Would parking next to this give you a complex? No wonder my Saturn has started to look so old and dated… Anything does when it sits next to this car for a few months at a time.
Actual photo from our space in the parking garage in Miami of a neighbor’s Lamborghini.
We’ve been back in Nashville for about 4 days now and we couldn’t be happier (even though we haven’t had any time to enjoy it). We absolutely love being here. We know unequivocally that Nashville is where we want to be for the rest of our lives, we just have to move around for a couple more years before that can happen.
Our last days in Miami were fun, but chaotic. Andy had a huge paper and a ton of studying to do before his final day on Friday. We sort of tried to celebrate my birthday, but since it was the day of the final and he had a paper to write, all we could really do was dinner and a little bit of shopping. We went to dinner at my favorite restaurant, Brasserie Les Halles, for some amazing French food. I ordered the Petatou de Chevre for my appetizer; it was sort of a warm potato tart with kalamata olives and goat cheese. It was insanely rich and delicious. Andy, of course, got the onion soup, which he described as “too cheesy.” Never in my life has Andy uttered those two words, so I nearly died of shock when he said it. For our entrees, I ordered the hanger steak with shallot sauce (probably the best thing I’ve ever tasted) and Andy had the roast lamb. For dessert, I had the best chocolate mousse outside of France and Andy had creme brulee. I’ll probably miss that restaurant more than just about anything about Miami.
On our last night in Miami, Andy and went to the restaurant we had frequented the entire time we were there, Balans. We had a cocktail as the sun set, had dinner, and made a final visit to my favorite clothing store (a great little boutique that was filled with all the things I like and that fit me). We talked about our favorite memories from Miami, things we would miss and things we wouldn’t. We agreed we would not miss the traffic or the necessity to speak Spanish. We will miss the convenience of our building, the gym, the pool, the security, and the fun neighborhood. We will miss being able to walk to dozens of great restaurants and walking to the grocery store. I will miss having a nail salon in the building. We talked about our favorite meals (mine was at Brasserie Les Halles, Andy’s was at the Delano), our favorite excursions (the zoo and the Seaquarium were tied), our favorite place to hang out (wandering around Merrick Park), etc. Overall, living in Miami was a great experience, one we don’t regret at all. We missed Nashville and we missed our friends and family, but never were we unhappy in Miami. If we had to go through the Miami program again, we would do everything the same way. Nevertheless, there’s no place like home.
Happy Easter, everyone! We spent our holiday making the very long drive from Miami to Nashville (14 hours in total), but we’re very glad to be home. There’s much to say and many stories to share but those will have to wait for another day. For now, just know that we have made it home safely to Nashville and will be spending the next few months here. Come visit!
Last last week, I got a call from our friend Jeff asking if it would be okay that he visit us for the weekend. Of course we excitedly said “yes” since we’ve been missing our friends terribly. He got in late Friday night so we picked him up from Fort Lauderdale and headed back home. We chatted for quite a while, since being stuck in traffic and sent on a detour facilitated extended conversational exchanges. We spent much of Saturday and Sunday at the pool, enjoying our last few days of Miami sunshine and giving Jeff a break from the confusing Tennessee spring/winter back-and-forth weather. The rest of the time we mostly went out to eat, enjoyed a few cocktails, and ran an occasional errand. We don’t have the best guest accommodations here (poor Jeff was stuck on the couch) and since Andy is very nearly done with the semester, his free time was hindered by a paper and some studying, but it was still a very nice (and exhausting) weekend.
One of the hardest adjustments we’ve had to make since being back in the US is that we feel like we’re having to reform a lot of our friendships from scratch since we were gone for so long. It’s almost as if we have to start over at the beginning with many of our relationships because our nomadic, Bedouin lifestyle is not exactly conducive to staying in touch. I know when we get back to Nashville it will feel the same way, feel like we’re starting over, but at least we’ll feel more like we’re at home. In just a few days time we’ll be back in the city we both call home, surrounded by many of our closest friends. Miami has been wonderful to us, but it just isn’t home. Get ready, Nashville, we’ll be back on Sunday!
