Trip 1 to Florida

So we've made our first trip to Florida, and it has been a success!

When we left on Saturday, at first we didn't think we were going to be successful at all.  We got into our car at 4:15 am and went to plug TomTom in, and low and behold, the cigarette lighter in Matt's car doesn't work.  Thank goodness we hadn't left yet, so we ran back upstairs and printed off lots of Google maps.  Since our entertainment was on an MP3 player, we ended up driving the entire trip down here in complete silence.

We got to Florida on Sunday afternoon, and drove around exploring the main part of the city, and we ate late lunch/early dinner at a local pizza place, and called it a night.

Monday was SUPER busy and productive.  Matt got all signed up to teach at his school and got to see his classroom.  Then we went apartment hunting.  Because we needed something available NOW and not like August, we had 2 choices: a cheaper place that looked run down or a more expensive place that had more square feet and storage room and looked nice.  We went for the more expensive one, and are happy about that situation.

Now, our plan is to go explore the new apartment, map out where we're going to put our furniture, and then tomorrow, we drive home to Iowa!

Steph

The Adventure Begins

I'm pretty sure everyone knows by now that Matt and I are moving to Florida.  I wanted to start this blog in order to keep in touch with all our friends and family who now stretch across the country.  We're both going to be contributing to this blog...yes you read that right, Matt will be contributing to this blog every once in a while.

For the first entry on this blog, I wanted to tell the story about how Matt happened to get a job in Florida.

Back in April, we made a decision to begin applying to Latin teaching jobs outside of Iowa.  The teaching jobs Matt had been applying to in Iowa were not panning out, and after a year of no job, we decided it would be best  to open our horizons. I sent out 28 e-mails to 28 different schools all around the country. Then we waited. Fast forward to May.  Matt had the interview with the school in Albuquerque and it didn't work out.  Discouraged, I sat down and applied to 12 more schools across the country.  3 schools became interested: One in Kentucky, One in Philadelphia and one in Florida.

Florida was unique, they wanted him to fill out an e-mail interview and then they followed up with a phone interview.  During the phone interview, they told Matt he was in the top three.  But after being rejected from every school, we didn't get our hopes up.  Flash forward to last monday (6-13).  The school called Matt and told him he got the job.

Now we're excited, and we're getting all packed up to move to Florida!  We're excited, terrified and nervous all rolled into one.  But we're ready to take on whatever gets thrown at us.

--Steph