And how is your life in St. Louis?

Since our arrival, maybe a little after than that, that's the question we get most from friends and family. 'How do you spend your time in St. Louis? What do you two exactly do in a week?' And the curiosity targets me especially, I know, as my position and activities this year is much more blurred than Dave's. Everyone can imagine a school, but no one has any idea what I'm up to with my days.

St. Louis in a chilly night, from East St. Louis. 

By the time we've hit three months being in the USA (around early November), I am proud to say that we've developed a weekly schedule. A schedule that was built on goals, reachable and realistic ones. A schedule that has demanded a lot from us, created the sense of achievement after workdays, yet demanded not too much, didn't take away the fun. I don't even remember the last thing I was as proud as to this achievement. If I don't take home anything else from the States but the skill and ability to build my days from scratch no matter the circumstances, that's already a huge added value to my life.

At the beginning, we had to build up our daily routines out of nothing. It is funny, how time works - I think back to August and it feels like it was two years ago. We both - but basically me - were in the thin air, no institution whatsoever around us. (Okay, Dave has the MBA, but classes are held only on two days of the week in big chunks. So that's not much help for a harmonious weekly schedule.)

I had no workplace, no university courses where I could sneak in, no remote working projects. No language classes or any other appointments to show up. Not even a single yoga class to keep me on time. Nothing at all. In everything I was doing, I was accountable only to myself.  

Think, how rare that is in your life when you don't belong to any institution. Institutions regulate our days and weeks since kindergarten. Schools and university, workplaces, whatever - there will be some sort of official legal framework for the most part of our day. This is even true for your sports activity - it's set in a fixed place, fixed date, and there's an institution behind that service. 

Not having any of this is scary at first. What will stop me to spend whole days in bed if (when) things turn bad? How exactly will I gain experience from this year if I don't belong to anywhere? It took me weeks go get used to it. But once I reached that point, it has become an overwhelmingly liberating feeling. You suddenly have all the time you can possibly have, and all the freedom to do good things with your time. It's like a full year vacation! Imagine what can you do during that time. Things you always wanted to try. Things you long owe to yourself. It's like flying in the air. If you know how not to fall, you will never want to give up that level of freedom.

I made a huge list of possible activities and projects and downscaled it to a handful that realistically can be done.  I govern my days and weeks, answering only to myself, and I am super happy with that. I have no idea how I will transition back to the 'normal' institution-packed life. 

So here it is, how we start and finish our weeks, and what do we do in between.

Sunday

Our weeks start with Sundays. It's not because of the States, as here weekly calendars start with the Sunday. Even back in Europe, we both struggled to spend Sundays as part of the weekend. It is not a full-value free day, I start to recognize Monday is coming. So instead of starting Monday in a rush, our week starts on mid-Sunday. After a big sleep and a cozy morning, we plan together our week, go through the calendar, untangle some potentially tangled programs. I usually cook on the afternoons and set priorities for the week ahead. We walk hand in hand in the beautiful neighborhood and fall asleep after watching a great movie or parts from our current favorite series.

Cooking
Cooking and other household activities are a big chunk of what we do here. The cooking mainly falls on me, because I prefer to eat something that is surely delicious. It turned out, I get along very well in the kitchen. We are still alive, we didn't grow three times of our size in the U.S. (yet), and both of us truly enjoy our meals. This little piece of satisfaction was a huge plus at the beginning, the secure and stable part of our days spent in constant change.

When I mention cooking (and my satisfaction with my progress), I mean a lot of it - we eat cooked, home-made meals for every single lunch and dinner, seven days a week. Planning, coordinating, scheduling and executing such an amount of work was a demanding task at the beginning.

And since, cooking grew to a kind of art and pleasure for me. Music is on, and I completely lost myself while cutting veggies or preparing rice. And I'm more and more interested: diverse food, all sort of cuisine, cutting edge methods, raw material prepared in new ways. Recently I caught myself reading many food blogs (right after the morning The New York Times sessions).

Monday - Thursday

The really hard working days. We get up around 7 am, and after a nice morning routine, we ready to work by 9ish. During autumn, I focused on my TOEFL exam, and Dave targeted his MBA studies. Another priority for both of us is to introduce our UX (user experience) company, Webabstract, to the St. Louis IT and business community. So on most nights either only me or both of us are going to networking events, usually from 5 pm till 9 pm. It's super exciting, and to my greatest surprise, I like it very much.

The reason why I decided to get more involved with UX design and IT in general lays in my specific visa regulations, and I plan another post about that subject. But I am very satisfied with the current way of things, it forced me to open up from my NGO world toward new directions. As far as I'm concerned, basic IT skills, like coding, is going to be the new set and measure of literacy for the next generation. I really don't mind to pick some of that knowledge up in St. Louis.

Morning routines

Apart from me getting ready to attend Anglo-Saxon universities, Dave learning whatever necessary for his MBA program, and both of us managing Webabstract, some new and exciting parts of our days are our mornings. You know what? Given we don't have to get up early to outside demand, we have time for a great and comfortable morning every day. That is mostly because of the new morning routine we developed since we arrived. I was obsessed with productivity and morning routines over more than a year or so, and starting over in a new place was the perfect boost to root new habits into our life. So now, our mornings consist a bunch of new-wave stuff and a nice breakfast. No morning rushes anymore, and after the routine, we are usually super motivated and focused for the day (except, of course, when Trump wins the presidency and similar catastrophes).

Friday

Friday is the closing of the week, and our favorite day. During the autumn, we started Fridays by sitting outdoors in the next door café in the morning sunlight with a cup of real coffee and evaluated the week (throughout autumn, we had 15-19 C degrees, warm sunlight and ravishing colors, autumn was a true miracle here). We recognize what went well and what are the lessons learned. What I really like in these days is that we don't do everyday work - we rather look at our progress from a strategical perspective and plan ahead.

After that comes the reading session. It's a couple of hours long session during which we aim to read big chunks of important literature - about economics, international relations, society, and social justice, but also about business and marketing. We target the more difficult, academic readings for this focused time - and have some exciting plans what to do with the accumulated knowledge. 

Friday is also the day for cleaning up the apartment, and doing everything that you would label 'maintenance'. The only time of the week I'm willing to cook a two-course meal is for Friday evening, to single that evening out from all the other evenings.

This pic was made at the Webster University Libary.

Saturday

The day in Heaven. The day offline. The day in nature. The day in bed. The day in front of our favorite series. Depends on our mood, Saturday is dedicated to pure recreation. There is only one rule - there is no work (no matter the circumstances). Since we work together, this regulation was especially important to introduce, as otherwise, we would turn to two project managers somehow ended up living together. Saturday is our day as two souls, as a married couple, we walk around the Forest Park, visiting the zoo, discovering all the museums, boating on the lake. Whatever makes us joyful. St. Louis is a progressive city that offers a great supply of programs, with still plenty to discover during the winter.

This photo depicts me with the Arch.

The blog
I love having it and writing it! Anytime I have "editorial" meeting with Dave, we are always super excited, plan ahead, think about interesting topics and different angles for a particular story. The aim is to find a nice balance between writing about public subjects and letting you in into our everyday life - struggles and joy in the States as two immigrants. Actually, my obsession with writing came to point that I'm considering to become a writer :)

Dave gone wild at the Blues Museum. Still thinking of the name of the band. 

And that's a full circle. Of course, this is a description of an ideal, flawless week (and also one in which we don't attend a social event), but it still grabs the pattern of our life and the main activities that now forms our everyday experiences.

The credit for the photos goes to the one and only Dave, except for the last one. That was me.