11 Oct The Leap

I decided to take my twelve year old daughter with me on a semester as an exchange student. This is what I remember from arriving San Francisco July 23^rd 2015: One thing I noticed about the San Franciscans is that they are usually eager to help out finding out where to go and how to get there, especially by using their smart phones. We had the BART from SFO to Civic center, went over ground to see street art, homelessness and chaos, and down the stairs(no escalator down..) with heavy suitcases again to find out where Muni tickets could be purchased, after confusingly different answers from eager helpers, and finally ended up in West Portal. The typical San Franciscan land lady of the house where we rented a room in for the first week, came and picked us up in her car.

We learned about how to handle the draught, recycling, where to buy groceries, some Muni routes, Clipper cards, added tax, earthquake preparedness, it’s hot and it’s cold, how SF used to be 30 to 50 years ago, cars matches pastel coloured houses, what’s that, excuse me, bless you and how to keep the chickens in the backyard safe from the raccoon at night. That’s only some of it. After the first night in Portola Drive we went to the San Francisco Educational Office on Franklin street to apply tweeny ( the years in between child and teenager)to a middle school, since the information I got researching earlier told me we had to have an SF address to apply. Then I started the process of searching for housing on Craigslist, Places4Students, Uloop and Facebooks SFSU Apartment Roommate Group and other web sites who could possibly have a place to stay for mother and daughter. This was going to be tougher than I could imagine..

But I still had my mantra strong shouting in my mind: The adventure is out there, and so are we!

Soundtrack: “Married life” by Michael Giacchino from the Pixar movie “Up”