I'm back in Iowa, and surprisingly, I haven't really felt much need to "adjust" because my home here is more or less the way I left it in May. And my body remembers its routines in this space. On the first morning, I hopped into the shower after my workout as if I'd never been gone, turning the knobs for the tap just so for that perfect mix of hot and cold, reaching for my face towel hanging just outside the curtain on the towel bar without having to look. It was so familiar it was eerie.
It is nice, too. Last year, when I arrived, everything was new and awkward and I was anxious about learning how the bus system worked and uncertain about where to get my books and ID and parking pass and bombarded with orientation meetings in buildings I couldn't find and welcome-to-campus potlucks among people whose names I couldn't keep straight. This year, all I had to figure out was what I wanted to get from the grocery store for dinner on my first night back.
Interestingly, though, I'm also a West Coaster -- at least, in the eyes of the new first-years from California (I've met two, one from Los Angeles and the other from San Francisco). On our lunch break from TA training today, we ate with a girl from Hawaii. Add to our group another Seattleite who found us earlier this morning, and suddenly the "I'm from a time zone significantly behind this one" club has its charter members. And I'm one of them, even though I've barely spent more than six months in Washington -- ? Well, yes. I feel more at home talking with these girls about life on the Pacific than I do talking with Midwesterners about growing up in Illinois. But maybe that's because Midwesterners don't talk much (comparatively speaking) and those growing up years were very awkward in general ...
D and I also made our localness official on my last day in Seattle by getting library cards. We spent most of Saturday morning and early afternoon downtown, with the goal of enjoying being out and about so we wouldn't mope in the apartment about my having to leave the next day. One of the places we had intended to explore all summer was the Central Library, which is an incredible ten-story contemporary structure in the heart of the city. Parts of its stacks are arranged in a spiral going up the center of the building, and you can wander from floor to floor without having to use a single stairwell. Escalators are available, though, if you want to take an express route through those levels. The top floor space is devoted to a sun-soaked (but comfortably air-conditioned) reading room and a special collection of Pacific Northwest reference materials and rare books. This promises to be a great place to retreat to during those occasional heat waves in the summer (one of which we endured over the weekend).
So that's the latest landmark in Seattle that we've gotten to know. Iowa has a few of its own worth noting as well -- including the "World's Largest Truckstop"(!), which I passed on the way back to school:
I had intended to take a picture of this place last year at some point, but I never got around to it. Now that I have, I can say that if the Central Library is interested in a copy, I know exactly where they can shelve it:
In all seriousness, I do wish Iowa had a home for the printed word as attractive as what we saw last weekend. All the same, I've also heard good things about the public library here. Maybe I'll check it out as well, if only to give myself an escape from the academic aura (read: tension) that dominates the quiet corners of campus where I'd ordinarily hole up to work. Being local is fine, but I'm in no hurry to feel like an overtaxed grad student again.
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