NYC, Buffalo, NJ
Backlog: The Monday after Monika's wedding was Memorial Day, Christian and I went into the city to have dinner with my friends George and Naz from high school. Naz invited his new bf, who seemed like a nice guy. He even offered to drive me and Christian to Newark airport the next morning, which saved us having to find a ride among my family and relatives. The place we ate was a Belgian restaurant somewhere in the lower teens or twenties. It specialized in lots of imported Belgian beers, served in their own custom glasses. Christian's was the only glass that was very exceptional: a beaker that was held with a wooden gallows because it couldn't stand on its rounded bottom and so had to be suspended by the neck. Sorta silly and novel, but not worth the $8-16 paid for each bottle, especially since the cheaper ones were readily available in specialty stores. Christian wasn't totally impressed with his mussels (we'll go to a better place in Lyon that I know) and I had a decent salmon that was served with mashed potatoes with lobster bits and lobster grazy mixed in. YUM. We walked around that part of the city for the evening before rushing back to transportation hubs--George to Penn Station and us to Port Authority--so we could catch the late night trains/buses. We were catching the 1am bus -- next one would be an hour later. First we ran to the usual gate I used to go to when I was in high school. When it was empty, I remembered that it was a holiday, so we had to go to the local gates. So we run over to another set of gates, whose doors were locked. Huh? So we run to the other entrance. Locked too. We run back to the express gates -- at this point only four minutes before 1. There, on the poorly designed side display I find information saying that late night buses depart from the 300 gates, which are alllll the way on the other side of the two-block-long building. We sprint, then run up the stairs to find a crowd of people milling about going to numerous gates. We have no clue which gate is ours, so we run doing spot checks of each doorway to see which bus was listed. Luckily, we quickly found our proper gate and got into the very long line. We were among the last to get seats on the bus, but we got home quickly. What a relief.
The next day we were off to the airport, bright and early in the morning to spend 9 days in Buffalo. The time flew by fast and we saw plenty of Christian's family. It was such a different experience being there when it wasn't the holidays or a major event. We had time to just casually interact with people, help them with some errands, stop over for dinner, etc. One of Christian's relatives even said it was nice to finally get to know me better. I like Buffalo, I like the feel of the interactions there and how we're treated there. Maybe that's just because it's not the family I grew up with, so the grass is greener. But it's still nice. Christian's dad asked impatiently one night when we were planning on moving back there, to which Christian replied: "Find us jobs at the university." It was half-joking, half-serious. We may like Buffalo a lot and would probably be very happy living there, but the sad reality is that jobs there have shrivelled. The university, like all state universities, is being sorely underfunded. It's disheartening that preferable places for us are sometimes coupled with complicating job realities: Buffalo and to a good extent, New Jersey as well. It seems we've staved off the two body problem for a year or two, but I'm not looking forward to facing it again.
We came back to NJ June 4th; the next day we worked on stuff -- typing up a legal letter to our landlord that still hasn't given us our security deposit, as well as a few other pending matters. The next morning I drove Christian to Newark airport for him to head back to Lyon alone. We had a bit of a runaround finding the British Airways check-in since it wasn't on the third floor with all the rest of them. We descended what we thought was two floors, and were greeted with a sea of people and luggage clogging the hallways -- about a hundred people waiting to check in for an Air India flight. Luckily, some guy overheard us say "British Airways" to each other and told us it was down another flight. There it was far quieter and Christian was quickly attended to. We said an emotional good-bye since it'll be 50 days since we see each other again. We've done longer times apart before, but that doesn't make it any easier.
The next day we were off to the airport, bright and early in the morning to spend 9 days in Buffalo. The time flew by fast and we saw plenty of Christian's family. It was such a different experience being there when it wasn't the holidays or a major event. We had time to just casually interact with people, help them with some errands, stop over for dinner, etc. One of Christian's relatives even said it was nice to finally get to know me better. I like Buffalo, I like the feel of the interactions there and how we're treated there. Maybe that's just because it's not the family I grew up with, so the grass is greener. But it's still nice. Christian's dad asked impatiently one night when we were planning on moving back there, to which Christian replied: "Find us jobs at the university." It was half-joking, half-serious. We may like Buffalo a lot and would probably be very happy living there, but the sad reality is that jobs there have shrivelled. The university, like all state universities, is being sorely underfunded. It's disheartening that preferable places for us are sometimes coupled with complicating job realities: Buffalo and to a good extent, New Jersey as well. It seems we've staved off the two body problem for a year or two, but I'm not looking forward to facing it again.
We came back to NJ June 4th; the next day we worked on stuff -- typing up a legal letter to our landlord that still hasn't given us our security deposit, as well as a few other pending matters. The next morning I drove Christian to Newark airport for him to head back to Lyon alone. We had a bit of a runaround finding the British Airways check-in since it wasn't on the third floor with all the rest of them. We descended what we thought was two floors, and were greeted with a sea of people and luggage clogging the hallways -- about a hundred people waiting to check in for an Air India flight. Luckily, some guy overheard us say "British Airways" to each other and told us it was down another flight. There it was far quieter and Christian was quickly attended to. We said an emotional good-bye since it'll be 50 days since we see each other again. We've done longer times apart before, but that doesn't make it any easier.