Walkable distances

Back to Mobile.

Never easy to come back to a life made only of work and little else, especially after spending many weeks with family and friends in places that fit me well.

I have to re-adjust to driving and not using my legs and bike as a way to transport myself between two points. The first days since I got back here, I felt I was in a cage....now I am just passively trying to adapt again. It is very hard for me to understand how people can settle for a life in which they depends from their car to go anywhere. The weather is fantastic here, it calls for spending time outside biking or walking. But this is simply impossible. There is nowhere to go to by walk and drivers are just not used to people biking, so that biking is calling for a suicide most likely....except for very few places. I miss being able to walk or bike to work....I leave 10 minutes away from work and still, I have to drive.

Yesterday I was relaxing at the pool in my apartment complex. The maximum distance within this apartment complex is maybe 10 minutes by walk, if not less. A family drove from their apartment to the swimming pool. They were not carrying something heavy. The kids were not so little. I guess they are just not used to use their legs.....and then some people complain about being overweight.....what about moving more? I understand here it is not easy, because Mobile is not walkable or bikeable, but at least for short distances and when it is possible....at least as providing a good example for the kids.

It is a very different life style. I am not used to this. It is not the US. In Washington many people bike...actually, there are so many crazy bikers, they are dangerous sometimes.

Another thing I am not used to. Guns. We had an orientation at work. They showed us a video about how to be prepared and train in the case a shooting would occur in the work place. My colleagues, a room filled with about 30 other people, mostly Americans, found this completely normal. Myself and another Japanese woman, both clearly not used to this, were speechless. I got extremely depressed after the video. It is difficult to explain. I am just not used to this.
Here you can have guns, shotguns, whatever you want, in your car or on you.
It is normal.
My students told me story of growing up shooting at snakes. It is normal. It is what they are used to. Driving everywhere and depending on cars, being used to guns and shooting.

Not an easy adjustment for an European who grew up in a small town in Tuscany and who always lived, until now, in very small towns or if not small, bike and walk friendly.

The National

I am going! I am going to their concert!
Unbelievable. They come to my home town for a concert during the time I am here. I will be there. And the location for the concert is just fantastic, downtown, in the old town.
I just got the tickets for a friend and myself.

Mobile - Tensaw Delta

There is one reason why I came here

Video

My first tornado warning

Gosh if I was scared.....I was so scared that I honestly quite panicked through the whole thing.

We started having these warnings, my cellphone beeping with messages saying that we had a high risk of floods. People telling me what to do in case of tornadoes. The rain battering the windows like crazy. Hailstones, powerful wind. And lightening. So much and so strong that it felt like someone was switching on and off the light in my apartment.

I have been told to prepare water, a pillow, and a blanket in the bathroom, the only room with no windows and more protected from the outside. And to go hiding in the bath in case of an actual tornado warning.

I had everything prepared and then I tried to go to sleep. It was night. I couldn't close my eyes. Between the lightening, the hailstones that I thought would crash the windows, the wind, the rain, and the fear I had in me, I couldn't sleep even for a minute.

Nothing happened, at least not exactly where I live. But there have been places flooded and people that got stuck somewhere because of the weather.

Definitively not a pleasant experience, especially to face alone.
And apparently this is nothing compared to the actual tornadoes and the hurricanes.

Lovely :-(

Happy in Lucca

Gosh how much I miss the beauty of Lucca.
Gosh, how strongly I look forward to the end of the semester here.
Gosh, with what impatience I look forward to spend some time in Tuscany soon

Two months and 23 days

I am here. It is today two months and 23 days since I moved here and it is nothing like what I could have expected.

I feared living here, but I thought that it would be great work-wise. I don't know how many times I already thought of quitting and go back to I don't even know to what, since there is nothing I could go back to.
I am sleepless. I work non-stop for zero reward. I have never met students on average so uninterested and so ignorant. But it is the lack of interest that strikes me more and upsets me and makes me feel frustrated. I spend sleepless nights preparing the classes, not being able to do anything else in my life beside working to prepare the classes and for what?
I have to do it, I am paid for it, but it is so frustrating.
And I have none to talk to here. No friends, no acquaintances with whom sometimes to take a break from all this craziness and do and talk about something else. I have been working hard in my life before. I had a crazy PhD time. But I had the olandesino and I had friends that made life worth, that gave me a reason, something to look forward.
Since two months and 23 days I am on a survival mode. Counting the days until the end of this semester, hoping that during the summer I will be able to recharge and not think about my non-life here, hoping that I will be able to spend time with my friends and family. I feel so disconnected and lonely here and I keep asking myself what really is the point of doing all this.
I moved here to be closer to my husband. But we still don't live in the same place, who knows when and how we will, since any attempt to find a job for him here has been unsuccessful so far, and when we see each other, which fortunately happens more frequently than before, I am always so down, so nervous, so busy preparing the classes and working, that I am not even able to fully enjoy the time together.

I miss my previous life, when I had a life.

I felt lonely in Portugal, but nothing compared to how I feel here. I didn't have close friends there, but I had people to do things with. I had people whom I could call if I wanted to. I had the ocean and plenty of time just for myself. And money to save.

