It seems as though the invention of Newvember and the events occurring thereafter have really started to take true effect. I spent nearly a month scouring the globe in what I refer to as my whirlwind world tour, seeing buddhas, baguettes, Big Ben, and most importantly, the person I can’t help but fall in love with more everyday. But all sappiness aside, I have had an incredible year of international travel - My W-2 even proves it with me raking just over a whopping $6,000 in a calendar year. I sacrificed work for leisure and as it obviously turned out, I can’t get enough of the travel bug. My SkyMiles are flowing in by the month and my passport is so full of stamps I have to pay overweight fees. Yet, now, with this mind-blowingly extensive break in my European travels - finances are proving to not follow closely with my lifestyle as stipulated by my previously aforementioned annual income - I have had to find a means of entertainment for the summer that is lucrative in both the financial and educational fields. My plan is to make an extra buck - though the pluralization of this word would definitely tickle my fancy - and in the process, be somewhere or do something new and exciting to provide myself with additional life knowledge I wouldn’t get by sitting here in bed all day waiting for my parade shift to come. With a little luck, and ten years of work experience in the field, I landed said gig and will continue my whirlwind national tour this summer, as a part of a new show at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia Irish Dancing for 6 months. March 7th is the potential takeoff date. With my ending around September 9th, I will spend the hottest months of the year in an air-conditioned theatre doing whatever they tell me - considering it’s an Irish Dance show, I’ll assume some Jigs will be involved - and pulling in the paychecks every two weeks.

I was offered the gig during the French leg of my tour. I had to settle the situation via email and one long-long-long-distance phone conversation detailing the logistics that an email just couldn’t properly provide. Upon my acceptance, a FedEx package was en route to my house in California, contract in tow. I spent that last week or so in Europe excited about this new move to Virginia and what it will potentially bring to my life. You see, the setup I had in Japan was that of a king. It’s equivalent to a dorm, that has been entirely paid for your stay by your rich parents who also control your allowance that is automatically forked over to you without you actually needing to take out the trash or maintain your laundry - though most people did this out of habitual cleanliness. There is no worry - no hassle. With my new job, I have to fly myself to Virginia, where I will be given compensation for relocation, but I will have to find an apartment and pay my bills - all without the added bonus of Per Diem. The highlight is the pay of $25/hour for a show that runs several million times a day. The cons and pros are equal, not heavily overshadowing one another, so my acceptance ensured me a month of frantically looking for an apartment, figuring out a way to get my Honda Element from California to Virginia without my needing to be inside of it, and getting drug tests and such to prove that I don’t arrive at work with a needle hanging out of my arm. The contract is currently completed and waiting for the mailman - or woman, we don’t discriminate here - to deliver it to my new home.

My hesitation dwindles everyday, with each step I complete. I find that I am increasingly excited for this huge change in pace. I have lived in California all of my life, with the exception of my 7 months in Japan, and my on-again-off-again travels to Europe, I will find a new culture and subset of people to experience. I’m going to the southeast of America, where colonies were formed and pilgrims were frequently seen chasing turkeys down the cobblestone roads - though I’m sure this all didn’t happen last week. I will be living in an apartment with rent, bills, and my own refrigerator stocked with my own food and chocolate bars. I am looking forward to having this be my next growing experience and ideally, what is to come later in life will be positively affected by the move. I want to use this as a means of figuring out what is next while I rake in cash and make trips up to New York as frequently as time and money will allow. The ability to properly budget and avoid the retail environment is one that seemingly skipped my generation, and though I am able to be decisive and smart, there are some times where that pair of jeans proves too tempting for me - my wallet often jumps out of my pocket and right into the hands of the sales associate, at which point not even you would turn back.

With all of the aforementioned at my fingertips, I am using my prep month to do a few select things. I am turning 22 - the year of life that is not a landmark year, nor is it followed by any positive landmark years (though I do have high hopes that by the time 30 rolls around, it will have settled well into it’s “30 is the new 20” roots). I have to have an amazing celebration of my new double deuces - a term I will try to refrain from using as much as possible, though I have a tendency to favor my alliteration. I am using the vast lengths of the internet to search high and low for services that are throwing themselves at me - car relocation services, apartments, airlines (okay, airlines aren’t throwing themselves at me, but I’ve watched The Secret so I know what’s up). I am spending time with as many of my friends as I can before I make a jump that, though it doesn’t create the inconvenience that Japan did in terms of communication and accessibility, is far enough to be considered a life-changing move. Mostly, I am spending my time throwing away as much trash that is sitting around my room as my 15 Glad bags can carry and finding clothes, though they may be attached to some mystical memory of me at an amusement park at age 6 with an Ice Cream that my grandparents bought me because I won a pony and am now the heir to the Microsoft fortune, that really just need to be given away as I tend to bring in new clothes before I make room for them. As it stands, my life is a messy room, drug test, flight, apartment, and car-transport away from being totally set for my move to Virginia.

I am excited to see what comes of this new life in such an insanely historical place. I have never actually lived in a place so rich in American History. I have been constantly surrounded by European history, via my hours and hours spent staring at gorgeous façades and statues that have been standing since far before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. I am looking forward to finally giving America a chance to prove to me that Europe isn’t one of the only places with a past - though I doubt it will change my dreams to one day reside in a place where people genuinely believe I have an accent. So here is to Newvember’s way of being late to the party, just in time to make me see that 2010 is going to be more than a fantastic year - it’s going to be the building blocks of my fantastic life.

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