2025 moments recap and moving forward into 2026!

2025 recap - some good things, some hard things, and some wishes for 2026:

I'm grateful for the beauty, togetherness, and all the hard lessons that 2025 brought.

My wish for 2026, for myself and everyone, is that we may move forward in a good way, incorporating what we've learned, open to new lessons, and giving the best of what we have to give for the benefit of all. 

These are some collages I made to capture some moments that are meaningful to me from 2025.

This one is all about Portugal and Spain 

And this is more Portugal as well as Montreal and NYC 

And finally this, from CT, NYC and Portugal 

Thank you for still reading this blog, and I truly wish you the very best in the new year, with peace, harmony and good health!

Christmas in Montreal

Sena and I are in Montreal, spending time with my parents. Aiyana is in China with a good friend, visiting her family in Chengdu.

My sister was also in Montreal with her family and we all spent Christmas day together.

I'm grateful for everything, but most of all for everyone being in good health.

Currently, I am still living at my sister's, but am in the process of buying a house. Hopefully it will be all settled by spring time, although I am really enjoying living at my sister's, and I will miss them all when I move out. But I will not move far. I've gotten much closer with my nieces and want to continue being near them and involved in their lives.

Other than that, I am looking forward to planting a garden in my new place in 2026. I am also looking forward to visiting Aiyana in Istanbul, where she'll be studying from February to June. 

Some pictures from Montreal over the last few days:

If you're still reading this blog, thank you! I hope you're well and wish you the very best!

Peace 

Two weeks now

Some bright things recently:

Living with my sister and her family has allowed me to get to spend much more time with my nieces, Stella and Lucy, and it's been a lot of fun. I love their energy and insights and our conversations are a real source of joy and inspiration for me.

At school, things have been very busy, but also lots of good stuff going on. For example, last Friday, my civil engineering class and I went on a field trip to UConn. We assisted to two lectures, one Reinforced Concrete Structures, and the other Mechanics of Materials. We then visited a structures lab. It was really fun, and my students really enjoyed the visit and got to ask questions and have good conversations with the college students in the classes we assisted to. Their youthful excitement and eagerness reminded me so much of how I used to feel, and I am grateful that I am in a position to facilitate this type of experience for them.

In my time off, I've been reading Oppenheimer, American Prometheus, an amazing biography, of a very unique person. I love reading about Oppenheimer's range of interests outside of physics, including philosophy and literature and nature. He was such an interesting and complex person. I also really like reading about the ethical debates that took place at Los Alamos as they were designing the bomb. I personally think that ethics is and should be a crucial aspect of science and technology, and I try to incorporate it in all the classes I teach.

That's my update for now,

Peace 

It's already been a week!

It's been a week already since I moved out! I wanted to share a little of my journey through this transition. 

One thing that's always bothered me in adulthood is this pretence that many of us put up, that our relationships are great and that we've got it all under control; we keep the not so great parts well hidden.

I understand why we do it and I myself have done it for years. It's embarrassing admitting that everything is not okay despite our best efforts. And we do it to protect the people we love as well.

In any case, I do wish that there had been more role models of how to navigate real relationships with real people when I was growing up, rather than the glossed over expectations that you'll meet the perfect person and fall in love, and everything will just work out from there. But who knows, maybe those glossy expectations are truly what's best. In any case, life will be sure to teach us.

Anyway, I would like to be more genuine as to how things can go sometimes. More specifically, yes, it's possible to meet a good person and it's possible for things not to work despite all your efforts. There's nothing to be ashamed of in that, which does not mean that it won't be really hard.

Anyway, now that I've been living at my sister's for a week, it's been nice and nurturing, and I've been feeling some long forgotten parts of myself resurface a bit. This morning for example, I felt a return of that feeling I had when we both lived in Clinton in 1998-2000, which was so sweet and cozy and nice. I’ve become quite a different person over these past 25 years, and developed some good as well as some bad habits along the way. But I'm realizing that some of the core good things in my life have stayed; and it’s really nice to discover them again.

Amongst these core good things, I count: Roxi, and now her family as well, and my connection with the natural world, my curiosity, my sense of wonder, and of course the family that Ed & I created – Sena and Aiyana. And hopefully my relationship with Ed will continue as a source of goodness for us both, albeit in changed form.

And my mom and dad are still healthy, which is really good.

So all in all, the overriding feeling I have today is one of genuine gratitude for my life and everyone and everything in it, as well as sense of curiosity moving forward in this big beautiful world! 

Peace

Life update

This blog has seen me through a lot of transitions, and there's a big one happening now, so I wanted to share it. Ed and I are separating. I will be moving in with my sister and then eventually to my own place.

Unsurprisingly, this is not easy, but Ed and I tried really hard for many years, and we have reached the conclusion that the kindest thing is to basically follow our own separate paths moving forward. I deeply care about him and he will always remain a monumental figure in my life. 