First and foremost, there’s new music up on our music page. Andy finally uploaded some songs he worked on over the break. They’re both some of the best work he’s worked on – cover songs of Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time” and Oasis’ “Wonderwall.” It’s good stuff. Once he takes the Step 1, expect loads more music to appear when he finally gets some downtime.
Also, we’re just three and a half weeks from moving back home sweet home to Nashville, so I’ve started thinking about what we’ll miss about Miami. I did this with Dominica, but honestly there isn’t much we miss about it (actually, I can’t think of anything except some of the people that we miss), but we’ve enjoyed our brief stay in Miami much, much more. We love how convenient our building is to restaurants, shopping, and all our daily essentials – our neighborhood is filled with character. We love being able to walk a block or two to sit and have a great meal, a glass of wine, and some gelato and then go for a walk after dinner; it’s a far cry from sitting at home watching TV endlessly like we did in Dominica or worrying about machete-wielding invaders. I love, love, love having a gym in the building. I’ve been working out five or six days a week, running, lifting weights, and feeling better than ever; we’ll see how I fare this summer when there isn’t a gym in the building anymore. There’s also a very affordable and very good nail salon in the building, so I’ve been able to get manicures and pedicures each month and all I have to do is take the elevator downstairs. I always feel very safe in the neighborhood and even more safe in the building. The pool area is flawless. Frankly, I just love our building more than anything – the convenience is fantastic. We miss our friends and Miami traffic sucks and it’s kind of expensive here, but living here has been a great experience that we won’t soon forget. Nashville – get ready, we’ll be back on Easter Sunday!
After a fun excursion to Fritz and Franz’s Bierhaus in Coral Gables for Andy’s birthday dinner with Ashley and Ryan, we kept the birthday weekend activities rolling with a trip to the zoo. We always love visiting zoos and this was one of the best we’ve seen. The Miami Metrozoo is enormous – we walked and walked and walked. I should have brought my pedometer just to see how far we actually walked. We arrived before 1pm and walked non-stop until 5:00 and just barely saw everything once. Naturally, our favorites were the typical “zoo animals” – tigers, giraffes, zebras, elephants, etc. However, we had some other favorites this time. The giant tortoises were interesting to see because these tortoises made the Giant Galapagos tortoises look like dwarves (they were easily 500 pounds). The koala was super cute – sound asleep, curled up on a branch right in front of the viewing window. 
It was a fun day, but a long one. By closing time we were starving and completely exhausted. We headed to a nearby mall and picked up some crappy Chinese food (we had a craving for the not-remotely-authentic Chinese fast food) and came home to relax in our hot tub. Sunday was a much quieter day, with studying and reading by pool. Andy’s birthday weekend, which started out devoid of any plans, ended up being restful, fun, and wholely entertaining.
We decided to make our way across the causeway with the goal of exploring Key Biscayne, continuing our very slow exploration of the Miami area. Every week we seem to tick off one or two things on our to-do list and since I hadn’t seen Key Biscayne yet we decided to head there. We drove straight to Bill Baggs State Park and the first thing we did when we arrived was rent a surrey. Andy has wanted to do this for as long as I can remember and I’ve been saying “no” everywhere we go (“it’s too expensive,” “it’s lame,” etc.) – Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, San Francisco, and everywhere else that has them. I owed it to him, so we rented a 2-person surrey for an hour and started pedaling. It ended up being a ton of fun – we pedaled for about 3.5 miles on tree-lined ocean-front bike paths. Anywhere there was a path, we took it. After an hour of surrey-riding, we went to the lighthouse and climbed the 117 stairs to the top and saw the most magnificent view. We saw downtown, South Beach, all of Key Biscayne… it was spectacular. After slowly but surely treading back down the 117 steps, we went to the beach. However, this was not the best decision. It was incredibly windy, sand was biting into our ankles and our shoulders, and the strong winds quieted the heat of the day. After about ten minutes, we left the beach and decided to head home. It was a successful and beautiful day, unfortunately, it just wasn’t a great beach day.
