Dear Diary, JACKPOT!

So I thought as I stand on the dawn of a new and exciting part of my life that I should probably get it into my head the idea to start keeping a blog. I've sucked at writing journals, diaries, whatever you want to call them. Growing up, I had friends who would write all their little daily activities and goings-on, to keep for god knows what. I tried to be like the cool kids, but after maybe, I don't know, 3 days of writing shit, I found that I wasn't particularly writing anything useful or worth mentioning. My entries probably looked something like this:

"5/24/96
School was fun. Poked a badger with a spoon. Oatmeal Cream Pies make me fart more than is usual. Girls still don't find me physically attractive. Might be linked to farting stemming from Oatmeal Cream Pies."

Needless to say, I got bored quick and said "F this, I'm going to go smoke crack"

Once you've gotten out of school, however, you start to realize just how difficult it is to keep in touch with all your friends. You graduate high school or college telling yourself you always going to chat with your buddies and visit them all the time, and then 3 months pass and you realize you haven't talked to any of them. I graduated from Florida State in the spring of 2007, and already I found out how hard it is to keep in touch with the people I hung out with regularly a little over a year ago, even the people I considered my great friends.

Working two jobs, 13 hours a day for 5 days a week during the summer doesn't exactly help ones ability to chat either. So, I've decided to keep a blog. A chance for my friends to get an answer to the "Where the hell are you?" that I seem to be getting a lot on facebook and elsewhere. Also thought it would be a great opportunity for me to document my travels. Now, if your one of those "where the hell are you" people, then your probably following that with "where the hell are you going", so let's focus on that for a second.

Anyone who knows me knows I've been absolutely intent on getting my ass over to Europe. Call it my dream. Since my brother was stationed in Bamburg, Germany back in the late 90s, and since I have always been interested in European history, I've always wanted to see it. For one reason or another, things always got in the way of me getting there. Whether it was not having enough money to pay for study abroad, to planned backpacking trips being aborted, the idea of going to Europe for a while to me was like watching the idiot who chases the dollar attached to a string. Always so close, but you can never pick the damn thing up.

I used to bitch about how I could never get over there, until finally one day, I just told myself that I was going to find a way over to Europe no matter what. While working at the University of Michigan last year, I came across some programs for teaching abroad, and I realized that this was how I could find my way into Europe. Teaching English. I talked to quite a few people who had taught in Europe and Southeast Asia and had excellent stories to share about their experiences, and I decided that this was the path for me.

Now, one doesn't just waltz into Europe and live there. You need a job. You need a work visa (which you can't obtain until someone hires you) and you need money. Lots of money. UM doesn't pay much, certainly not enough to fund my expenses over there, so this summer, I moved to Nantucket, Massachusetts where my buddy Chris Wessels lives, and took two jobs as a fine dining waiter and at a bike shop. Anyone who's been to Nantucket knows the rich people flock to it like the Salmon of Capastrano. They wear their Nantucket Red pants (another story for another time) and compete with each other to see how much money they can throw around. Which is fine by me. I made a shitload of money this summer and am now back in Michigan.

In two weeks, on October 8th, I'll fly out to Prague, Czech Republic. I've signed up for an intensive, month long training program to teach english, run by TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) They teach you how to create cirriculums and the proper way to teach, all that jazz. After I finish that, I'm moving out to Berlin, Germany to settle and find a job. My awesome, world traveler Argentine girlfriend, Noel, is already over there, doing a cultural exchange program in Cologne for now and later Magdeburg and Berlin. So we'll be travelling and seeing the sights and sounds together.

All in all, I'm pretty stoked about everything, and it's really the beginning of the next big part of my life. I'm looking forward to sharing my experiences with whomever cares to look. I'm not going to be writing in this everyday, but I'll get to it as much as I can and share what I've seen and what I've done.

That's all for now. Cheers.