Yearly Update: The Journey to 30

Over a year has passed since my last “update.”  And the year I was 29, despite the fact that I lived close to home rather than abroad, was anything but boring, so there’s no real reason for the lack of blog posts.  

The year I was 29, I survived what may have been my most difficult year of teaching yet.  Many overseas teachers say, “Teaching in the States is so much different than teaching abroad.  You’ll see.  That’s why I went overseas; I’d never go back to teaching in the States.  It’s just...too much.”  Well, they’re not wrong.  I admit, I thought that with five years teaching experience under my belt, my first year in the US, my first year at the high school level, would go rather smoothly.  While in a sense it did (no concerns about the quality of my work from administration or complaints from parents), it was mentally and emotionally very taxing.  Even this year, my 2nd back in the States, I’m still adjusting to and coming to terms with the fact that as a US teacher, I will never be able to squeeze everything into an 8 hour workday while still getting everything done.  I see 100+ students every day, need new lesson plans for each of 4 different classes every single day, and I still haven’t found a way to formatively check for student understanding without grading a load of worksheets (or exits slips, or quizzes, or reflections, or other formative checkpoints) every single night.  So I will always leave for work before Jake does, and I will almost always get home after he does.  I’m still adjusting to this new fact of life.  But it’s not all bad.  Despite my complaining, I do enjoy my work.  I enjoy interacting with students each day, and I love immersing myself in my English curriculum.  Each class is different, each day is unique, and I value that.  So I’m not going anywhere or planning to change professions any time soon.  

My year as a 29 year old, I maintained an active life outside of work, as well.  The adventures didn’t stop just because I was in the States.  During my first winter in several years, I learned how to cross country ski, downhill ski, and snowshoe.  I purchased a road bike, and I started to join Jake on the road and increase my biking stamina. And of course, I continued running.  I ran so much, and got so much faster, in fact, that I set PRs in the 5 mile and 13.1 mile distances.  (By a lot...like 5-10 minutes faster in each distance).  Excited by this progress (or blinded by it?) and with encouragement from Jake, I signed up for a full marathon, 26.2 miles.  In June, I completed the race--the longest distance I’d ever run.  To say it was a proud moment is a total understatement.  Growing up, I didn’t see myself as an athlete.  Period.  Never in a bazillion years would I have predicted that one day I would run a marathon.  

Biking the North Shore

Post marathon

Finisher!

Before our half marathon

Another thing I never would have predicted?  Being one of those girls who meets “the one” and has a fairy tale relationship where everything just goes right from the start. I’m still a little bit in shock when I think about how lucky I got in meeting Jake.  Seriously.  I wouldn’t go so far (or get so cheesy) as to call it love at first sight, but from the moment we met, it just--clicked.  It worked.  We work.  There was no drama, no arguing, no fretting to my girlfriends about whether this might be the right guy or not.  I didn’t decide Jake is the one.  He just is.  

So it’s been quite wonderful to share the past year with him.  So many travels, trail runs, races, cooking nights, camping trips, inside jokes, and afternoons spent reading or napping. Even the mundane seems fun when we’re together.   

Recently, the age 29 became memorable for another reason.  A scant 4 days before I turned 30, Jake and I bought a house together.  It took us 3 months of viewing countless houses, waiting for the perfect one to come on the market, but we found it.  Castle Rosengaard (of course we named it) is great; it’s the perfect space for us, reflecting our personalities well, and giving us the room to entertain, hang out, and get work done.  It’s neither too big nor too small.  There are beautiful hardwood floors throughout, a bathroom big enough for both of us to brush our teeth at once, a cozy theater room in the basement, and a garage so that in the winter I’ll still be able to claim southern sensitivities and avoid scraping my car windshield each morning.  

We’ve spent the last month on a stream of seemingly endless “house projects”: painting, hanging lights in the room with no overhead lighting, framing photos and putting them on the walls, installing new towel racks, hanging a hammock in the living room, removing unwanted doors and relocating unused shelves to other parts of the house, and making list after list of “things to do.”  The house becomes more our own each day, and we check items off our lists each weekend.  It has become an even more comfortable place to live.   

Friends enjoying the hammock

But I think the best thing, so far, about living in our new house is coming home to Jake each day. I remember the first week we moved in, I was giddy each afternoon when I left school, remembering that he would be there waiting for me.  There’s no more packing an overnight bag to spend a weekend together.  No more planning of driving back and forth between our two towns and apartments in the most efficient way possible.  No more eating alone on weeknights.   Life is good.  

It is all of these little things that make me so content with life.  I loved teaching abroad, and while I often remember those days fondly, it’s hard to imagine myself back in that world.  I cannot picture giving up this life I’ve created here.  At least not anytime soon.