Settling In

There are many steps to settling into a new city. In the first stage, it is setting up house -- you unpack your boxes with all your things, then spend hours inside IKEA, target, home depot or the local thrift stores shopping for furniture or containers in which to put all the stuff from your boxes. In the next stage, it is becoming friends with your neighborhood-- you learn which stores carry the cheapest tofu, the best selection of produce, or your favorite shampoo; you pick out a few favorite spots to get takeout, and know how to properly estimate your travel time to any point in the city, especially that route to work, where you figure out how to avoid every second of idle waiting, by timing your walk to the station just right so that you are next to the last one to squeeze into the train car.

And then the final stage of settling in is the most difficult, making the city your home. Your tiny apartment can feel cozy and home-like, but it is not home yet. Home is where your people are, and so to finish this stage you need to establish a circle of friends.

In a city like New York this seems to be both an exciting but then also overwhelming task. 8 million people, there must be a handful for you! And these friends will be interesting/exciting/better because of so many choices and possibilities. You're friends no longer have to be all graduate students in physics-- doesn't that sound exhilarating! But then how do you find those few people in 8 million, seems like the classic needles in a haystack.

My old friends remind me it took me awhile to find them in Ithaca-- and I remind myself that it also takes time to incubate and develop and establish any connection-- that my old dear friends were accumulated through years of being in dear old Ithaca. I try my best to be okay with finding myself often alone on weekend nights not really sure who I should call. It will get better in time... I hope...

So for now, in place of people, I find activities. New York makes that easy.

On Friday night I tore myself away from catching up on episodes of Homeland, and took the train to Chelsea for Friday Night Blues. This is my third time going to a dedicated blues dance- but I'm falling for it, and the scene. It's crowded and there's no AC and you get sweaty and bump into people, but I love the energy in the room, of the young and the old, and the way everybody moves and has their own style. I must admit I am usually shy and awkward about expressing any form of sensuality, and the argentine tango closed embrace still makes me slightly uncomfortable when I dance with people I don't know. But somehow, on the blues dance floor I open up, I have confidence, and am not afraid to let my self be showy and (for some songs) sexy. I think it's the fact that blues is close to swing and there's so much room for improv and that the music is rarely subdued, it's usually the pop songs of all the past decades, swingy showtunes, jazzy ballads, rock n' roll, broadway... I enjoy dancing with all people, young and old, holding people close, enjoying the the few minutes we have interacting and dancing and playing with the music, expressing ourselves and having a conversation through body movement.  I have yet to take proper formal lessons in blues dance, but already the time flies and I have fun, and I want to dance for hours.

I didn't dance for too many hours, because I had a busy Saturday morning planned. I woke up to get out of the house like it was a regular workday-- I had a lovely blueberry scone and pumpkin spice latte on my way to the New York Common Pantry in East Harlem. The company I work for has this really nice program where if you volunteer 25-50 hours a year, they will donate money to a charity of your choice matching your efforts at $100/hour.  On top of that, they have an office that coordinates volunteer activities with community organizations which employees can sign up for.

I've often wanted to volunteer for a food-related cause. Food is so central to my existence, and I can't begin to imagine the difficulties of hunger or poor access to nutritious food. Anyways, this being my first experience, I was very impressed with the way this food pantry is run. For one, they offer fresh produce, and nice grains, beans, some diary and eggs -- things I would gladly purchase for myself if I were grocery shopping. Additionally, all the pantry clients have membership cards, which gives them a sense of ownership, and is a good way of organizing/keeping track of pantry distributions. Lastly, they have a shopping system, where based on your household size you can choose between the inventory selections of the week.

The last point surprised me-- doesn't this cause lots of additional required work? But as I was very impressed as the morning went on, their system is designed such that the orders are digitized-- you can order online or come in to access the webapp during your pickup time.  Inside the pantry, around two dozen volunteers scrambled to fill in the orders as they came in, bagging groceries, running around.

I started out the morning dividing beets and pears into 1 lb bags in preparation for the incoming orders and crowd. At 10 am, I got reassigned to a job working with clients who came in to make selections on-site. 6 of us volunteers, each armed with a tablet, sat with clients as they chose their selections through the webapp. Most of the clients were nice and friendly, even the ones who didn't speak English. I got to speak some Mandarin, and practice very broken Spanish phrases (a few of the Hispanic seniors were very amused at my efforts, but the webapp shopping list was written so that it displayed the client's preferred language and had nice colorful pictures to help both of us along).

The volunteer experience was extremely streamlined (no idleness of standing around being unproductive, no questions on what to do or how) and the impact of the pantry very apparent (most clients were very happy to be making their grocery selections). A lot of my colleagues shared my sentiments and were curious how to volunteer in following weeks, and were eager to see the pantry coordinate more sign-ups through our company.

As I took the train back to my place, I thought to myself, it is quite a nice way to spend a Saturday morning. Although looking at all those pictures of food and being around the food made me hungry and wanting for some fresh produce for myself. So I stopped by the farmer's market near my house, got myself some ingredients for a arugula and pasta + steamed asparagus lunch and then a nice thai basil tofu stir-fry for dinner. And that dictated the rest of a very charming saturday, cooking and housekeeping and blog-writing.

I've met a few friendly people at these activities, and had a few interesting conversations. Perhaps along the way I will make myself some friends. Perhaps not or perhaps elsewhere. But I'm building up the structure of my life in the city to my liking. For everything else, friendships, relationships, maybe even love, I guess that's an adventure that I will not be able to design, and can only look forward to experiencing.