Reset
Two weeks of biking 6 km daily later, I think I'm confident with my biking now. Sacrifices made amounted to bits of my right leg and a pair of glasses. Considering that I haven't biked in 10 years, I'm pretty happy about that.
Going uphill is still a challenge, but that's probably related to the fact that my lower gears buck me harder than a horse. I'll get that fixed eventually.
Overall, a leisurely 30 min commute to school doesn't sound so bad.
Though if I could, I'd probably go back in time and point out to past me that I was planning to live on top of a hill. Like... literally on top of a hill. Well, no risk of floods.
Two years later, I'm still not quite used to one particular aspect of American culture: people often say what they don't mean here.
It's not an undocumented phenomenon by any means: fakeness, superficiality, it goes by many names and is described in countless guides. Be it planning for events, planning for the future or even just planning for tomorrow, I've lost count of the "let's do X sometime" invitations that proceeded to fade away. As far as I can tell, the correct protocol is to smile, nod, and mutually agree to not mention it again.
It does get more than a little tiring, but I'll get used to it some day.
That's pretty much the only "warning" for America that was accurate, though. Alcohol, drugs, guns, etc - yet to drink, smoke, or get shot at in my life so far, and it isn't really difficult to keep it that way.
I haven't entirely decided on how I'll separate my blogs yet. I do prefer this format and theme in general, but I'm too lazy to come up with a new one right now and so the blogspot defaults will have to do.