Tags
Eight days actually, but who’s counting? It’s Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving, and the start of a crazy weekend of packing up almost everything I own and moving my things into a storage unit. In one week from tomorrow I will be boarding a plane and heading to my new home, in Amsterdam. That any of this is happening is all still extremely surreal and I’m not sure it will sink in until I arrive at my apartment and start my new job.
The whole thing started at the beginning of October as somewhat of a joke. I was in the UK for work and happened to overhear that a job was coming available in a client’s company. Not thinking that anything would ever come of it, I managed to get introduced to the person who had the vacancy to fill. When I was back home in the states I had a few phone interviews and before I knew what hit me there was a job offer for a 13 month contract working for a European company and I would be based in Amsterdam.
I’ve been to Europe twice before, but never to Amsterdam. All I knew about the city was what most who’ve never been know – legal drugs and prostitution. Not much different than living in Nevada. I connected with a few friends who had been to Holland and Amsterdam to find out if it was somewhere I’d be happy. Every review was glowing and every person said they would love to live there. Based on their information and what I knew of the job it was an easy decision.
So here I am with eight days left in the USA, putting my life into boxes and a 10×10 storage unit, about to move to a city sight unseen and take a job where I haven’t met, for more than a brief moment, a single soul. I am nervous and excited at the same time. I know that this is the experience of a lifetime both personally and professionally and I can’t wait to see what the next 13 months holds.
My plan for this blog is to track my experiences and observations as I travel through Europe and possibly other continents. It will be a public journal so that I can share these experiences with you, but also as an archive to remember the places, people, emotions, etc. when I’m old and (more) grey. I look forward to sharing this experience with you and would be interested to hear your thoughts and feedback – good, bad, or indifferent. What else should I be sure to keep track of? What would you be interested to read about?