I just feel like writing about this, because I had a fine week and my life is about to change forever.
I’ve mentioned before that we’re moving to New Brunswick, New Jersey in August. My husband was accepted as a doctoral student in clinical psychology at Rutgers. We accepted this rather unwittingly considering we have lived in Michigan all of our lives and weren’t really sure what we were getting ourselves into. But a Ph.D in clinical psych is his dream and Rutgers is an excellent school for Social Work in my area of interest (immigration/mental health policy.)
So this week, being our 2 Year Wedding Anniversary the 11th of June 2008, we decided to go find a place to live. Conveniently, my beloved Aunt, one of the most important people in my life, lives in Syracuse. So we took a nice little 9 hour jaunt across Ontario, Canada, crashed with her for a night, and then drove the 5 hours from Syracuse to New Brunswick.
I must say I’m rather surprised by how freaking gorgeous it is on the East Coast. Syracuse leaves much to be desired, but the trip south from Syracuse through hilly, rural New York State, the gorgeous, curvy Pennsylvania and surprisingly green New Jersey was a pleasant surprise.
New Brunswick was also a surprise. I guess I expected industrial waste and unbearable congestion. What I found were lots and lots of trees and parks (19 parks in Middlesex County alone), and a clean, safe campus not unlike Ann Arbor, Michigan where I’ve spent most of my adult life. Despite its dense population, this place is very green, possibly more green than Michigan, and everything is conveniently located right next to everything else. Frankly, I love it. It’s green and heavily populated and you can’t sneeze without moistening a Spanish-speaker (that’s my target demographic, career-wise.) And also, people are very friendly, very interested in your story and very proud of their community. I already made friends with a lady living in our new apartment, way before we filled out the application. Even the financial agent at the bank where we opened a new account was willing to shoot the shit with us for a good 30 minutes and answer all of our questions about the place.
We looked at apartments with a sense of harried foreboding, having only two days to get it done. Rent is twice what is costs where we live now but fortunately we’ll be living double-income with the almost certain benefit of student loans. No place we looked at was bad–some better than others, but certainly no dumps.
Because our life together seems to be miraculously blessed, my husband and I found the apartment of our dreams. We ideally wanted something closer to campus, within a ten minute drive from a running trail. What we found is a 900 square foot apartment (we gain 300 square feet with this move) with gorgeous parquet wood flooring and no monthly cat fee (this is almost unheard of.) The best part of all is that this particular apartment happens to have, as its backyard, a 60 acre recreational park with tennis courts and baseball diamonds and a running trail that attaches, across the river, to a 450 acre state park for a combined 4 mile running trail in our freakin’ backyard.
(CITE! )
The apartment is also 2 miles from my husband’s campus, about 1 mile from the Social Work campus, and a 10 minute walk from the train to New York City.
So basically it couldn’t possibly be more perfect. We have been approved and are moving on August 6thish.
Having successfully found a place to live, we drove back to Syracuse and spent a wonderful day with my Aunt and her husband. They were getting droolingly jealous over our description of New Brunswick, and are going to spend the upcoming weekend in New Jersey trying to decide if they want to move there (her hubby has a contract to fulfill working for Lockheed Martin since they paid for his M.A.), and there happens to be a Lockheed in Cherry Hill and Edison both. Having my Aunt in the same state as me would be heaven. You can’t imagine how much I have missed her – she’s like a big sister to me and we are alike in countless ways. We have also shared experiences growing up that nobody else could really comprehend. I am trying not to get my hopes up.
Ok, so we drove home. 29 hours driven in 5 days, and we are here, home, at last, with my beautiful cat, and I realize this won’t be home for much longer – New Brunswick will be home, for at least the next 5 years. Trippy. Now all I have to do is find a job and prepare my own Rutgers application.
My husband and I have had a wonderful 2-year anniversary and it’s just really great to share life with him. For the record, I really love him and wouldn’t have wanted to share this experience with anyone else. I think the Universe approves of our union. I can’t comprehend how else we keep getting so blessed.