The most devastating blow so far was my visit to the local Great Harvest Bread Company. I didn’t make it until Saturday, but I’d been looking forward to it all week. The moment I walked in, however, I sensed that Great Harvest here is not the same as Great Harvest in Provo. Sure, they had more free samples—samples of bread the moment you walk in the door rather than after your purchase, samples of jams, samples of dips and spreads. This, I decided, was a bad sign rather than a good sign. It meant that this Great Harvest is a place where you shop for gift baskets and holidays and brunches, not a place where you stop to pick up your weekly loaf of bread. Sure enough, when I asked how much a loaf of honey whole wheat bread costs, I was told $4.00 (fifty cents more expensive than Provo), and that they only come in the round loaves rather than the pre-sliced rectangular loaves, and that you can special order a rectangular loaf for $6.00 that is one and a half times the size of the loaves I picked up in Provo. I left the store feeling disheartened, wandered into the neighboring grocery store, and picked up a loaf of bread there. But I’ve already made a peanut butter sandwich and a grilled sandwich and toast and none of it tastes quite the same. Store-bought loaves, even the “good” kind, just don’t do it for me anymore. Perhaps I’ll start making my own bread again.
But the other changes haven’t been quite so rough. Some of the things I’ve noticed:
- Apartments. I actually quite like my new apartment—the walls of each room are painted different colors (my room is sort of a turquoise color, but it’s better than it sounds), the refrigerator is small but is also only being split between two of us, we have a dishwasher (which I haven’t used yet because it just seems so much more convenient to wash my dishes by had right away), and we have hardwood floors so we don’t have to vacuum. But I’m also learning to deal with some of the inconveniences I haven’t dealt with for awhile after living in houses for the last three years. I forgot about being able to hear the people upstairs, about floors creaking and pipes running and late night phone conversations drifting down through the ceiling (who talks on the phone at 3 a.m.?). I forgot about hauling trash out of the building to the dumpster (all the way around the back and then up a longish flight of stairs—that will be fun in the wintertime). I forgot about saving quarters to do laundry, although fortunately the laundry room is close by and in the wintertime I will not have to spend more than 2 seconds outdoors in order to get there. I forgot about parking lots and parking passes—we have one between the two of us (one parking pass, that is), and so we’ll have to rotate it week by week or month by month. And the parking lot entrance/exit lies at a relatively sharp angle with the street, meaning that when I first came I scraped bottom about 75% of the time. I’ve managed to get down to about 25% of the time, and I’m hoping to get better as the year goes on, but it’s not much fun to navigate.
- Furniture. It was strange moving into a completely unfurnished apartment. I managed to populate my bedroom with cheap shelves and bookcases (which still aren’t quite enough), and a family of some friends who lives up in a Detroit suburb provided me with a bedframe and mattress, a dresser, a kitchen table, a coffee table, and a loveseat. The latter two are the only items of furniture in our living room which would be quite bare if it weren’t for the dozens of empty boxes that keep piling up as my roommate and I unpack. Getting the furniture from Farmington Hills to Ann Arbor was a trick, requiring two there-and-back trips (there in my car, back in their van, there in the van, and back in my own car), and one amazing unloading trip in which I managed to move all of it up about a dozen steps and into our apartment (even the loveseat) all by myself because my roommate was at the temple and I didn’t have phone numbers for anyone in the ward. I was aching when I woke up the next morning, but I have to admit I was quite impressed that I was able to transport all that furniture on my own. I also don’t want to have to do it again for a very, very long time.
- Running. I liked the route I ran this morning, but I’ve got to find more than one running route, as well as an “expandable” route for long runs. The problem is that all of Ann Arbor looks the same so far. It may just be that I don’t know the area well enough yet, but in Provo my runs felt a lot more interesting. There’s just no change in the scenery around here. I will run along a street lined with trees and wooden houses, and then turn onto another street lined with trees and wooden houses. The only change is when I make it onto a four-lane rather than a two-lane street, or when I run past a high school, or when I find myself near a shopping center (and shopping areas aren’t much fun to run in). I am hoping things get more interesting as I come to know the area because I would hate for my running to be compromised.
- My office space. I complained about my office at BYU when they made us move upstairs—no view out the window, a chalkboard instead of a whiteboard, no easy access to the building entrance. But I really didn’t have that much to complain about. Mind you, I’m not complaining now. But it’s strange to have my office replaced by a cubicle in a working area with several other graduate students. And we’re in the basement. In fact, to get to the meeting area for the research project I’ll be helping out with until a new one starts next semester, I have to weave my way around boxes and dormant furniture and literally duck under several large water pipes. I’m not worried—I’ll get used to it.
- In fact, the whole campus feels just a little less…up-scale, I guess…than BYU campus. It is a decent campus. The law school is beautiful, and there’s a lot more history in the buildings in general, most of which have been around for awhile, and some of which have been around longer than BYU has been in existence. But it’s a state school, with different funding sources than a private school like BYU where every time a building begins to feel more than about ten years past its prime it gets added to the list of buildings to tear down or gut or re-paint and re-carpet as soon as the previous projects are completed.
- Social events. Scholastic social events, that is. We have opening socials scheduled for Sundays—I guess that shouldn’t be surprising, I just didn’t think to expect that I would have to deal with the Sunday issue. And at any school-sponsored event where food is available you can eat as soon as you’re ready—no waiting around for someone to ask the blessing. Of course that’s to be expected, but it’s a difference I didn’t think of ahead of time and it always takes me a second to remind myself that there’s nothing to wait for.
- Dress code. Or lack thereof. Again, this is not something that’s bothersome to me, but it is something I notice only because it’s not something I saw much around BYU. The thing that catches my attention the most is the facial hair, and the thing that catches my attention second-most is sleeveless shirts. And there’s language, too. During my very first five minutes at my orientation on Thursday I listened in to a conversation between two girls sitting at my table in which one of them managed to use the “mother of all swear words” and the names of two of the three members of the Godhead (with very non-religious connotations) in one breath. Fortunately, most people (even in the “real world”) realize that such language doesn’t make a good impression in general and it’s nowhere near as bad as the high school I taught at in Virginia. But I do have to adjust to being in an environment where “hell” and “damn” (pardon my French) cause no raised eyebrows or slightly-audible gasps or nervous laughter, as they do in the Provo bubble.
Hooray for a return to internet access!
2 comments:
Good to see you made it safely.
I know EXACTLY what you mean about not having enough bookshelf room. I have basically three walls full at home, and still there's never enough space for the next book. Argh! I cannot wait until I am rich and can afford a small lending library.
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