Greek In the Big Apple

Friday March 9th leaving the city on an Amtrak train bound for New England. I find myself back in familiar and familial territory this weekend, traveling by train from New York to meet my parents and good family friends in Greenfield Massachusetts. Train travel in the U.S can be an interesting harrowing, and educational experience or just a plain drag depending on what you want out of traveling. Many commute with trains every day others take long distance trains from city to city... Train travel is quite different here than in other countries in Europe I've been too recently. France for instance has an extensive, well developed, high speed and modern train system, people rely on the TGV for fast reliable travel between cities in France as well as Belgium.  Greece on the other hand does not... Train travel in there is frowned upon and very badly maintained. Very few use trains to travel from city to city and those who do don't have a very pleasant experience to recount. It

Filoxenia /Gratitude φιλοξενία / ευγνωμοσύνη  I have now been in New York for three months, and after many weeks of searching, I have finally found my little corner of the city to call home...What one may call a room of one's own.  When looking back at the past three months the generosity the open hearts, the open homes, and the care I have received from my friends here in the city has been the corner stone and building block of my new life here. It brings me to tears to realize that without these wonderful and amazing people I would not have been able to survive let alone get a start in this new path. There are old friends who have opened their homes, supporting me in this effort by reassuring me while lending an encouraging word at moments of doubt, and new friends who have helped me in small and big ways from helping me find work, to looking for a home and listening to my rants in order to keep me sane and focused on my goal of transition. I don't know how I could

Early morning in New York City is a rare time of day. It's an opportunity to see and be a part of a rare ritual of moving from night into early morning even before everyone else starts their day. This beast of a city moves at a rapid rate at all hours of the day and night but there are those few hours just at the edge of dawn where the city is almost quiet. For the past couple of weeks I've been waking up at 6.00am heading to morning Mysore Ashtanga practice at the Ashtanga Yoga New York studio on Broome street... the studio is run by Ashtanga Yoga veteran teacher Eddie Stern. He along with his wife and a team of lovely assistants have been my yoga family since the first week of my arrival here in the city back in December. Every yoga student needs a yoga family and since I've been here they have been my yoga family. Now that I walk in the studio I see some of the same people every day doing their Asana practice and in a rare moment of coming in to the studio at 6 am I w