Today is the 15th of April. Taxes are due. It’s spring in New York: friends are posting pictures of cherry blossoms and other blooming things; Husband has been getting up at ungodly hours of the morning to watch the Mets play baseball or to watch the NY Rangers, who have not yet tanked the Stanley Cup playoffs.  (The joy of sport is alive and well and sleepless here on the 37th floor). At breakfast, Husband is all “the Mets are on a real winning streak…” and his optimism is another sign that spring is in the air. (And, like spring flowers, this optimism lasts until early June, when it wilts and dies.)

Why does it matter that it’s spring in New York?  As I say to my students as they struggle with their essays, “what’s the so what of your argument?” I can hear you saying the same thing: what’s the so what of it being spring in New York?

Well for one thing, spring means that the semester is almost over.  Exams start May 10th and then the students leave for the summer, which means that my teaching year is over. But how can that be? I mean, didn’t we just get here?

And at the same time, haven’t we been here forever?

No. We haven’t been here forever; we’ve been here for exactly eight months, as of two days ago. On our four month anniversary, I wrote a post comparing that four month marker to the fourth month of pregnancy, which is (usually) when you can let out your breath after the worries of the first trimester. But by the eighth month of pregnancy, the novelty of being pregnant is over.  Your back aches; your feet (which you haven’t seen in several months) throb; you haven’t taken a deep breath in weeks because all your internal organs are resting on your lungs, displaced by the blob that ate Manhattan now cartwheeling in your belly;  you have the sneaking suspicion that you might, in fact, be pregnant forever.

And so. Here we are. Eight months into expat life, which now seems less like an adventure and more like…life. Continue Reading →