As of today, September 1st, 2011, I am a resident in Portland. I picked up my keys today and I'll be moving in tomorrow. Internet will arrive on September 7th. I'll be starting up a garden when I'm settled in a bit.
It feels like such an accomplishment, completely different than apartment hunting in Turkey. In Turkey there was never any doubt that I was going to have a place to live; it was in my contract with the school. I lived in the dormitory until they found a flat, so I didn't have to worry about cramping a friend's style as I've been doing here in Portland for the last couple of weeks. The process of looking at prospective apartments went something like this: the head of the English department and her real estate agent would walk me into a building, talking rapid-fire back and forth in Turkish as I pretended to know what to look for and waited for the key information - price and quality of the kitchen - to come out in English eventually. Eventually I decided on an apartment namely based on appearances and recommendation. The school set up utilities and Internet and showed me how to pay my bills.
I never had anything to worry about. But this time I had to do everything myself, so it feels like an accomplishment. Good thing there wasn't any Turkish involved or I would've been sunk.
To celebrate I took a nice long bike ride down part of the Springwater
Path. The loop is 40 miles long, but I only went for 6.5 miles before
breaking away. Enjoy some photos from the excursion:
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| Tideman Johnson City Park |
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| 72nd Ave at Holgate |
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| Tideman Johnson City Park |
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| Where allergies come from... yikes! |
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| Willamette River |
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