Running Away

M and I drove up to Needham last night, stopping briefly at the Tarrytown, NY Metro North Station to pick up J. We are excited for Hughesgiving and also for a little long weekend away. I picked up Adam Gopnick's "Paris to the Moon" this morning and immediately fell in love with it. This made me need to blog again:

"You can't run away from (a) reality, (b) American culture, (c) yourself," our friends all said, compositely. "But you can run away," we said under our breaths, and we did.

Beautiful.

Where to Go, Where to Go?

HE PASSED!

I'll write a longer post in a bit, but wanted to record my elation that Matty CRUSHED the FSOA and the security and medical clearances should be started in the next few weeks. What a rush. I am so proud and excited!

I heart Philadelphia

I grew up only 13 miles from this city in the beautiful suburb of Bryn Mawr. My parents still live in the house where I really came of age and in the backyard of which M and I were married in May 2007. My childhood experience of Philadelphia was museums and field trips, cultural events and community service projects. I have fantastic memories of being in a small group selected to visit the Betsy Ross House (not sure why) in 1982, and I remember a trip to Independence Hall with my junior class for Core. Mom, Laura and I, all dressed up, made many trips to the Academy of Music for Christmastime performances of The Nutcracker. An artist drew pictures on a blackboard with colored chalk during a rendition of Peter and the Wolf by the Philadelphia Orchestra. It made classical music absolutely come alive, and also, I think the conductor collapsed and they had to ask if there was a doctor in the house. I can't find this incident via Google search, but it would be such a weird thing to have made up! I even sang in that gorgeous hall when the Orpheus Club invited the Bel Cantos to join a concert in 1994. Though I have never seen any of the Rocky movies, I have sprinted up the famous stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art for crew team work outs and Mom taught us the different types of columns standing at the top of those steps. Over the last three decades, I have visited and learned about important works of art and history within that beautiful building and the first weekend that Matt met Mom and Dad, we spent a Saturday in March, 2005 at the Dali Exhibit. Laura and I learned about elephants and pigeons at the zoo. We learned about poverty, humility, humanity and basic residential construction with an organization that provided home repairs and renovations for low income families.

A beautiful childhood notwithstanding, I never expected to return for more than a visit after I left for college in the fall of 1995. I certainly didn't want to move to the suburbs and I never gave Center City Philadelphia any real consideration as I was making plans. As luck would have it, Matt was offered a very prestigious position with the Fall 2007 class at the Philly Public Defender's Office and we bought a beautiful little house and settled in here so easily. Getting to know Philadelphia from this very different perspective has been a real treat. We love so many things about it, not least living so close to my parents and now the Little Bee.

We went on a lovely walk today and Matt took a few photos (pretty good quality for Blackberry photos, I think.)

Incredible ironwork on houses in Old City:













If you click to enlarge, you can see children apparently learning to march in formation in the Revolutionary Army on Labor Day, 2009:
Matt's favorite flower, the Morning Glory, Ipomoea purpurea:

More beautiful ironwork:
Flower baskets hanging from a lamppost across from the Philadelphia Stock Exchange at 3rd and Walnut (F&O*. Founded in 1790, PHLX was purchased by NASDAQ July 2008):
*When we first moved here, my Uncle J explained that we would find many of Philly's attractions to be F&O (the First & Oldest in the country) and/or FBF (Founded By Franklin). My new hospital, The Pennsylvania Hospital, happens to be both! Not sure about PHLX.

It's an honor just to be nominated....

Matt and I took all of next week off and we leave for Washington, D.C. on Wednesday morning. The big day is September 10th and I can't believe it is almost here! The last few weeks have really flown by. I've been very busy at work and am absolutely loving my job. Matt is busy defending the accused, as always, but has also been spending significant chunks of time studying and preparing all the paperwork that he must bring to D.C. Plus, we've been trying to get a lot of sleep, but get up early and get regular exercise, and we are just constantly on the go. Philly is fantastic in the fall - the air temp has cooled, the humidity has passed and all the students are back as of this week. It makes such a difference; there are so many more good looking people in this town in the non-summer months!

We went to a wonderful birthday party for our friend C last night at C&W's beautiful house. We love all their great friends and I feel pretty torn about leaving whenever we have the chance to spend time with them. Luckily, this Foreign Service Oral Assessment is a REALLY difficult test to pass. Matt is feeling confident and is certainly well prepared. We even have a brand new, bright white, Brooks Brothers athletic cut dress shirt, which our dry cleaner pressed out perfectly for the big day. Matt's shoes are at the cobbler for new soles (President Obama got his campaign shoes re-soled instead of buying new ones, so we're following his example) and WE ARE READY! But, realistically, very few people pass this step and I am trying to be totally open to the possibility that we might very well spend another great year in Philadelphia.

Lucky us.

On the other hand, during our walk this morning, we decided that if I am able to keep my women's health career going at our various posts, I could have a blog called The Foreign Cervix. Nice, right?

Sitting Here in Limbo

My little sister, B, is celebrating her 24th birthday on Saturday. We are going to Chifa for some comidas latinas, and Matt and I are very excited. However, as of today, we are not only celebrating her birthday. It seems B got herself a job as a research coordinator in a certain Urology department. This should be incredibly fun! I am hoping that we'll be able to do some interesting work together. But, wait, there's more. Little B has applied to the Penn post-baccalaureate program to complete her pre-requisites before doing the Penn NP program. I am beside myself. How amazing to have two NPs in one family. I would love to work together, we could be such a force, and I know she wants to do psych and behavior change therapy which is so important in female (and male) urology. I feel extraordinarily torn between feeling excited about the FS life and feeling excited about what could be if I stayed here. I am trying to really compartmentalize today. We have 15 more wake ups and a duffel bag drag and I do want to enjoy these two weeks. If Matt doesn't pass this time, we have already decided that we'll try again. And, I'll remain in limbo, but will definitely enjoy doing female urology with B and A!

Mom and A will be here bright and early for our WMW (Wednesday Morning Walk) so it is time for me to turn in. What an exciting day for B, we have so much to celebrate at Chifa.

The Final Countdown!

I don't know why today marks the beginning of the final countdown, but we had 17 days until the OA when we woke up this morning, and we are pumped! Having spent the first year (almost) of our relationship split long distance between Boston (MGHIHP for NP School) and DC (GWU for Law School), Matt and I are very good at whittling down remaining days. We do the old "if you don't count today, and you don't count the day of the OA" and "if you don't count the weekends" and pretty soon, the OA is tomorrow. But, I know it actually will be tomorrow before I realize and, pass or fail, the Monday after Matt's OA is September 14th - an official fall date for sure. I am doing my best to enjoy the rest of summer 2009, and my best effort is pretty good.

My ten day vacation in Cape Cod with the Hugheses and Maine with Mom, Lisa, Becky and Matthew was sensational. I took hundreds of pictures and got a few fabulous ones. I kept saying that I have no idea how one hundred and fifty years of history were captured on film before the advent of digital photography. This is not completely true. I have a large wooden box of photos from my semester abroad in Australia that answer that question in a word: badly. But now that I have a digital camera and the magical powers of Picasa the pictures are really improving.

Matt, Toby and I have a goal to work out everyday through 9/9/09 (when we'll drive to a fancy hotel in our nation's capitol). Today we ran to, along and home from the Delaware River Waterfront. It was a lovely evening, even Camden looked good, and I am nice and sleepy now.