Here's the facts. Since I moved into my first dorm on Third Avenue in late August of 2008, I've moved a total of twelve times. Twelve times in four years. Five of those times were in the last year, thanks to that time when I moved to Spain for a bit.
Post-grad as I've mentioned, I've become a bit of - okay quite - a gypsy. I haven't lived in the same place for more than four months since late mid-2011. After four months in Madrid, I was home for a month, then in an NYU dorm for four months, then in Europe for two weeks, then in New Jersey for a week, then in a sublet on Roosevelt Island for six weeks, then home for six weeks, then couch surfing in Brooklyn for two weeks, and now I'm living in Harlem for three months.
WHY?
It's a valid question. I've had older friends tell me that everyone goes through a kind of gypsy period after graduation. I responded to one friend, yeah but I'm doing it more than everybody else. But I tend to think I do most things I do with a more-ness compared to most people. In any case, the people I know that have moved frequently after graduation still aren't moving this often. Theirs is more a case of, "Brooklyn is too far, I want to move back to Manhattan," or "Manhattan is too expensive, screw this I'm moving to Brooklyn." My year of living out of suitcases has not been that. Actually I've found it kind of interesting to live in different parts of the city, particularly Roosevelt Island since I know a total of three people who've lived there (and I've now lived with two of them).
I didn't lease an apartment after graduation because in February of this year I went to visit my cosmic twin (really, we're the same person) in Philadelphia where he now lives with his boyfriend. I found out while I was there that they were planning to move to NYC and was offered the other bedroom in this hypothetical apartment. I'd always hoped my friend would move back to the city and we'd live together, so I was thrilled. As the spring wore on, the hypothetical moving date kept floating further away. So over the summer, I subletted and then spent some time at home, hoping the boys would figure things out. In the meantime I ended up subletting this place in Harlem where I am now. I just didn't want to buy furniture and sign a lease just to have to ultimately move that furniture and either find a subletter myself of have to wait to move into the apartment with my friends.
So I took on a gypsy life, drifting from neighborhood to neighborhood, sublet to sublet, suitcases in hand on trains and busses all over the city. As I well-documented, I spent my time at home ruthlessly getting rid of anything I could to make ultimately hauling my possessions across country easier. I don't know what size my future apartment will be, but my stuff ought to fit. I believe it would fit into this bedroom I'm in now, and it's not that big.
All this is to say I had an impromptu lunch with my friend today who happened to be in the city for an audition, and he told me he's going to be performing a cruise for essentially the next year. What that means for me, as I was already coming to discern, is that I'm not going to be living with him anytime in the near future. The new roommate search is on.
My first thought was my friend Anna who is currently studying abroad in Madrid just as I did last year. Frequently when kids come back from abroad studies they move into apartments instead of back into NYU housing. (This is much cheaper for essentially anyone who isn't me, who had her housing paid for by a scholarship.) As it turns out, Anna is in the market for a roommate herself as her housing plans seem to have fallen through too, so it looks like I've already hopefully solved half the battle. Anna is quite possibly the only person I've ever met who I would dare to say is as big of a Harry Potter fan as I am. She's two years younger than me and a Playwrights student, and we started talking on facebook the summer before she came to NYU because we both had Potter pictures in honor of the coming film (Half-Blood Prince at the time). I remember in one of our first conversations we analysed the latest production stills that had just been released in the nerdiest possible detail. I know I have friends that would have done that with me when we were twelve, but I don't know about at age twenty.
This is far in the future, as we won't live together until January, and we just started talking about this within the last 24 hours, but I'm excited. It's going to be the best. Have no delusions about what you will walk into if you visit our apartment. Let me give you only this picture: In our "about me" sections on facebook (or "acerca de mí" because our facebooks are in Spanish), I have "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." Anna has "Nitwit. Blubber. Oddment. Tweak."
Friendships have been built on far less.
As Anna and I were talking, I said "I guess I've been a gypsy for no reason," but then amended it to add "Or at least not the reason I thought," which is really the truth. I can see now, on what is probably (hopefully?) the tail-end of my gypsydom (I'm not sure there's a noun for it) that even though I thought I was wandering New York for the sake of my friends, I have of course been wandering New York (and the world, really) for the sake of myself. This blog started because I went to Madrid, and I went to Madrid because I was determined to broaden my experience of the world and gain greater perspective about humanity. That happened. But it continued when I came back to New York and kept living out of suitcases for another year. As I've said before, I've learned a lot about who I am, what I need and don't need, what I value, what I can let go of, who cares about me, what matters. Who are you without all your stuff? You're still you. You really are. I really am.