Another thing I’ve been exploring lately is my French repertoire of cooking skills. I made filet with sauce porto a l’eschalotte (shallot-port sauce) and Andy said it was probably the best thing I’ve ever made for him (which is saying a lot since I’ve been cooking for him for about six years)… and on the list of the best filet mignons he’s ever eaten. I also made coq au vin (chicken braised in red wine), and roti de porc au lait (pork roast in milk). They’ve all been incredibly delicious. I love the freedom I have with cooking now – if a recipe calls for a a pork roast, I go buy one. If it calls for filet mignon or shoulder steak, I go buy it. If it calls for chicken thighs, I buy them. These were not things I could do on the island and I’m slowly getting used to this newfound grocery freedom. Anthony Bourdain and his Les Halles cookbook has become my new cooking bible (if you like French bistro fare, this book is amazing). There are a lot of recipes in the book, so there’s still more to try, but this French cooking repertoire exploration is proving to be a lot of fun – and delightfully delicious!
I really wanted to title this post “Porn for Women” but knowing what I know about search rankings and the permanence of the internet I decided against it. Nevertheless, if you have ever seen the book of the same title in a book store, you understand the reference. If not, I’ll explain. The title sounds lewd and lascivious, but as soon as you open the book you see photos of (clothed) muscled men doing dishes, vacuuming, cooking, cleaning, ironing, and doing all those other tasks that women really wish the men would do. I had a moment like this a few days ago when Andy vacuumed the apartment (without me needing to ask him to). Now, when Andy vacuums he gets every crevice, every nook and cranny, every speck of dust and cat hair; he uses each corresponding attachment to ensure the carpet and floors are spotless. It really is an awe-inspiring sight – he even vacuumed the cat hair off our comforter. It was my own version of “porn for women.”
Besides the house cleaning, we were able to enjoy our first whole weekend off for the first time in a long time. We wandered the shops at two different outdoor promenade-style malls, saw a movie (for the first time since the middle of 2007), went to the pool, and did normal weekend errands like grocery shopping and laundry. It was actually a really nice weekend, even though that sounds pretty mundane. More than anything, it was just nice being able to do whatever we felt like doing and have a wealth of options at our fingertips. Who knows what this weekend will hold for us – it could be anything, because finally, after a year and a half of nothing but limitations, our recreation options are practically limitless.
I wish I had exciting stories of traveling around Miami, stories about sightseeing, unique experiences, or fun things, but we really haven’t done anything while we’ve been here. Andy’s spent most days shuttling between classes downtown, classes in South Miami, clinicals in Pembroke Pines (which is like 40 miles away, so with Miami traffic it takes about an hour and 45 minutes to get there), Spanish class, and certification for ACLS. In his “free time” he was also expected to study for his giant comprehensive exam (which 60% of the class usually fails) and do a bunch of assignments. Fun, right? Well, the good news is he passed the comp without any problems and has managed to stay on top of all these assignments, despite how much work this has been (as a side note, he was told that only 40% failed this semester so I guess things with the comp are improving). This schedule should slow down a little bit soon, once the certifications are out of the way and some of the stress of the first few weeks has passed. We’re looking forward to a weekend off, but we haven’t had one of those yet and won’t have one this weekend either. Oh well, maybe the week after. We’ve been here for two weeks and we haven’t seen much beyond the boundaries of our building.
I’m back at work on a set schedule and really enjoying working from our building. My office just gave me a Blackberry so I now have two Blackberries to keep up with and keep track of. I have been going to the gym during my lunch break every day; unfortunately, my metabolism seems to have slowed to a crawl and it hasn’t made much of a difference. After work, I always make dinner and it seems like cooking is so much easier now than it ever was on the island – I never seem to have a hard time incorporating vegetables and healthy food into our diets in a way that never seemed possible on the island (which was an awful lot like Lost at times, Marianna!). Old island habits seem to die hard though; I was making Krista’s enchiladas the other night (which were awesome, Krista) and I actually caught myself worrying about leaving the oven on for a long period of time in case I would run out of propane. Now, we don’t have a propane stove, but I don’t think I’m completely adjusted to the US yet. I find myself worrying about generating too much laundry, too, but then I remember that I have a washer and dryer in the apartment.
