BONSAIS

The bonsais have mysteriously reappeared in Arnold Arboretum, and I'm taking this as a sign that Boston is officially convinced in the presence of spring. I really love the Arboretum. It's a park maintained by Harvard about a kilometer from my doorstep in Jamaica Plain. There are paths and marshy trails and a special little hut just for gutsy little bonsai trees. I was alarmed, back in October, when I had gone running to the top of the hill upon which the bonsai hut is perched only to find that they had been relocated indoors for the winter. Every time I've been jogging since then, "let there be bonsai" has been a prominent mantra in my adrenaline-deprived brain as I plod towards the arboretum.

Last weekend, I was walking around Harvard Square on Saturday morning, wasting time before I was due to play soccer with Dionysi and the physicists. Together, this team leaves theory at the office and transforms into an unstoppable force christened "Impertinence." The team name makes cheer-leading a much more interesting affair: Impertinence triumphs! Impertinence scores again!

Anyway, the city's transformation in the midst of springtime made me feel like I was in a different country--tulips had emerged, the occasional ant timidly scurried out from a sidewalk crack, and the bushes were slowly fleshing into brilliant green. I was, however, more amazed at the emergence of humanity: hairy shins, flowing hair, cracked elbows, pasty white legs freshly de-coccooned from scuffed-up Uggs, and of course, lots of cleavage bouncing about in every which way. Seeing as I've spent the last few springtimes in more conservative parts of the world, the revealing tendencies of the western sundress are a bit shocking. However, I feel that the donning of a sundress is a contagious bug for many women. Despite my immediate disdain for my American sisters' lack of restraint, I couldn't resist going out and buying a feisty blue number for myself that same morning. .

I've also joined a gym, thanks to the coercive nature of my co-worker, Sharon. I guess I didn't make it too difficult for her. I heard "next to the T" and "unlimited yoga" and I was pretty much sold. Gyms do give me a slight case of the heebie jeebies--something about people scampering about on indoor machines reminds me of a metaphor in a post-modern novel. We'll see how this experience progresses.

For Heit

I don't even quite know how to begin blogging again. This resurgence of emotional outpour via cyberspace is the result of the vexacious but clearly effective nagging tactics of Shannon Heit, my dear friend who continues to station herself in Seoul, Korea with one Kyoungseok Lee. I visited her there once. I still maintain that lunch at the temple in Insadong was the finest meal I have ever had ever ever forever. And I doubt that anyone in the world besides KS will ever bestow porcelain dolls of Korean villagers craddling kimchee in their tiny frozen arms as a parting gift. Mm. Kimchee.

So now I've been living in Boston since September, after a summer spent traveling to the larger dots on the map in the midwest, teaching yoga to my mother's coworkers, and reading The Economist on the backporch in Beaver Dam, WI with a New Glarus Spotted Cow beer clutched between my knees. You see I can't make things simple for myself, so the logical thing to do after coming back from Asia was to rebound geographically in one way or the other. I will say that I love Boston, despite the stress and challenges I've faced here. My group of friends is small but wonderful, there are poetry readings everywhere, and after two months at a terrible internship and another month of job-searching, I've landed a lovely teaching post at a small ESL school located on a college campus in a swanky area of the city. I mean, we're two blocks from Valentino. That's serious swank.

Boston also gave me a swift kick in the boot-ay towards applying to graduate school. I've been accepted to the programs in Southeast Asian Studies that I applied to at Cornell, Ann Arbor, and Madison, and it's looking as though I'll be back in the land of fried cheese and beer brats come January of 2010. I'll write more about grad school at a later time. Or maybe not, as the decision has already taken up the greater portion of my year thus far.

I live in Jamaica Plain, which is southwest of downtown Boston. It's a great neighborhood; I don't think I could compare it to any place in Chicago at all. Or any place I've ever lived, actually. It's a nice mezcla of families, students, and we working folks, and there is just so much green. Well there is now after a harrowing arctic winter from hell's most frozen tundras. There's a large pond about half a mile from my house, and I've been running around it each day after work. Today I saw lots of Canadian geese sitting calmly in pairs, and emerald-dipped mallards fighting over the lady ducks. I look pretty ridiculous when I run; I still haven't bought an ipod (mine was stolen a couple years ago), so I use a discman that's maybe seven years old, along with headphones that are larger than your average-sized tufty earmuffs. I like to think I'm a neo-hipster or "retro" rather than a freak.

Thus concludes my first blog out of Boston. This weekend I plan to run the pond, co-host a cook-out (you're all invited), study Greek, and finish at least one of the five books that I've started since February. Love, Hilary