So, you know, it seemed crazy, it still kind of seems crazy, that I've had no real permanent address for ages, that I've had to have mail sent to Illinois constantly even though I've spent cumulatively about a year there in the last three, but it's okay. I don't think I would trade it to have had an apartment back in May. Yes, I am absolutely excited to buy a bed and have a room I get to decorate myself (which will still include Harry Potter posters, of course) and having keys I get to keep and being able to give people an address that I'm going to still be at in more than three months time. One day, I will actually change my residency to New York, but apparently that will only be after I've already lived there for five years.
All I'm really saying is I still believe everything happens for a reason, even if it isn't always the reason we expect. That's life.
Showing posts with label couch surfing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label couch surfing. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Friday, September 16, 2011
Stocking Up on Weekends
Well, I guess I had a life for the last couple days, because I didn't post once, let alone twice a day! I need to blog about my first week in Spain at some point including the day trip we took to Segovia, but I think tonight I'll just write about this week and then maybe tomorrow backtrack to August.
When last we met, I was in a terrible mood due to the Spanish class situation. I'm still stuck in my original Spanish class (we're moving on to - wait for it - more review of things I learned in Spanish 1 next week), which is unfortunate, and I was in a bad mood Wednesday too, but that has now passed. Despite an impossible number of little things going wrong on Wednesday, the world has stopped wreaking havoc on my life and now things are pretty nice.
Tuesday night, our couch surfers arrived, later than expected, but well. Nate and Aliska (that's not a typo) were a married couple in their mid-twenties from Salt Lake City, and my roommate and I spent a nice couple of hours chatting with them before we finally went out for dinner (around 11:30). We took them to Cien Montaditos, named for the 100 little sandwiches that comprise 95% of the menu, which range in price from one to two euros each. They also offer glasses of beer for a euro and tinto de verano (red wine and sprite, my new favorite thing) for two euros. Cien montaditos is a favorite among the NYU crowd. Or at least those of us whose parents aren't lawyers or medical doctors (sorry Dad). We spent about an hour and a half or so sitting outside, chatting, drinking, and trying new sandwiches - I got crema de queso y salmún (cream cheese and salmon, wonderfully similar to a bagel with lox) and tortilla de patata con salsa brava. Tortillas de patata are really common here - the one I had on my sandwich wasn't good, but the one I had the next day was, so more on that later. Our couch surfers were kind enough to pay for our (extremely cheap) dinner, and then we walked a little further to show them the Royal Palace and the Royal Cathedral (which are across from each other). By now it was about 1:30 in the morning, but even at night the buildings are really majestic. Here's a couple pictures I took in the late evening our first week here:
So then we went home, and we all went to bed around two, and I got up at 7 am (in the dark, with the moon outside my window) to make sure Nate and Aliska got up on time to head to the airport. Wednesday-day passed in a haze of mishaps, misery, and misfortune, but in the evening, I went to my Spanish cooking workshop!
Every member of the program had to choose one of three cultural activities (it's was a tiny bit like Amazing Race, but without the stress): food, wine, or dance. I chose food, and I'm glad I did because we pretty much got a whole free meal, everything smelled delicious, and I learned how to make some new things. We cooked paella (of course), tortillas de patatas, and made the filling for croquetas de jamón. Then we got to eat the paella and the tortillas as well as some already cooked croquetas (the filling has to refrigerate and set so it can be cut into pieces to be fried) as well as gazpacho, sangria, and a tart that as far as I could tell was made mostly of almonds, vanilla, and powdered sugar and was incredibly delicious. So you probably know what paella is, but I had never heard of tortillas de patata before - it's an incredibly simple and popular dish of potatoes and onions fried in olive oil and then cooked with eggs and salt to create something that looks like an omelet but isn't. It's surprisingly tasty, considering the simplicity. Makes sense that it's a staple of the Spanish diet.