So there isn’t much to update about; it’s all working and studying for the most part. We will have visitors over the next few weeks, so as people come and go we should have a few decent stories and pictures. I do have one story, but it’s one of great frustration; it was one of those moments where I realize that just because we’re in America, it doesn’t mean that EVERYTHING is easy. I was trying to track down a varicella vaccine for Andy (that’s a chicken pox vaccine for all you non-medical folk reading this). The school recommends one clinic that they have an agreement with, so I called them up. The woman I talked to said she had no idea if they had the vaccine in stock and that if they did have it, I would have to call the doctor on his cell phone to schedule something outside of office hours because he’d be out of the office most of the week. She said she’d call me back. A few hours later another woman from that center called saying she still didn’t know about whether they had the varicella vaccine or if I could make an appointment for this week; being completely useless, I gave up on this clinic. I moved on to the next name on the list of locations recommended by the school, except they didn’t have phone numbers. So I Googled them and came up with a number for one – they didn’t seem to speak any English, which made it pretty difficult to get an answer. I then dug out my insurance card and started looking for primary care physicians in the area. I called the first one and got no answer. I called the next one and left a message (they still haven’t called me back). Then I went to the next one and the woman who answered didn’t know what “varicella” was; I took this as a negative sign and hung up (what kind of person in a doctor’s office doesn’t know what varicella is?!). I finally got a decent response at the next number. A man answered and put me on hold to see if they had the vaccine. They did, then he put me on hold again to find out how much it would cost. 3 full songs played while I was on hold (one of them was Jefferson Airplane – it was a radio station for the 60′s and 70′s). He comes back on the line to tell me that they can only give the vaccine if Andy gets a full physical, too. I told them I didn’t need that, that I could send a letter from our primary physician that he was in perfect health and just needed the vaccine. He said that the doctor refused and would only do it if he “became a patient” and they billed our insurance. I told them that I was not willing to have them charge me for more than I needed or wanted and that this kind of greed was absolutely unacceptable. I hung up angrier than ever. I called the next number and they had the varicella, but only in the children’s dosage. Next number: they were out of the vaccine and had ordered more, but it would be a while. However, the woman at the desk gave me the number of a clinic that would definitely have it, or so she said; I took this with a grain of salt. I called them and sure enough they had the vaccine, in the adult dosage, and they didn’t need to examine Andy’s insides to give him a stupid shot for chicken pox (and just charge me more than they already would). Thankfully, after an hour of making phone calls, I finally had an appointment made. This frustrated me so much because I don’t feel like getting an appointment to get a shot should ever, ever, ever be this difficult; things are supposed to be difficult in Dominica, not in America. If Andy had just gotten the chicken pox as a kid (like I did in the first grade from Robby), none of this would have been a problem. Oh well… c’est la vie!
After an incredibly busy week filled with work and school and very, very early mornings for both of us, we were very much looking forward to a lazy Sunday when we could sleep in all morning. In fact, I had been looking forward to it all week. It felt like such a rare treat to be able to sleep in past 8:00, since it had been many weeks since we’d done it. Well that plan was spoiled by some incredibly loud music. I awoke with a jolt, thinking it was just some passing convertible with their music set at an unnecessarily loud level. But even in my dreamy state I started to realize that the glass on our balcony is far too thick for a car to project that much noise. Furthermore, the music wasn’t stopping. I got up, bleary eyed and angry just before 8:00, and made my way to the balcony. Looking down at Brickell Ave., I could see one whole lane blocked off with bicyclists riding by and a band set up at the building next door to ours. It was the ING Miami Marathon and our house was right around mile marker 25.5. The hope for a lazy morning flew out the window because the commotion from the race was only beginning. The music, the endless stream of people, did not cease until about 1:00. We did, however, have an excellent view of the race.
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