I set foot here about 48 hours ago and there’s already so much to tell.

Day 1

When I was packing my things, I had a sinking nervousness where I worried for all the unknowns. I had figured out all the big stuff a few months ago. I scored great flight tickets and a nice place to stay near work. But there were so many other things that had been on my mind. I’ve never lived in a city before and I had all the naive anxieties on my mind. I had the irrational fear that as soon as I exited the uber from the airport, I’d get snatched. I’d instantly be picked out as a scared, inexperienced college student and shipped away to god knows where.

I boarded my flight with this low-grade anxiety simmering. I planned to continue writing my honors thesis since I had not touched it in months. That never ended up happening. Instead I ended up chatting the whole 7 hours with a new friend! It was crazy how two people can randomly get along together so well. I actually want to write a whole article about this so I won’t get into the details and I have to hurry and write this before getting ready to sleep tomorrow.

I ended up learning a lot from my new friend as well as my uber driver about the complexities of living on a visa in the US. My parents immigrated here when I was young on a visa like them, but that time in my life is nothing but a distant memory. Especially because I wasn’t mature enough to even understand what a visa even is. I always wondered why they were so worried about their Visa credit card from expiring. My friend and the driver both had to work harder and longer beyond anything I would ever consider doing. I am privileged enough to not have to search for visa sponsorship and apply to 700 job applications. I was already fed up with 60.

I ended up going to the grocery store and making a few meals for myself. I’m still learning how to cook but I’m slowly getting better!

Day 2

I’m still fighting off a sinus infection I contracted just a few days before my flight so I desperately needed to stop by a pharmacy. I had seen this in videos but practically all the shelves in the store were locked away unless you asked for it to be opened. And there was a guard out front, or as one internet user put it, “the big necks out fron”.

I made myself some lunch which was composed of two fried eggs and a baked potato with european-style yogurt.

My mission for the remainder of the day was to figure out how to get around the city. I have never biked in a city so I had test run navigating to my workplace. Honestly I love how bikeable San Francisco is. Plus where I live in the Mission district has everything I need within a 10 minute walking distance.

For those of you who know me, I have had a fascination with calisthenics for a very long time. For those of you who don’t know, calisthenics is basically body weight workouts meant to be done with minimal equipment. I think there is something incredible about how you can train your body to do insane feats with next to nothing. For the first time in my life, I have access to an outdoor gym 5 minutes from my work. These gyms an altar for the body and mind… and broke students.

I’m not as jacked as I want to be, far from it. I’ve been plagued with back and knee issues for the past 8 years and have finally been making meaningful progress in actually reducing my pain. It’s nothing permanent. Mostly just muscle weakness and extreme tightness due to sitting all day with poor posture. Everybody tells you have important it is to have good posture but it honestly sounds like a joke. It’s hard to understand until it’s too late and you’re losing sleep over a bad neck. So let me spell it out for you

POSTURE IS IMPORTANT OR ELSE YOU WILL BE IN FUCKING PAIN!!!

Today for dinner I made myself fried garlic chicken with yogurt sauce and my salad from yesterday as a side. Definitely one of my new favorite recipes.