St. Augustine was founded by a Spanish explorer and is the oldest continuously occupied, European established city in the United States. Many of the buildings and forts in the city are still standing and the Spanish influence on the architecture is so beautiful! I walked around Flagler College and downtown St. Augustine just in awe of the beautiful buildings. I decided to drive across the bay to the area that seemed primarily residential and found my way to the beach. I decided to treat myself to some gelato and sat on the beach while I ate it. It was so relaxing!
After a good night's rest in St. Augustine, I made the last four and a half hour drive to Broward County, where my friend's home was located. That was probably the longest drive of the entire trip as I was just ready to be there. I stopped in Boca Raton to fill some paperwork out at the main office of my employer and arrived at my friend's apartment around dinner time.
My friend, Kylee, and her husband offered me a temporary place to stay until I found a permanent place to live. It was definitely an interesting experience living in someone's living room and making the backseat of my car my closet, but I was just grateful to have a roof over my head. Kylee had just recently had a baby and I was a little nervous about how that was going to play out as I hadn't spent much time around a baby since Sage was a baby eighteen years ago, but boy did I fall in love with that little guy! He is the most precious thing I have ever seen! He grew and changed so much from the time I arrived to the time I left I couldn't believe it! He is such a good little baby and only cries on occasion, mostly when I'm holding him and he starts to get hungry and he doesn't understand why I can't feed him. He get's pretty angry!
The day after I got here I began my search for my own place, but glitches along the way deterred me from my plans a little longer then I, or Kylee, wanted. After many weeks of searching I ended up in an area called Coconut Grove.
When I came to Miami on vacation in May 2010 my friend and I stayed in this area so I was slightly familiar with it. It is pretty centrally to everything, including downtown, the beach, school, shopping, etc. To me, it's perfect! I found a roommate named Amber that I met through a roommate website. She recently moved to South Florida from Eugene, Oregon, and doesn't really know anyone other then her older sister so we definitely have some things in common! We found a two bedroom, one bathroom duplex in a nice neighborhood with a really great landlord for a really great price! We are definitely lucky! We still haven't completely settled into the house as we are both poor students, but it's getting there!
School is going well. Due to not being sure what my living situation was going to be like in the next few months I decided to take online courses. My work life is getting better. I took a huge paycut moving here that I didn't know was going to happen until I actually got here and at that point there wasn't much I could do about it. I have been diligently searching for at least an additional job and was recently employed with a national babysitting company however that's still money in progress. Being that I'm not one to sit around and wait for the money to start rolling in I went out and got another job at Panera Bread. I'm really lucky and grateful that I have as many opportunities as I do because I know how hard things are for people. I am also looking into starting my own auto advertising business where I would advertise local businesses on my car and all I have to do is drive! Hopefully I can get to a point where I can become a broker and start hiring people to advertise ads on their cars also. I've also got some fun things going on with another friend, Julio, that I'm excited for. He's a musician that has a good following and is in contact with Universal Latino Records and we've been working together to get his career going. Look him up some time. His stage name is Dainamite and his most popular song is "Dulce Caramelo". You'll be seeing great things from him soon and I will be there every step of the way. As the saying goes, "Behind every great man is an amazing woman!" =) Here's a link to the video!
That's all that's happening from the East Coast! Stay tuned for all the exciting things are gonna be happening in the next few months!
Xoxo!