It was a good thing I had the food class that evening because later I went to what was called a "welcome cocktail-dinner" for all the member organizations of APUNE, the Asociación de Programas de Universidades Norteamericanas en España, which includes about thirty universities. It was hosted at Gabana, an apparently famous dance club, and was neither a dinner nor were there cocktails. There was tons of free wine and beer (and soft drinks) and a few appetizers that were impossible to grab because crowds of people were swarming the waiters. I had a good time and met a couple of guys who go to Marquette University in Milwaukee of all places, but it wasn't what I was expecting at all. Though now I can say I've been to Gabana, which I guess means something to some people. The lighting was interesting.
Yesterday I had class all day. I actually went to school early (before my 9:30 class), got a croissant and a cafe con leche from the café up the street, and sat at a table on our school's patio (a nice big open area that connects the two townhouses that make up NYU in Madrid). I had about half an hour to just relax, enjoy my coffee, and get a little homework done before class. I think I might do that more often.
Classes were pretty good: I am in LOVE with Federico García Lorca, I argue a lot in class and talk probably too much because I'm the only theatre major in a class of 14 people who haven't studied theatre. I told my teacher after class to tell me to shut up if I'm talking to much, and she said she was grateful that there was someone who didn't act like a high schooler when talking about love and death and sex and passion (which is all Lorca writes about). We've had four classes, and she said I was a "joy to have in class." So that's nice. :) My Spanish culture class that's taught in Spanish is definitely getting me to talk in Spanish more, which is great. I'll be giving a presentation in a little over a week, in Spanish, but it only has to be 3-4 minutes, which is nothing compared to the 20 minutes I frequently had to present about things last year. Playwrights kids have no problems with presentations. My Spanish class is still really boring. I finished our quiz 20 minutes before class was over, which used to happen to me all the time in school, but now that I'm in college, it means I get to leave early! I took the bus home and got to spend a little time eating lunch before walking the five minutes to the Prado Museum for my art history class. This week we got to see Caravaggio's El Descansamiento/The Deposition, an extremely famous painting that usually lives at the Vatican and is leaving the Prado on Sunday. I also went on my own to see Velázquez's The Crucifixion of Christ, which I think usually lives at the Prado but is also leaving Sunday for some reason.
It was really nice to get lost in the Prado by myself for a while after the class was over. Eventually I wandered home and spent the rest of the night relaxing with my roommate, as we were both exhausted after two nights of going out.
AND I FOUND SPANISH THEATRE! I was in fact going to see something tonight, but I'm still tired (especially after being productive all day) so I'm chilling home again tonight and going to the theatre tomorrow. There's a theatre less than ten minutes from here that shows new work, often many things at the same time just on different nights, and it seems like - for you theatre people - it might be the La Mama of Madrid. I hope so! Tickets are cheap, and tomorrow I'm going to see something that got extended through this weekend that seems to be a political satire. So I'll be lost the whole time because it will be in Spanish AND be about Spanish politics. I'm excited. I've also found some Spanish productions of works by Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Durang, Pinter, and Moliére, so I'll probably check some of those out as well as all this new avant garde stuff I've found. Next week I think I'm going to see something in a theatre that produces its works in an abandoned church. I have no idea what the show is about but it looks pretty. If I get bored I can just watch the lights like I always do. Plus, it's in an ABANDONED CHURCH.
I think that's about all for now. Hopefully another post tomorrow about previous activities. Now I'm going to eat dinner and then enjoy an evening of A Very Potter Musical as a reward for being so productive today: two loads of laundry, swept the apartment, did dishes, made egg salad, went grocery shopping, got a better phone plan, withdrew money to start saving cash for next month's rent. (This is probably just because I can't deal with not having class on Fridays. Friday still has to be a productive day. I'm used to having no weekend, so three days is just way too much. It's like I'm getting all the weekends of my college career in one semester. Oh my God, I'm like Dobby when Dumbledore offers him a huge salary and tons of time off.)
Face it, I'm a loud and proud Ravenclaw.
When last we met, I was in a terrible mood due to the Spanish class situation. I'm still stuck in my original Spanish class (we're moving on to - wait for it - more review of things I learned in Spanish 1 next week), which is unfortunate, and I was in a bad mood Wednesday too, but that has now passed. Despite an impossible number of little things going wrong on Wednesday, the world has stopped wreaking havoc on my life and now things are pretty nice.
