This is me....my first year in Boston.

Hello everyone! My name is Jeny. I just got back (on May 8th 2010) after spending four and a half months in Nepal. I am starting this blog as a medium to express my thoughts and feelings(sometimes random!), meanwhile trying to find myself sorta 'lost' between the two countries. I had a wonderful trip that I will be posting about later with pictures.

Thirteen years ago on June 1997, I came to the USA and have since been living here in Boston. I was 20 then. Years later, here I am living in one of the biggest and the best countries in the world, the USA.....a whole world apart from my own country, Nepal.

I came here as a quiet, reserved girl in the peak of my youth days not knowing what to expect from this country or it's people. The culture shock was huge and the language sounded very foreign even though my English language scores were the one of the highest in my middle and high school years. The first month I was in Boston, I got to stay with a bunch of Nepali girls in Somerville who I came to know about through my uncle in New York just that very first day in Boston! Luckily I found out that they were looking for a roommate for a month which meant I had a place for myself for a month. They came home around midnight from their restaurant jobs and drank beer and wine and a couple of them smoked cigarettes too. That was my first culture 'shock' of the many to follow. In Nepal, none of my friends drank or smoked or came home at midnight. I quickly realized that coming home at midnight was quite normal for people who worked at restaurants and that there was nothing wrong with having a glass or two of wine after work. Smiling with strangers was ok here. I'd never smile or talk to a stranger in Nepal, especially if they were men!

I spent the first few weeks looking out the window down on Somerville Ave, crying all the while questioning myself 'what am i doing here', 'what am i going do next', 'where am i going to live and with whom'....and above all, I missed home a lot. Before I knew it was time for me to look for my own apartment...the first apartment of my life. I had come to know a lady who was also looking for one so we decided to look together. Everyday, I went through Boston Globes and Boston Heralds looking for apartment ads but not knowing how close/far Cambridge was or Everett, Malden, Arlington, Belmont, Revere, Chelsea, or Framingham was. We finally found one in Arlington that I heard was 'not very far' from where I was living in Somerville and even though it was a 4 bedroom apartment for $1500, it would 'quickly be filled up' even though it was just the two of us looking for an apartment. Not knowing any better and therefore trusting 'their inputs', I quickly made arrangements and paid $3000 for the first and last month's....the last remaining chunk of money that I had with me. It was a 'first floor, 4 bdrm, one bathroom, eat-in-kitchen apt right on Mass Ave at the intersection of Brattle St.' The two of us settled in with a few of our suitcases.

One day in November, it started snowing. Despite being from a Himalayan country, I had never 'felt' real snow. So snow was very very exciting for me. My shout kind of echoed through my hollow apartment as I ran out right into Mass Ave and started jumping up and down in my pajamas. How silly I must have looked to the people passing by in their cars.

Trying to find roommates for the two other rooms and then living with a whole lot of them, not to mention sharing 'a' bathroom is a whole different story! It took us 3 months and getting on the 77 bus for days and posting our "roommates wanted" signs all over Porter Sq and Harvard Sq only to come back and find out that most of them had been ripped out because we had put them up in the prohibited places. Nonetheless, we got calls from all kinds of people, some Spanish guys who barely spoke any English, an Indian couple who needed a room for a month, another Indian man who was coming from Sacramento,CA and needed a room for three weeks, a Nepali couple with a little boy. The family moved in, soon followed by a couple of Nepali students.

My first part-time job was of a waitress at a Korean restaurant in Allston. I had a 12hr shift and by the time I got out of work, it would be close to 11pm. The first few days my ankles hurt so much from standing all day that I sat on the ground while waiting for the train. I'd take the Green Line to Park St, get on the Red Line there, get out in Porter Square and walk 15 minutes to my apartment at midnight. At times, a car or two full of drunk guys would pass by and yell out words in Spanish which I never understood to this day! A bunch of other jobs followed and thus slowly but surely I got myself in the groove of the American world.