the incident until an hour later when he stopped the bus, turned toward us and asked us if we knew where the bus station was. We all looked puzzled not really understanding what he meant until he told us he was lost. He called the office but that didn't seem to help. Someone finally figured out where we needed to turn and we got there fairly quickly. I chose to forget that incident as well until later when we realized we were going in circles. It turns out he didn't know how to get to the second station either. People started to get annoyed. He stopped someone on the street and got some directions. He got us there and apologized saying he wasn't given good directions. I decided to forgive him that one too, we all have bad days. Most of the other passengers didn't forgive and became extremely irritated when we realized that he couldn't get us to the third station either. At this point some used more colorful language and got a little louder. We made it to that one too but that meant we were going to be really late and might miss our connections. Thankfully they held the buses for us and we were able to continue the journey with another more seasoned driver. I had to make three connections and spend the hours between 11:30pm and 2:45am in Columbus, Ohio where the lights were way too bright for tired eyes and where we got to listen to a sport news broadcast which repeated itself every hour. It was painful, almost too ridiculous to be true. I finally got on the last bus and got to Huntington at 6:00am after 17 hours of traveling. The moral of the story is that Greyhound buses will get you to your destination but it might not be the most pleasant way to get there.

The week was spent with friends and we got to attend loads of Services, some very special ones too, like the Canon of Saint Andrew of Crete, the Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos, a Pre-Sanctified Liturgy, the Sunday of Saint Mary of Egypt and the vigil and Vesperal Liturgy of the Feast of Annunciation as well as a tonsure of a monk to the small Schema (stavrophore). The week was jammed pack with spiritual pearls in the forms of services, conversations, gifts. The nature there is infused with prayer and you can feel it. It was an altogether different experience than busy, loud and paved Brooklyn! The only thing missing was Matthew who stayed behind because of his work schedule.

Having spent a wonderful week I decided that I probably should come home. I must admit the thought of staying there crossed my mind more than once but it isn't the time yet. Maybe soon... The trip back wasn't quite as painful but still couldn't be described as pleasant. The important thing is I made it back in one piece.

Here are a few pictures of the trip.


These are some of the buildings. The red building contains a gift shop which sells things that the monks make to support the monastery. There are soaps (bars and liquid, some made using goat milk from their own goats) lotions, lip balms, honey, incense, a DVD produced by the monks on monasticism, books, candles, specialty pastries, CDs... I spent a bit of money in there.

This other building contains the shipping office as well as the incense making workshop and rooms for monks and visitors.

This is the newest building which is not completely finished yet. It is for Bishop George of Mayfield who now resides at the Monastery. This house will also be used for visitors.


This house is attached to another bigger building comprising offices and a library. (This picture was taken by one of the monks.)

These are the new baby goats! They're so cute! Too bad they'll grow up to be pretty ugly and dumb.

This is Myrtle. She is a new addition this year and will provide the Monastery with milk. They use the goat milk for drinking, making cheese and making soap but they wanted to have a different type of milk as well to make different cheeses. Myrtle and I became friends really quickly (I did bribe her with a dog treat!)

This is a closer shot. She was quite fond of the camera.

This is a sign taped to the Greyhound station in Huntington. I couldn't resist taking a picture.
Some things are just plain silly. I thought of asking the clerk what would happen if someone was to actually walk into the station with a hood and sunglasses, but I refrained.

Another Episode of "Our Life in Brooklyn"

Life has been good lately though we're all succumbing to the season's cold. Matthew is over his, I'm starting mine and the others are at different stages of the "runny nose" infection. We all seem to get along well even when we're sick so that's good. I just realized that we've been in NY for over a month already! We arrived on Sunday February the 8th. Crazy. Here's a few things that have kept us busy.

On Saturday Fr. Andrew asked me if I would walk. I was sure what he meant (some things get lost in translations) but I agreed I could walk thinking maybe he needed me to go pick something up for him. It turned out he wanted to take the girls and I to Jamaica Bay preservation which is, according to the Brooklyn Bird Club, "one of the most important urban wildlife refuges in the United States. Encompassing 9,155 acres, it is comprised of diverse habitats, including salt marsh, upland field and woods, several fresh and brackish water ponds and an open expanse of bay and islands- all located within the limits of New York City. The Wildlife refuge is nationally and internationally renowned as a prime birding spot where thousands of water, land and shorebirds stop during migration. More than 325 species have been recorded here during the last 25 years. "

It was great! We got to see lots of these -

I could have sworn we were in Nova Scotia, until I would spot city buildings across the water.



