Six Years in Numbers
Six years ago, almost to the minute, we first arrived in California. It had been a long, emotional flight from London to San Francisco. Our visas to the US (and thus all our future plans) had been bungled and we'd been stranded in the UK for weeks, presuming on the hospitality of our friends. We were newly married, exhausted and broke. When we touched down in San Francisco, I cried: tears of relief and fatigue. Tears of hope, for a new chapter which was beginning.
We thought it would be a shorter chapter: "Three years", we said, "and then we're coming back to South Africa." But there was much we didn't know then. We didn't know that Jeremy's extant Masters degree from UC Berkeley would count for nearly naught at UC Davis, and that he'd pretty much have to do another Masters degree. Add 1.5 years. We didn't know we'd have our children here. We didn't know how much the job market would change during our time away.
Three years became four. Then five. And now six, and I'm feeling quite emotional about it all. So I decided, as learned from various male-engineering-analytical types in my life, to try and make sense of it all by using numbers. So here are our "six years in numbers":
1 - degrees obtained
2 - children born
3 - addresses lived in
4 - trips to South Africa
5 - countries in which our immediate family (2 parents and 2 siblings each) live spread amongst.
6 - wedding anniversaries celebrated
8 - email addresses which currently work
9 - hours time difference between us and our parents
10 - hours time difference between us and our parents in winter
12 - national parks visited
14 - pounds gained since I first arrived (granted, I was VERY skinny on arrival - see prior note about being broke and exhausted. And I had a baby 7 months ago. But still.... yikes!)
32 - overnight house guests
37 - restaurants visited in downtown Davis
47 - weddings invitations received (26 attended, 21 regretfully declined)
280 (more or less) - Sundays at First Baptist Church
544 - facebook friends acquired
58,479 - good memories (conservative estimate)
We thought it would be a shorter chapter: "Three years", we said, "and then we're coming back to South Africa." But there was much we didn't know then. We didn't know that Jeremy's extant Masters degree from UC Berkeley would count for nearly naught at UC Davis, and that he'd pretty much have to do another Masters degree. Add 1.5 years. We didn't know we'd have our children here. We didn't know how much the job market would change during our time away.
Three years became four. Then five. And now six, and I'm feeling quite emotional about it all. So I decided, as learned from various male-engineering-analytical types in my life, to try and make sense of it all by using numbers. So here are our "six years in numbers":
1 - degrees obtained
2 - children born
3 - addresses lived in
4 - trips to South Africa
5 - countries in which our immediate family (2 parents and 2 siblings each) live spread amongst.
6 - wedding anniversaries celebrated
8 - email addresses which currently work
9 - hours time difference between us and our parents
10 - hours time difference between us and our parents in winter
12 - national parks visited
14 - pounds gained since I first arrived (granted, I was VERY skinny on arrival - see prior note about being broke and exhausted. And I had a baby 7 months ago. But still.... yikes!)
32 - overnight house guests
37 - restaurants visited in downtown Davis
47 - weddings invitations received (26 attended, 21 regretfully declined)
280 (more or less) - Sundays at First Baptist Church
544 - facebook friends acquired
58,479 - good memories (conservative estimate)
posted by Bronwyn at 8:43 pm
2 Comments:
Funny how graduate degrees seem to take twice as long as your most liberal estimate.
I, for one, am glad you have been here so long. :-)
Wow - six years - that's how long we stayed in Joburg after planning for a year or two!
Miss you :-)
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