Welcome to Arizona

Yesterday I made the trip from Charlotte to Phoenix with the obligatory layover in Atlanta.  After a few hiccups with the car rental, I made it to the apartment that I'm staying in for the summer.  Interestingly enough, I've never even actually spoken to the girl whose apartment I'll be occupying this summer, but based on a mix of communicating through e-mails/facebook and being surrounded by the books/movies/decor that fill her apartment I get the sense we'd get along pretty well.

This is only a few miles from my apartment.

The apartment is in a great location, as I'm right in between Old Town Scottsdale and some other area that is supposed to be cool.  I really couldn't have asked for anything better.  The complex has a really nice gym and several pools.  Obviously there's no squat rack as it's a 24-hour gym with no permanent staff, so I'll have to figure out some other leg stuff to do this summer, but it probably wouldn't hurt me to learn some new leg exercises anyways.

I still know very little about Phoenix (I'm actually living in Tempe and working in Phoenix, but for the sake of simplicity let's just call it Phoenix).  The best way I can describe the feeling of being here so far is just that it is weird.  I've lived in France twice, and yet for some reason being here sometimes feels more foreign than being there.  I think part of it is that at the moment, I know literally zero people within 500 miles of me (unless you count the guy in the apartment complex gym who said he liked my indoor soccer shoes).  I don't think I'll have trouble meeting people though, I've already put out some feelers on that front.  I also am not used to being in a foreign environment where the culture is still my own.  When I travel it's almost always to a foreign county, as while I've visited placed like Romania and the Czech Republic, I have never visited places like New York City, Los Angeles, or Chicago.

The plan tomorrow is to finish a few little housekeeping items and then find a cafe where I can just sit and get some work done.  I start work at the Goldwater Institute Tuesday, and I need to review the institute's current case docket before starting work.  I'll probably put up a post with some more details about exactly what I'll be doing sometime soon.  If I have time, I also have some reading to do in French on the conseil constitutionnel for my research with Prof. Wells this coming fall.