back to routine (almost)
so we are now a couple of weeks officially in chicago.
we still sleep on an air mattress, but it's now on a bed, surrounded by more furniture and less cardboard boxes.
we are trying to adjust to life in the big city. for instance, keeping all our change for tolls, parking meters, and most importantly -- quarters for laundry. these machines "eat" 4 quarters per wash and 4 per drying cycle. but at least they don't take space in our small apartment -- they live in the basement...
we have a giant stove (i can't understand why american stoves are twice as big as the israeli ones, probably for turkeys ;) but it's so convenient!!
we have already used some of our cool kitchen stuff, the pots and pans, the new food processor(!), toaster... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
one important thing to find, was the nearest meijer store... which is not that near :( -- about 40-45 minutes away. we still don't know what the shortest (timewise) rout is. looks like they don't have such large cheap grocery/everything-you-need stores in town. i guess the cost of rent is too high, and/or city tax, makes it just not profitable. for instance, we found a cluster of stores (best buy, target, etc.) right outside city limits. what they DO have all over town, is walgreens. makes you wonder.
it takes us about 20 minutes to get to the university (give or take the time it takes us to walk from wherever we found parking, which can be pretty far away, depends on time). we both have our offices now, we met some of the people in the department, and found the important facilities (e.g., microwave). we like it there. i feel kinda lonely in my office all alone (there's actually another student there, she showed up today, but she leaves for france in a couple of days...) but i guess it will make it more efficient. it=working. of course, today all i did all day was to research the official immigration website and try to figure out exactly what forms we need to file. baaaa.
so far, so good. i love chicago.
1 comment:
Ditto. We love Chicago. I love being here with the person I love the most...and MOST of our stuff is in one place now too. And I know where everything is. Everything, that is, except for my Ipod holder. Anyone seen it?
I have to say everything has been great here so far. My only complaint has to be about the stuffed shirts down at Immigration and Naturalization Service. I'll do another post on that some other day, when I'm feeling more negative.
The things that has struck me most about my short time here is the diversity. I never realized how international this town is, at least where we are. The doorman and one of the maintenance people are Russian (Alex and some other guy), the building manager and one of the engineers are Romanian (Stella and Doru), and the other engineer is from Central America (Miguel). The building is a "melting pot" of people from the Far East, Eastern Europe, Israel (at least one) and yes, even one American.
Riding up the elevator around dinner, you cover the full spectrum of cuisine; ginger and soy sauce on the 6th floor, something with coconut on the 8th floor,
sizzling red meat on the 10th floor, curry and garlic on 12, and Israeli on 13. And on some days on the 13th floor, you would even swear you could smell peanut butter and jelly.
The cable guy, Daniel, came here the other night. It was his last job, and after we gave him a beer, he reminisced about childhood friends in Mexico. He finally left after his wife called him for the third time.
Our building is about 6 blocks from Clark St., a nearly uninterrupted 5 mile-long thoroughfare of restaurants, bars, ethnic food stores, liquor stores, Starbucks', Walgreens', and McDonalds'. I had no idea it was there until we took a wrong turn coming back from Jiffy Lube on Saturday. Oh, and there's a Borders about 2 trains stops south of us.
I should start taking pictures of this place.
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