Graduated again! Just like that, life changes…

Graduated! May 14th, 2011! I can hardly believe how quickly it seems to have happened.

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In August of 2009, I moved to Pennsylvania. I still remember flopping onto my bed & breathing a big sigh after I dropped of my parents, and later The Girlfriend (now, The Fiancée) at the train station. I was living on my own, with my own car, my own bookcases, my own everything.

I took the bartending class I always wanted to take, just because I could. I made new friends, I integrated myself into the salsa community in the Central PA area, worked at Penn State and in the surrounding community doing academic work and interning. I also got to visit all sorts of places by going to academic conferences, like Austria, Texas, and Washington D.C.. I visited Pittsburgh, went on wine tours, hiked the Appalachian Trail, learned photography, and explored caves.

I handed in my completely edited and corrected thesis on May 5th, 2011, I graduated yesterday, and I sit typing this with my first boxes already packed for the trip to CT. (…with my parent, The Fiancée, and the future in-laws literally texting me that they arrived in CT and are home.) I will go from pure independence to living under my parent’s roof until I get back on my feet.

It all went by so damn fast! Yet, it was almost 2 whole years of my life! So much change and so many new and great things happened in those two years.

My CT friends and my family want me to come “home” to CT. The problem is that this is my “home” now, too. Sure, I want to be near The Fiancée, my family, and my friends, but this is home! It is home even with its cows and corn I complained about on my first vlog post. Pliny the Elder was right about home being where the heart is. Both places are home now.

I have already planned on visiting Pennsylvania friends after I leave and have made the most of planning get-togethers with them between the packing, the filling out of job applications, and the tying up of loose ends. I am thankful to have so many wonderful people who entered my life and I know it’s not goodbye, but more of an “I’ll keep in touch.”

Although it feels like some strange step backwards from all the new things that I know, I have new job opportunities to look forward to wedding planning, and life itself to look forward to. I’ve done this before and I will do it again many times. Change has come and it is time to once again embrace it.