Peace

Updates about my email

For friends reading this blog, I wanted to let you know that I've barely been using my yahoo email and I plan to discontinue it altogether. If you'd like to reach me, the best email is:

ralucamocanuus@gmail.com 

(note the double u)

Back home

Traveling can break us open, rattle our little habits, face us with the truth of our filters, preconceptions, fears, and other ruts we fall into as we lead our habitual lives. 

Upon returning, we have the opportunity to put ourselves back together again, hopefully incorporating what we've learned about ourselves, others, and our world in a kinder,  more open, more generous and understanding way than before. 

I had a beautiful time travelling, and I am grateful to my sister and her family for welcoming me into their family vacation. I am also grateful for the week I had by myself. There were some hard times for sure, but also many beautiful times. 

Thank you Portugal and thank you Cordoba Spain 2025. My hope now is that I may use the understanding I've gained to move forward in a good way, contributing something positive to something outside of myself.

These pictures are from my last couple of days in Lisbon

Peace

Religious pluralism?

Spain, and Andalusia in particular, is a great example of how 3 different religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism can try to coexist with various levels of success over time. 

At times, it does seem that they may have succeeded in coexisting in some kind of harmony. I want so much to believe that they did. But I don't think that's the case, and when it was, it didn't last.

Personally, I find it very dismaying and dispiriting how each of these religions, though imbued with beautiful sentiments at its core, in practice is used to justify oppressing and killing others, all in the name of being the "chosen people".

How is it possible for people of different beliefs to live in such close proximity to each other as people in Spain and Portugal have done for so long, and still genuinely believe that their particular set of dogma is correct and the others are not?

I know that my thinking is simplistic, but why is it not obvious that these beliefs might just be different paths to quench our human need for meaning, purpose, and connection to something greater than ourselves?

That being said, the architecture, artwork and cultural artifacts left behind by these religions are incredible here in Cordoba. Visiting the Mesquita last night, I was literally moved to tears when we first went in. If you're ever in Cordoba, I absolutely recommend touring the Mesquita at night. The music, lighting and the architecture combined are so beautiful and unique. No pictures or videos I've seen do justice to the feeling of awe you get when you're actually there.

We were not allowed to take pictures in the Mesquita last night, which I think is right. But I will share this picture I took as I sat down in a random park to rest from the heat, earlier in the day.

My mind had been heavy with questions like the ones above, questions about the forces that shape our world and my own role in all this; and then a beautiful white dove came and landed by the fountain. It was just me and this dove, and I can't describe how beautiful it was and what a feeling of relief it brought me then, and still does now as I think back to it.

Peace

Cordoba, Spain

An absolute jewel. I'm here by myself for the next week, after having said goodbye to my sister and her family in Lisbon. It was really nice traveling with them.

My first night in Cordoba, I went around the outside of the Mosquita, and the Roman bridge.

Today, I visited the Palacio de Viana with its incredible gardens, and then I went to the university of Cordoba Faculty of Philosophy and hung out. 

I love gardens, books, architecture, academic places like universities,as well as contemplative spaces like monasteries, mosques, etc. This trip has given me all of those and more. I'm just blown away by the aesthetics of the places I've seen, and Cordoba is hard to beat. 

The Roman bridge and Temple 

Palacio de Viana 

Cordoba Faculty of Philosophy

Streets of Cordoba 

peace

Coimbra was so beautiful!

I spent the day visiting the Coimbra University which dates from the 1200s, and the famous Joanina library, which is known as one of the most beautiful libraries in the world, with rare and ancient books, some of them relics,  and with resident bats! The bats protect the books by providing pest control and have been residents in the library for hundreds of years. They only come out at night (little random shout out to the smashing pumpkins here).

The time in the library is strictly monitored and limited to exactly 10 minutes, and pictures are not allowed. I'm honestly kind of glad I didn't spend that 10 minutes trying to take pictures, which I would have, and instead, took in the stunning artwork and overall aesthetic of the place. It really is an incredible place that literally made me gasp out loud as I entered.

In the basement of the library, there's an academic prison! Students were imprisoned for various offenses and escorted to their classes from here and then escorted back at night! Quite a drastic approach to classroom management, haha.

SE Velha below:

Just questions

Why do we get so boring and closed off as we get into middle age?

What happened to all those conversations we used to have when we raged and dreamed, when we were ready to consider and question and explore?

Why do we allow ourselves to get trapped in the banality of convention that kills our spirits?

Are we too tired, too disillusioned? What happened to our curiosity? Why do we no longer wish to know?

Is it all reduced to safety, comfort, practicality, convenience? 

Has life slapped us that hard? 

Yet, the disillusionment can be a stepping stone to something more vital and real.

I will resist the deadening of the spirit as long as I can.

Peace

Aveiro , Portugal

Salt flats

It feels so good to be spending time with my sister and her family

And it's also nice to be able to do my own thing, thanks in part to my cute little rental Fiat 500, which allows me to explore. This afternoon, I spent a few hours in a beautiful museum and cloister of Saint Juana.