Life is too short to be wasted and I really cannot see a point in wasting mine working so hard to receive zero appreciation and feel constantly stressed, unhappy, and nervous. I had to finish this semester and then start to seriously think about maybe moving again if things will not change within the next months. What is the point of being here if I have to be so lonely and work all the time to not have a life and have such a low salary that I constantly worry about how I would get to the end of the month if my husband wouldn't help me with the expenses.

It is not the place, it is not the people. It is all together. On average very bad students, too much work, extreme loneliness, not having time for myself, feeling isolate, feeling far from family and friends and not having enough time to dedicate to them even if it was just to talk to them on the phone.

I have something like two more months to go and I can't wait to get to the end of this semester and hopefully get a life worth living back.
There are really too many beautiful things in this work to spend all my time working....and working for what?

Friendly? it's the South

I am in the South......and in a South that feels even Southern of Portugal.....I mean. Geographically it is. I just didn't expect here to be this way.....

This way how?

Southern......

Slow, disorganized, messy, but also with warm communicative people, great food, nice weather (at least so far...no hurricanes or tornadoes).

Am I in the US? except for what concern all the documents that a non-American person needs to fill to do anything here, for the rest it doesn't look like anything of the US I have experienced so far....but I am in the US.

There is Starbucks....but well, there is Starbucks also in Paris....so that doesn't count.....

My beginning here is not going as I expected. I thought that it would have been difficult. I just didn't expect it to be so difficult. I guess that largely has to do with the fact that until now, any time I moved to another country, it was always to follow my work dreams. This time, my decision to move here was dictated by wanting to be closer to my husband and still have a job I love. Moving here was basically the only option we had.

But I didn't move for my work... so my work here doesn't keep me going and motivated when things get difficult. I moved to be closer to my husband...but I am still alone most of the time, as we do not even live in the same state for now....we are closer and communication is easier, but it is not like if we were in the same place....

I don't even know from where to start writing down all the absurd things I experienced here so far....Maybe I could start with something quite unbelievable, something that I found funny.

Last week I had to get the documents for the apartment insurance. My husband and I go to the office where to get the documents and we are welcomed by a very friendly woman....very friendly....signing the documents took us not more than two minutes, but we stayed in the office for about an hour.

First, here I am very exotic. No matter where I am, as soon as I open my mouth someone asks me where I come from. 

So, we started the conversation from there. As I said, everyone is extremely friendly here and chatty....in a few minutes, and I don't even know how, we ended up with her telling us that she was 40something and that she met someone and she thought he was the one, although they went out only three weeks before he died in her arms...so after that, she thought she would never find anyone else, but she did. She met this guy, divorced with three kids. The oldest kid is a bit difficult to deal with, but she leaves the dealing with him all to her partner...anyway, what were we saying??? yes, she is with this guy...do my husband and I think he could be the one? no, because she likes him. He is good, he is good to her....but still, could he be the one? now? him? you know, things are complicated, the kids, the ex-wife. But he cooks well, oh, yes, he cooks well. And the oldest kid spends all his time watching TV or on the cellphone or with these things. He is not mannered. But she doesn't want to get into that...no, his kids are his kids. But the youngest one is so nice. He is a teenager, but so well mannered. He is all yes ma'am, no ma'am. So, do we think he could be Mr right for her?

....She didn't tell us about her sex life, but I felt that giving her a little bit more time, we could have gone there....

I mean, lovely person. I liked her. But we were standing there, my husband and I, ready to leave and there we remained for another hour listening to this.....

The thing is that she was not an exception.....I had a colleague of mine coming to my office to welcome me and talk about office and lab space and he ended up telling me about his headache and the medications he had to take and how they make him feel and for how long he has to take them and all that.....the whole conversation last two hours at least, if not more.

I had a guy at the supermarket telling me about his dream to visit Germany to see the Bayern Munich playing (this because as usual, to Americans my English accent sounds German) and the woman at the cash register telling me about her trip to Germany and what she saw and where she went..... and who cares if there were other people in line after me.....

I had a waitress telling to my husband and I that he mother passed away as well as her grandfather to explain us why she spoke German and so on (her mom was German.....but we didn't ask her why she spoke German....only if she spoke German after she told us that she was half German....again because of my accent)....

We had a waitress sitting at the table with my husband and I to chat with us while I was looking at the menu.....

I had the person in charge of computers at the place where I work coming to my office to set up the computer and ending up telling me all about one of her daughters and showing me videos of her singing and telling me how much her daughter likes nice dresses and that they got her a credit card and that she baby-sits so that she can learn the value of money....all this during working hours, while I would have had to rush from one place to another for all the bureaucratic papers and forms I have to do here (this is going to be another post, because this never ending story is still fully ongoing).....but no, you can't do anything here without ending up with talking to someone for at least an hour.....

I mean, these people are all nice and I appreciate them being so friendly.....but first, I really do not need to get into personal details of their lives. Second, I have so much to do that I have a hard time to find any time for myself ....listening to someone talking about his/her life for an hour and then going through the same with the next person I meet is not my ideal now.....

Is a common practice here to share personal details with whomever already at the first encounter???

I must look very reserved to all of them then, as I certainly don't talk very much about my things.....