June

Our first mini-break (with a friend)

We've had a very eventful June.  Mike got a job and then quit the job (the same job), we started volunteer teaching our Adult ESL classes for Columbia University's Community Impact, we went on our first mini-break, we were almost killed during Tropical Storm Andrea, we moved to East Harlem and we celebrated 14 years of wedded togetherness. See. Very eventful.

We didn't do much to celebrate our wedding anniversary.  We don't really celebrate it.  We do celebrate the day we met, which happens on July 3rd, though.  The day we wed is arbitrary but the day we met, that was destiny.  Still, we did enjoy a lovely Vietnamese meal of Bun Xuong Nuong to mark the occasion.

Friday at Governors Ball

Tropical Storm Andrea kicked our asses.  We didn't hear any music at the Governors Ball Music Festival on Randall's Island due to the pounding rain and gale force winds but we still had a good time volunteering at the Doing Art Together booth and we'd probably do it again.  Maybe.

After the hardest apartment search ever, we finally found a place to call home.  It's a railroad apartment in East Harlem, "El Barrio", at 1st & 106th, on the 4th floor of a walk-up.  We've now spent just over a week there and our first impressions are that it's much more "neighborhoody" than our old place (sidewalk BBQs, evening conversations lingering outside open shops) with a ton less tourists.  It's also an easier commute to my job at East 43rd and much closer to Central Park (where I've always wanted to go running).

Our new apartment

We went on an evening passeggiata in our new neighborhood the other night but were diverted by our first "salvaging" opportunity.  We wound up grabbing a lovely desk and two chairs off the sidewalk, all solid wood and quality pieces.  Now we have four pieces of furniture to help our new place feel like home (we bought an air mattress earlier).  Hot tip: the end of the month (aka moving day) is a great time for salvaging.

The first half of 2013 has proven to be much more challenging than we had ever anticipated.  But, now that we have a permanent place to call home, maybe other things will begin to fall in to place as well?  Wouldn't that be nice?