It's taken a while, but here's update number one on life in Pittsburgh! Our first week here was orientation, during which the 16 of us got to know each other and started to get acquainted with the city. Lots of team-building exercises, which were surprisingly fun as far as team-building exercises go. The whole PULSE group this year is really quality people, and it didn't take us long to get comfortable with each other. I'm living in the newest PULSE house, and no one had lived here for some time before us, which means that we had a few plumbing/mail/appliance issues at the beginning, which thankfully have now been resolved. Each of the houses wrote a house covenant to refer to about chores, conflicts, house money, guests, or other issues that might come up. My house is eating together four times a week (plus a community meal once a week with all the PULSErs), and it's a lot of fun seeing what everyone thinks to cook.
Since getting here we've figured out where the nearest restaurants and groceries and churches and libraries are to us. We've been learning some of the quirks of the city, like the Pittsburgh left (when a car in the left-turn lane speeds in front of the cars going the opposite way to make its turn as soon as the light turns green) and how on buses you always pay when you're farthest from downtown, no matter if you're getting on or off. Pittsburgh is full of variety, and while I am easily confused by the counter-intuitive streets, at least there are usually cool murals or buildings to look at when I get lost. One day I walked from downtown across the Monongahela River to my work. Little did I know that the bridge I took would leave me on a roadway where to my frustration I could see my building down by the water, but I could see no way to get down the huge height difference and across several sets of railroad tracks to get there.
I started my job at Green Building Alliance three weeks ago. During my second week the organization had a huge event for its 20th anniversary, so now that that's over things are falling into more of a routine. I had very little previous experience with green building, so I'm learning a ton. I've been researching topics for the website, working on the Green Workplace Challenge (a Pittsburgh contest to get businesses and organizations to do as many green actions as possible), and handling other various tasks as they come. I just wrote a resource page about composting toilets, which I never imagined getting excited about, but they're super cool. Haha. I have a fair amount of discretion about how I spend my time, so I'm curious to see what other interests I discover and what direction this year takes me... My coworkers are funny and helpful and incredibly good at what they do, so I have lots to learn from them too. Last week I went to a networking event at a bar downtown, which was a whole new experience. I've never had a full-time job before, never had to commute 45 minutes to get anywhere, and I've certainly never had to try to develop a professional network. One PULSEr did suggest that maybe the Mennonite game is good training for networking. Another said networking is like professional flirting, which seemed to me to accurately describe the weirdness of it.
The hardest thing about the past month has been trying to strike a balance. I have a different schedule than I'm used to, and we've been so busy getting settled that other things have been neglected. My hope for this month is to have more time for maintaining relationships, more time to be with my own thoughts, and more time to explore. There's so much to do in this city (we already have a whole list of things we want to do this year), and even though we only just got here it seems like there may not be enough time to do it! But in any case I'm thoroughly enjoying these new friends and this new home.
