It takes some time to adjust to living in a new place and a different space: on this second night of Hanukah, I still can’t find where I packed (or unpacked) my menorah. But I have now been in Los Angeles long enough to begin participating in its culture, from that palace of culture, the LA Opera, to the street tacos cooked on a sidewalk grill by the butcher at the bottom of the hill I live on. I went to a talk at The Broad Museum, where I saw an amazing new piece by Mark Bradford and met an artist working on an economic census of LA artists. I joined the Huntington Library and Gardens because….GARDENS! and have taken off and landed at Bob Hope and LAX airports more times than someone concerned about global warming should. I’ve also learned that despite its population of over 13 million people, Los Angeles is small: I walked into a restaurant in Burbank and was greeted by a friend yelling my name who had moved to LA from Arizona a year earlier.

As I walked home from work at sunset tonight, I said hello to one neighbor who was taking out his trash and another just getting home from work, who greeted me with “hello there, it’s so nice to see you.” With that — and this view — I realized I have fallen in love with the city I now call home.