Unfortunately we were on a time limit, I could have spent a full day there walking the trails and listening to the birds. There were creatures I had never seen before like the Horseshoe Crab. One of the girls told me it was a crab and I replied "no, that's just a car part that washed up", I have to admit I was quite far from it and the shell was in two pieces :)

There is even a trail that leads to this type of creatures -

But we didn't have time to follow it so I took a picture of a replica especially for my friend Sherrie who loves turtles. When I go back I'll try to spot real ones!

In other news Matthew and I have kept up our scavenging habit since we moved. A couple of weeks ago he surprised me with a nice wicker side table that he found on the side of the road (it sounds so much better than saying "in the garbage") and this is our newest find before cleaning it up (it was covered in plaster)



and after.

I would not advise anyone to put a plyboard/metal shelf unit in a shower to wash but this one needed it and we knew in advance that it was chosen solely for pratical reasons. It actually survived the soaking quite well and sits happily in a once-bare corner of the room. That's where my knitting stuff will be.

Talking about knitting I finaly broke down and went to see the local yarn store today. If your favorite yarn is Patons or Lion Brand you would totally love this place. The walls were covered with all the variations of. As for other more "exotic" yarns (which is what I was really hoping to see) there was some mohair on the back wall but you couldn't really see it. Two things should have warned me that this was going to be a bit disapointing 1) the smell of weed as I walk in (???) 2) the fact that the two staff people were men. Now if one of them had been Jared I would have entered the shop with full confidence but he wasn't one of them... They did prove to be very welcoming however, and they sell bamboo needles, but it was a bit disapointing. I did buy a skein of black Classic Wool by Patons to make Matthew his favorite hat as he lost his on one of the subway rides. I just felt so bad they didn't have any better stuff that I wanted to buy something (ridiculous, I know). It's 100% wool and it's processed in Canada, and it has cute sheep on the label.

I'd be really disapointed if that's all there was but there are so many yarn shops in the city that I know I'll find what I'm looking for!

Oh yah, we tried to move the car today and it won't start. Thankfully we can leave it where it is until next Tuesday (that's when they do street cleanup which equals prime ticket time) so we can try to figure something out before then.

Gifts from Alabama

So we're starting to adapt to our new life. Matthew has finished his orientation and begun his
"real" work, I'll write more on that later. I'm still learning to live as the "Midwooders" do it. Everyday chores take more planning and more time. Doing the laundry involves getting out and scheduling time for it. No more tossing the laundry in and getting 20 more things done at the same time. At this point multitasking is kept to either reading while the clothes are being washed or staring at the wall, I prefer the former though I must admit sucumbing to the latter every so often.

I also learned that if someone sends me a package without putting down the apartment number the said package will promptly be returned to the sender. This is what happened to the package Forrest and Patsy sent me for my birthday. I forgot to give them the precious information! No matter, it arrived this morning and I was just as excited to open it as I would have been the day of. I wasn't disappointed!!!



This is the "Yarmouth lighthouse Rough Seas", painted by Forrest himself (Matthew's dad). It's nice to see something familiar such as the lighthouse. I love it and I'm so happy to have some art to hang in our new lodging. We left with the bare minimum and that didn't include much art. Forrest has many beautiful pictures of a theme I really enjoy you can view more of his work here.

I also got some wearable art!

This is such a joyous thing! It's "Springy" and bright and happy. I've been wearing my shawls a lot lately so this new addition is most welcomed! And then to top it all off, they sent me a box of the most "caramelish" tasty looking chocolates! Yum! Thank you sooo much to both of you!

Beware #2

Yesterday turned out to be a very expensive day. Having returned from my walk I received a call from Matthew. He told me our car had been towed (a sign that reads "No Standing at Anytime" really means "No Parking at Anytime") and gave me the number to find out exactly where the car was sitting. I called the number and after pressing way too many buttons I got to talk to someone who told me I had to call this other number. This second number led me to someone who didn't know what Canada or Nova Scotia was (we had to provide the place the car had been registered) and who had a hard time understanding that my car was an Oldsmobile not a Lumina and that it was green not blue, and "no there was no chance someone would have even considered it to be blue..." She finally gave me another number to call. The third number led me to someone who wasn't familiar with NS but was able to figure out which car was mine and was kind enough to explain to me where their tow pound was and what we would need to do to get it back which included paying the towing -$185.00.