Tuesday night, our couch surfers arrived, later than expected, but well. Nate and Aliska (that's not a typo) were a married couple in their mid-twenties from Salt Lake City, and my roommate and I spent a nice couple of hours chatting with them before we finally went out for dinner (around 11:30). We took them to Cien Montaditos, named for the 100 little sandwiches that comprise 95% of the menu, which range in price from one to two euros each. They also offer glasses of beer for a euro and tinto de verano (red wine and sprite, my new favorite thing) for two euros. Cien montaditos is a favorite among the NYU crowd. Or at least those of us whose parents aren't lawyers or medical doctors (sorry Dad). We spent about an hour and a half or so sitting outside, chatting, drinking, and trying new sandwiches - I got crema de queso y salmún (cream cheese and salmon, wonderfully similar to a bagel with lox) and tortilla de patata con salsa brava. Tortillas de patata are really common here - the one I had on my sandwich wasn't good, but the one I had the next day was, so more on that later. Our couch surfers were kind enough to pay for our (extremely cheap) dinner, and then we walked a little further to show them the Royal Palace and the Royal Cathedral (which are across from each other). By now it was about 1:30 in the morning, but even at night the buildings are really majestic. Here's a couple pictures I took in the late evening our first week here:
That's the Cathedral and the Royal Plaza
Side of the Royal Palace
Front of the Royal Palace
(The flag on the left is the Spanish flag. On the right is a flagpole for the king's flag, which is only flown when he's there. Which he never is, because there's like five palaces.)
Cathedral (which apparently isn't allowed to be as pretty as the palace; they had to "simplify it")
Top of the cathedral over the wall of the palace at dusk
Every member of the program had to choose one of three cultural activities (it's was a tiny bit like Amazing Race, but without the stress): food, wine, or dance. I chose food, and I'm glad I did because we pretty much got a whole free meal, everything smelled delicious, and I learned how to make some new things. We cooked paella (of course), tortillas de patatas, and made the filling for croquetas de jamón. Then we got to eat the paella and the tortillas as well as some already cooked croquetas (the filling has to refrigerate and set so it can be cut into pieces to be fried) as well as gazpacho, sangria, and a tart that as far as I could tell was made mostly of almonds, vanilla, and powdered sugar and was incredibly delicious. So you probably know what paella is, but I had never heard of tortillas de patata before - it's an incredibly simple and popular dish of potatoes and onions fried in olive oil and then cooked with eggs and salt to create something that looks like an omelet but isn't. It's surprisingly tasty, considering the simplicity. Makes sense that it's a staple of the Spanish diet.
It was a good thing I had the food class that evening because later I went to what was called a "welcome cocktail-dinner" for all the member organizations of APUNE, the Asociación de Programas de Universidades Norteamericanas en España, which includes about thirty universities. It was hosted at Gabana, an apparently famous dance club, and was neither a dinner nor were there cocktails. There was tons of free wine and beer (and soft drinks) and a few appetizers that were impossible to grab because crowds of people were swarming the waiters. I had a good time and met a couple of guys who go to Marquette University in Milwaukee of all places, but it wasn't what I was expecting at all. Though now I can say I've been to Gabana, which I guess means something to some people. The lighting was interesting.
Yesterday I had class all day. I actually went to school early (before my 9:30 class), got a croissant and a cafe con leche from the café up the street, and sat at a table on our school's patio (a nice big open area that connects the two townhouses that make up NYU in Madrid). I had about half an hour to just relax, enjoy my coffee, and get a little homework done before class. I think I might do that more often.
Classes were pretty good: I am in LOVE with Federico García Lorca, I argue a lot in class and talk probably too much because I'm the only theatre major in a class of 14 people who haven't studied theatre. I told my teacher after class to tell me to shut up if I'm talking to much, and she said she was grateful that there was someone who didn't act like a high schooler when talking about love and death and sex and passion (which is all Lorca writes about). We've had four classes, and she said I was a "joy to have in class." So that's nice. :) My Spanish culture class that's taught in Spanish is definitely getting me to talk in Spanish more, which is great. I'll be giving a presentation in a little over a week, in Spanish, but it only has to be 3-4 minutes, which is nothing compared to the 20 minutes I frequently had to present about things last year. Playwrights kids have no problems with presentations. My Spanish class is still really boring. I finished our quiz 20 minutes before class was over, which used to happen to me all the time in school, but now that I'm in college, it means I get to leave early! I took the bus home and got to spend a little time eating lunch before walking the five minutes to the Prado Museum for my art history class. This week we got to see Caravaggio's El Descansamiento/The Deposition, an extremely famous painting that usually lives at the Vatican and is leaving the Prado on Sunday. I also went on my own to see Velázquez's The Crucifixion of Christ, which I think usually lives at the Prado but is also leaving Sunday for some reason.
