WV week one

Exactly a week ago, I was somewhere high up above the Atlantic, hoping my plane would make up for enough of the 1.5 hour delay so I wouldn't end up stranded in New York. As it turned out, we got stranded above New York - Long Island to be precise. The fierce winter weather had battered the area badly, so air traffic was in a mess and we were made to fly loops (in heaps of turbulence - my stomach may tell you; but I'll keep things civilised) for another hour-and-a-half. "Luckily", the flight to Pittsburgh was delay just as much and immigration was as easy as a walk in the park. (I guess that's the advantage of not being allowed to land: there are no queues on the ground - everyone's still in the air.) Add in another hour's delay for the luggage which did miss the plane and my ETA in Morgantown quickly turned from Wednesday 6pm into Thursday 1am.

In the seven days since then, I have mainly been exercising my patience and doing my best not to get too upset about just how insular the world still is, 66 years after the founding of the UN (and 90 after the founding of the largely irrelevant League of Nations). Amongst the things which I reckon some internationalism might do a lot of good to, are fun exercises like getting a national identification number (why does that need to take a month? Why do I need three? (luckily I didn't need one in Australia) - and why can't I do _anything_ without one? I do have a passport so they know who I am, right?), figuring out how taxes work (I seem to be exempt in the US, they tell me. Whether that means that I should pay them in Belgium instead, no one knows), opening up a bank account (and figuring out how this bank is different from all the banks you've known before: all banks have largely the same yet different things, but they all name them by different names), figuring out what you must, could and should do and in what order - and getting sent back a lot because you needed to get B done before A, which in turn should be done before C, G, F and J, of which you don't know the desirable order yet. Also, you'll have to do all of this in as little time as possible, but before anyone else does anything, you'll have to wait a long while. The trick seems to either be an expert at international justice, international and national finance and tax policies and international relations or to love walking, not to mind anything and to take _everything_ _everywhere_ _all_the_time_, whether they say you need it or not.


I guess I've spewed enough frustration both in the previous post and paragraph, so I'll leave the whining at that. Now for some happy information. I've got a mobile phone (cell phone?!) and I even figured out how it works. I've got a desk (which is temporary, since it's actually Paulo's desk and he'll be back from Arecibo in April) and I've got a place to live. Since there's nothing quite as enjoyable as a socially functional shared house - and because I imagine it might do me well to have some people guide me into American (and West Virginian) culture, I decided to try and find a shared house - in which I succeeded in no time. So since last Sunday, I've been living in a home inhabited (besides me) by three undergrads from the Pittsburgh region (which is fairly close by). I can hear the surprise, wonder and worries about "undergrads", but so far I'm astonished at both the cleanliness and lack of noise in this place - I've known undergraduate housing where you'd fear for the health of the rats that might live there; these guys (well, two guys and a girl, actually) seem calm, relaxed and pretty clean. There hasn't been too much social interaction yet (well, I've hardly been there myself yet), but I imagine I'll have more to say on this topic sometime soon.

Two great assets of the house are provided by its location: it's in Star City. Now which astronomer wouldn't love to live in a place with that name? Also, it's located right on (well, right next to), the trail - I could throw a rock from my bedroom window and hit a jogger. That trail brings me to another fact that might interest (some of) you: I live about an hour's walk away from uni - that means that the same time it took me to bike into Swinburne, can now be walked. I'd call that progress, especially if I tell you that Morgantown is the best walking city in West Virginia. However, don't get carried away about that: if any of the cities I've lived in before were in the running, I know who would have won easily...

For those who are still thinking about that hour's walk: it's really not that bad: the trail also passes right next to uni, so I could just get a bike and ride for 20 minutes or less - it's really quite close. At present, though, the trail is covered in a dangerously unpredictable combination of snow and ice, so biking isn't really an option - and neither is running, sadly. So for the time being - while the surrounding hills are being covered in the refreshening blanket of Appalachian snow, I walk about 25-30 minutes and catch the PRT.