Matthew came back from work and told me he had gotten a ticket that morning because he was parked too close to a fire hydrant, that one was $150.00. We hopped on the subway to go get our car. The subway didn't go as far as we needed to go so we had some walking to do. We knew that, but we didn't know just how far we'd have to walk. After a while we saw a NYPD tow truck (they're the ones who towed us) and stopped to ask him where the pound was. He looked at us and said "are you walking?? (I could have been really snarky but the guy was nice and had a good sense of humour) he gave us the directions and we continued our journey. It took us an hour's walk to get there. Once we entered the office we found out we'd have to wait for another long while as many people had tempted fate that day. It took us two hours of waiting to finally get the wonderful green slip that allowed us to take our car back. When Matthew got to the window there was another ticket, that one was for the parking violation which the towing fee did not include- $115.00. That's when I understood why the young lady next to us had decided to donate her car to a charity instead of redeeming it.

After all this grueling affair we were just so excited to get home, but that's not how it was meant to end. Matthew got in the car (I had to wait outside of the parking lot because of regulations) and... the car wouldn't start! I couldn't believe it. After all this effort at trying to get it out of jail the thing decides it likes it there and wants to stay. We had to wait for someone to come and boost us but that wasn't working. Matthew kept trying and at 9:59pm the guy said "I'm off at 10:00", Matthew asked to try one more time. He tried and the car STARTED! A miracle at the end of the day! We drove off, VERY thankful to have a car back and to have prayers answered.

In our attempt to get home Matthew drove the wrong way onto a one way street (I can vouch for him that there were no signs showing it to be a one way), a cop saw us and stopped us. At this point we just laughed. How ridiculous could this get? The cop was very understanding and only gave us a warning. Matthew said that he'd probably seen how much money we had given NY today! We made it home without any further obstacle.

Beware

On my extremely long walk (I got lost twice, once because of bad indications) I decided to try to find a new skirt. The first store tried to sell me one for $135.00! I mean if there was anything to it, but it was just flimsy black fabric that "people raved about" (she said three times), no thanks. The second shop was much more decent with nice stuff for regular prices (which seemed like steals compared to the $135.00 item). All went well until I was sent to the dressing room to try them on.

I walked into this "largish" room but there was already a lady trying on stuff with another women telling her it didn't fit right. I looked around confused and managed to ask if this is where I was to try my clothes. My vendor smiled and said "yes", to which I muttered something like "we're not used to this back home..." while another lady came in to try some stuff. My helper didn't take pity on me and replied "this is much better because we can be with you and tell you if it fits or not" which they did - all four of them. I managed to remember all the summer camp tricks and showed the least amount of skin as possible and I got out of there with a nice skirt! I have to admit that it would be pretty hard to get out of there with something that didn't fit well.

So anyways, if trying on clothes with 2 other ladies and 4 workers isn't on your list of things to do, stick to Walmart.

New Knitters

So I was thinking "I haven't had time to meet knitters around here yet, and I really need to feed my addiction by being with other addicted knitters. I think I'll just have to create new ones!" And so I did. When the twins least expected it, I got them tangled into the web. They don't seem to mind though. I think they'll do just fine!

Just in case the hook wasn't in deep enough I decided to wet their appetite with this.

It worked. They are totally taken with knitting and are already planning the different things they will knit. I just have to make sure they're not knitting when they have to be studying for their math exam.

Just as we were packing up for the night, a package came in for me! My first package at my new address! It was from Sherrie and it contained some really, really yummy stuff!

It's north loop yarn's superwash merino DK and it feels super soft. The colorway is "Evergreen" and is greener than in the picture you can actually smell the pines as you look at it. It's really nice and I can't wait to knit it up! Thank you so much!!!

Our Neighborhood - Part 2

Being curious by nature and blind when it comes to signs that read "do not go on the roof", Matthew and I decided that it would be nifty to see our neighborhood from up there. It was pretty frigid but really worth it. I felt like Mary Poppins and a certain song popped into my head. It's nice to see the world from a different perspective.



You can see Brooklyn Heights in this shot.


This one shows you that people spend their money in very similar ways as back home.

Matthew was a bit pale when he got up this morning so I advised him to lay in the sun for a while.
I guess we're not the only ones to can't read. That's good we may get to meet kindred spirits (or as Anne Shirley liked to call it "bosom friends") while we're here.