I'm back...and in Brooklyn

Whelp, so much for trying to keep a blog throughout my first year of teaching.  Blame it on fatigue, stress, business, or sheer complacency, but after a full month of not writing I realized it just wasn't going to happen.  But this time I'm back, and hopefully here to stay for a little while longer as I explore this new territory called The Big City, a.k.a. Brooklyn, a.k.a. My New Home.

My move isn't 100% official yet, but I just got my Brooklyn Public Library card so I'd say it's close enough.  I'll be going back to my small town home once more before moving here for good, but in the meantime I'm doing my best to make my new apartment and my new neighborhood feel as close to home as I can.  Though I've gotta tell you something: it's hard.

You see, I grew up in a small town with a population well under 50,000.  I'm used to wide streets and big backyards, two-story houses with separate two-car garages. I'm used to a 15-minute round trip to drop off a book at the library, free and ample parking spaces and giant lots, and something like the Cheers theme song, where everybody knows your name.

I'm also used to pretty much one language and one accent (though thickness varies) throughout the city, one widely accepted set of traditions (though I typically did not share them), one primary religion (not that I was a part of it).  I'm certain I'm not giving my home town nearly enough credit for the diversity that does exist there, but by New York standards I come from a pretty cookie-cutter Wonderbread kind of place.

Okay, okay, so I did go to college in a big city.  Well, in the context of my own state, anyway.  New Yorkers don't even recognize the city when I mention it.  But even there I didn't feel the city was overwhelming or multitudinous.  Actually, all things considered, I really enjoyed living there.  I'm a bit sad to have left.

So here I am, a small town Jew in a giant metropolis where people live on top of one another, where languages, ethnicities, traditions, and dress codes bump and shove and glide and mix with one another like splatters of color in a Jackson Pollack painting.  Beautiful to some, jarring and uncomfortably chaotic to others.

With this change comes a shift in the purpose of my blog.  This time 'round, I think I'll need this space as a way to process everything I'm experiencing and to share it with all the people who can't be here with me in person.  This is the biggest, grandest, most terrifying adventure upon which I've ever embarked, and this blog might just be the one thing that keeps my head together.

Join me, won't you?