Where do I even begin?
Since Maciah and I made the decision to make this move, I've had an idea in my head of how it's going to go. And I don't think any of that has happened!
Months ago, we bought tickets for the 29th of August. I thank God that we switched airlines and therefore, switched dates, because we would have been on the island when Hurricane Irma hit and I don't know how we would've handled that. So our date was then supposed to be the 19th of September, hence the post about having only two days left. Well Hurricane Maria is due on the same day we were, so I just pushed our flight out by another week, which brings us to our third departure date since we started: the 25th.
We originally thought that 6 weeks before departure we would begin to look for an apartment. We would secure the right one - and then we would find jobs and the rest would be history.
"All we need is an address," we said, "then, we can search within a few miles of that for employment, since we will be on foot." This meant we should look in area metro, populated areas like San Juan and the surrounding suburbs, where we would have access to a lot of businesses and transportation.
Perfect plan, right? Well, we spent weeks working with a realtor who ended up telling us that it's too hard to get a landlord to sign a year lease when we don't have jobs, which left me calling people off the classifieds two days before landing somewhere neither one of us has ever been. That, plus the storms and the average rent in San Juan (which my friend, J, tried to talk to me about weeks ago.... but I'm stubborn), means we are now considering a slower life in a smaller place where the people may be more willing to help us. The probability of getting a job in a less populated area may even be higher, because on these parts of the island it's more of a community than a huge tourist city where nobody cares.
The whole point I'm making is that now I'm open to things I hadn't considered before. I couldn't see other options because I was focused on my plans. I was limiting myself to what I thought would be best. Life is funny that way. And I keep learning this lesson, yet it never sticks...
So, to update you all:.
Since we both already quit our jobs and gave notice to our landlords, we will be couch surfing until our new departure date!!! Wahoo!
Luckily I have some very generous friends and family members, so I'm sure I'll have no problem there.
I'm taking it one day at a time at the moment, and I'm loving every exhilarating second of it! I feel even more excited to go now than before, when I thought I had it all figured out! Maybe I knew in my mind that it wouldn't go the way it was supposed to, and subconsciously it scared me more that I was kidding myself. At least now I can look at it the way it actually is - which is a very exciting move toward a very unknown future.
As to exactly why I'm in such a better place mentally, now that all my expectations have fallen through, that I can't say. All I know is that I've been told countless times that I shouldn't go, and it's always been my favorite thing to do what people think I can't.
Vamanos!
