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 .

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.

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.

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.

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.

*Reason # 106 - I gave up Atkins today

So Saturday was my birthday! I turned 28 on the 28th. Thank you for all the birthday wishes y'all (practicing for when we do get to West Virginia). Matthew had to go to a CPR course in the afternoon so we walked in the morning and after he left Fr. Andrew and matushka Zhanna invited me to go to Brighton Beach with them. I should have deduced from the name that we were going to a beach but somehow I didn't really think I would find a beach scene in NY though we are surrounded by water. I must say that lots of places around these parts have names that lead you to believe something about the place they refer to only to find out that the name bears no relation to the place. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised to see this -

And like in Yarmouth there is a population of dirty birds. People feed them around here.




The sand was really nice and there were other things that reminded me of home.


After the beach we walked on Brighton Beach Avenue. It's a very interesting area of Brooklyn. A lot of it is comprised of Russian stores where you can get all kinds of tasty Russian treats. I wanted to show you this shot because of the railroad you see on top of the street. This is a usual thing around here. You have a street covered with rails for the subway. It makes the streets really dark and loud.

After our adventure we came back home and Matthew and I went to church for the vigil. It was really nice. Metropolitan Hilarion was there and we got to have his blessing, not only that but they took out the Kursk Icon which resides at the Synod permanently and we got to venerate it. Now that we live here we get to venerate it every week (usually through the glass though, which is nice but when we venerated it yesterday it was fragrant and we couldn't smell that through the glass). The first time we venerated it was right before our wedding. We were told it would bless our marriage. That was a highlight. On our way home I decided I wanted a cupcake. I've read much about NY cupcakes and frankly I didn't really get what the big deal was with eating an oversized muffin. That was until I stepped into Crumbs and bought a black forest cupcake.


I waited until we got home to eat it (I hate eating on the run - how can you savor anything in a hurry?) and this is what I did to the poor thing.

First bite was good.


The second one was great.

The third one was even better.
The thing was to die for. I didn't have to quit Atkins (I've never been on Atkins, just to make that clear) to eat their cupcake and I don't need any reason other than the fact that it was soooo good. Sooooo good that after today's Liturgy I stopped by and got another one. I also got Knitscene, a knitting magazine with a few nice vests I intend on knitting. this cupcake is named Red Velvet and looked much better in the shop but it had sustained a bit of damage from being in my bag for the best of 3 hours.

I'm hooked and we're now officially in Lent which means no cupcakes for me for the next 40 days. Reason # 107 - Lent is over.


*There is a board in the shop showing people's reasons for eating Crumbs cupcakes.