new places

Learning a new city with new views and new bridges. 

New corners to memorize and new streets to explore. 

The buildings don't reach as high and the lake is now a bay.

It's street lights twinkle to a different tune and the windows glow with a new light. 

Snow is now fog 

and summer,winter and spring are all now fall. 

And fall is summer. 

The faces are strangers instead of friends

A phone company stands where gum used to.
and I found out where all of Chicago's hills went... San Francisco took them....
but the sun is bright and the air is fresh
the views are bolder and the skies are bigger
and for once I can see the stars. 

I have started to think that

all the nice people in the world live east of Salt Lake.- but yesterday I was proven wrong.

Let me back up.

Ok so this weekend I am spending some time in Salt Lake for a NPWH conference. Its a huge women's health conference and once I got to the Oakland airport yesterday I realized when seeing the long gypsy like skirts and beautiful scarves that filled gate 11 -my flight was going to be filled with midwives all heading to Utah for this same conference. Thrilled, I began to plot exactly how I was going to position myself to connect with one of these women and ultimately ask them to please please pretty please precept me and teach me everything they know. I know... I know.. that is a fairly large request but I was hopeful.

Well long story short I was sitting no where near any midwives and quickly regretted my decision not to book a Southwest flight. However, that flight was the beginning of an amazing and reviving few hours. I sat next to two women who had beautiful spirits and I really do believe us crossing paths was not an accident.  We talked about so much -which is weird for me- I am not a spill-your-guts-out-to-the-complete-stranger-type but there was something so welcoming about these women. The more I talked to them the more I realized how worked up I have been about so many different things going on in my life and the more I realized I was loosing focus on the truly important things. It was just refreshing to talk to someone who didn't know me or anything about me.   They had such a healing way about them and their genuine sense of compassion was something I haven't experienced in a stranger in a very long time. Their words held so much love and their wisdom was far too heavy for that small plane. Walking off that plane I realized though midwives were on my mind- God knew that I needed something else more entirely. After meeting and bumping into (literally) so many not nice people on the west coast- these Californian women gave me a little hope that maybe there is some of that Midwest mentality in the sunshine state as well.

Just to top things off- that evening was filled with so much laughter and joy. I met up with two good friends, one from college and one from the hospital in Chicago. We spent the night reminiscing and filling each other in on missed life events and just enjoying each others company in the beautiful scenery of Utah.

It was wonderful to take a break from all the craziness and stresses that have been clouding my mind and just bask in the sun.  Life is such a wonderful thing and it can be so easily tainted with bull shit. .  This trip has weirdly helped me regroup, refresh, and gave me a lot of new perspectives. ( and non of them are, ironically, women's health related) The conference somehow ended up being the perfect little retreat and I am now re-centered and ready to take on the world. 

and just in case you were wondering... I still do not have a preceptor.

not quite there yet

I have been hesitant to blog about the move and my thoughts thus far on this new city mostly because they always say first impressions are never right. But... I am tired of getting texts from everyone asking me to post so here we are!

To be honest these past 2 weeks have been nothing less than a whirlwind and while I would love to summarize everything and give some profound insight into the world of San Fransisco, right now I am struggling to fit my thoughts into nice little neat sentences. There is just too much going through my head right now and until I can take a minute to start digesting everything I can't really answer that question, " So how do you like San Fransisco? "

All I can say is that change is uncomfortable and new things take time to get used to so I am just trying to let the dust settle and trust in the process.

Until next time..