The Deposition The Crucifixion of Christ
It was really nice to get lost in the Prado by myself for a while after the class was over. Eventually I wandered home and spent the rest of the night relaxing with my roommate, as we were both exhausted after two nights of going out.
AND I FOUND SPANISH THEATRE! I was in fact going to see something tonight, but I'm still tired (especially after being productive all day) so I'm chilling home again tonight and going to the theatre tomorrow. There's a theatre less than ten minutes from here that shows new work, often many things at the same time just on different nights, and it seems like - for you theatre people - it might be the La Mama of Madrid. I hope so! Tickets are cheap, and tomorrow I'm going to see something that got extended through this weekend that seems to be a political satire. So I'll be lost the whole time because it will be in Spanish AND be about Spanish politics. I'm excited. I've also found some Spanish productions of works by Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Durang, Pinter, and Moliére, so I'll probably check some of those out as well as all this new avant garde stuff I've found. Next week I think I'm going to see something in a theatre that produces its works in an abandoned church. I have no idea what the show is about but it looks pretty. If I get bored I can just watch the lights like I always do. Plus, it's in an ABANDONED CHURCH.
I think that's about all for now. Hopefully another post tomorrow about previous activities. Now I'm going to eat dinner and then enjoy an evening of A Very Potter Musical as a reward for being so productive today: two loads of laundry, swept the apartment, did dishes, made egg salad, went grocery shopping, got a better phone plan, withdrew money to start saving cash for next month's rent. (This is probably just because I can't deal with not having class on Fridays. Friday still has to be a productive day. I'm used to having no weekend, so three days is just way too much. It's like I'm getting all the weekends of my college career in one semester. Oh my God, I'm like Dobby when Dumbledore offers him a huge salary and tons of time off.)
Face it, I'm a loud and proud Ravenclaw.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Nope.
Got an e-mail from the director of NYU in Madrid (a woman who has never met me and knows nothing about my Spanish skills other than the results of that test I took at 1 am in April). Despite the okay from both Spanish teachers and the academic coordinator, she said no. So. Slow, boring four-day-a-week Spanish class it is.
As a person who has always been fortunate enough to excel academically, I've never had a problem with being judged based on my test scores, because they were always really good. It's quite the rude awakening to really see just how much one stupid number can affect a course of action. It's really frustrating. It feels like people are telling me I'm not smart enough for something. And I'm not asking for advanced classes, just a faster-paced, further along intermediate one. I kept up with everyone today just fine, but the administration is getting so hung up on this one statistic from almost six months ago that I don't feel is a fair reflection of my skills.
I guess I should go figure out what my homework is for tomorrow since I wasn't in class today.
The couch surfers were supposed to be here an hour ago and they still haven't called me. Hopefully I'll be in a better mood by the time they actually show up. They're a 26-year-old married couple from Salt Lake City (aaahhh, English speakers) and they're only going to be here about 12 hours, at this point, as they're leaving by 7 or 8 in the morning to head to the airport. Maybe they will be happy to just drink wine with me and get some ice cream from up the street.
As a person who has always been fortunate enough to excel academically, I've never had a problem with being judged based on my test scores, because they were always really good. It's quite the rude awakening to really see just how much one stupid number can affect a course of action. It's really frustrating. It feels like people are telling me I'm not smart enough for something. And I'm not asking for advanced classes, just a faster-paced, further along intermediate one. I kept up with everyone today just fine, but the administration is getting so hung up on this one statistic from almost six months ago that I don't feel is a fair reflection of my skills.
I guess I should go figure out what my homework is for tomorrow since I wasn't in class today.
The couch surfers were supposed to be here an hour ago and they still haven't called me. Hopefully I'll be in a better mood by the time they actually show up. They're a 26-year-old married couple from Salt Lake City (aaahhh, English speakers) and they're only going to be here about 12 hours, at this point, as they're leaving by 7 or 8 in the morning to head to the airport. Maybe they will be happy to just drink wine with me and get some ice cream from up the street.
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