Andy’s Blog

I’m still quite a ways away from actually making my trip to Europe, but planning it is proving to be extremely exciting to me. My original plan was to visit maybe 2 adjacent countries in Europe for my trip. This soon changed when I actually just started playing around with Google Maps and realized that Europe is much smaller than I originally expected. I knew it wasn’t big, but I in no way expected it to be as small as it is. (I’m obviously no geography expert.)

I’m starting to look at different possibilities now that so much more has opened up to me. I’m pretty set on wanting to visit Italy while I’m in Europe so that may be my first destination. I’m not 100% sure where I would fly in to though…maybe fly into Rome and make my way north through the country. The other place I could fly into would be Milan, but then I’m missing a good portion of Italy by cutting a few hours of travel time. I’m also thinking about stopping in Germany to visit a friend that I met back in Arizona to catch up, not only to visit him, but I would like to visit Germany as well so it’s kind of a win-win situation.

Another interesting thing I found out today is how cheap airfare is from country to country. So this also got me excited because it opens up even more possibilities for myself. Obviously airfare varies quite a bit but just from a quick glance and only from one website without any real research I found a trip from Germany to Ireland to be only $120. So that could be another destination to add to my list. I gotta tell ya I’m getting pretty excited just from the research of this trip, and from watching my buddy at VirtualWayfarer.com‘s videos.

On a lower note, saving up the money for this trip is proving to be harder than I thought with my various different bills and my student loan payments have started this month. The student loan payments take up almost a quarter of my monthly pay and that’s without the other bills I have to pay. It doesn’t help that my car is in desperate need of repairs so trying to put money away while fixing my car isn’t easy. But nevertheless, I’m still managing it.

Anyways I just wanted to give a little update on my future plans. As always comments and criticisms are always welcome.

Well here I am 16 days into 2009 still reflecting on what went wrong/what went right in 2008. And I am in no way “emo” but I must say that the “what went wrong” outweighs the “what went right”. Towards the end of 2007 I moved in with some people that at the time I didn’t know would change my life. This was definitely one of the “what went right”s. The became my best friends and my second family pretty much and even though roommates came and gone I developed new friendships and found myself doing different things. I was starting to go out a lot more and just having more fun in general which is what I was lacking for a long time in my college life. I happened to move in with Nathan who was an avid dancer at ASU. He took me with him one day and things changed for me from there on too. I really started getting into dancing around August when I took a class. This was one of the best choices that I’ve made in a long time. It kept me happy and was a cheap way to have fun for the whole night. Those were the best things that happened to me in 2008.

Well sadly 2008, wasn’t all good as some people could probably guess. Besides on a global scale all the economies of the world starting to fail affected all of us. As far as work is concerned I couldn’t find anything when I most desperately needed it. I always had a job where I worked from home on web pages and etc, but that could only go so far as to how much money I could make and how much I needed…sadly the amount I needed way outweighed the amount I could make. Other than money I turned 21 this year which I’m still trying to determine if that is a good or bad thing. Sure it’s fun to go out to the bars and stuff, but it’s extremely expensive and I’ve made some poor choices that I’m bettering myself on now. As far as my personal life goes I ended a relationship that I have yet to this day figure out why I did and I feel like an idiot still and am always wondering. My grandmother that I was extremely close to passed away this year which was probably the hardest part of the year because it was just like that and suddenly she was gone. I also had mono and pneumonia at the same time which forced me to withdraw from the spring semester at ASU.

Well 2008 wasn’t the best year of my life, and I’m not sure if it’s the worst and if it’s not it’s definitely in the top 2. I’m hoping 2009 will be much better but so far it’s been good. I have an amazing job that’s going to help me get out of the debt I’m in, in no time. Thanks for ready and comment I hope to talk to everyone soon!

Andy

First of all I’m just getting over a cold it wasn’t really too bad just a little thing but I ended up leaving school yesterday after I took my exam which I got a 26/30 on which I was pretty happy about.  Yesterday I went to bed feeling pretty crappy but this morning I woke up feeling a lot better, but that soon changed.  I started to feel crappy as the day went on and since I don’t have class until 1:30 I didn’t go to dance today either which is the first time I’ve missed that class.  Apparently we learned a few new things in Salsa today which makes me sad.  But in general I’m starting to feel better now so hopefully it’ll carry out for tomorrow.  The one thing that sucked about being sick at the time I was is I missed a good friend’s 21st birthday last night and surprise party today.  Oh well shit happens I guess.

The next main thing on my mind is money.  I think this is on everyone’s mind especially with the economy in the situation that it’s in right now.  I have a job that I enjoy doing and the people I work with, but the biggest problem is that I work from home and don’t have scheduled hours or anything like that so it gets hard to coordinate with them especially since they’re in Chicago and I’m in Arizona.  At least it’s not as bad as it was now that there is only a 1 hour time difference versus the 2 that was in effect before.  But I am looking for something more steady not that I would quit the job I’m at now, but this is proving to be a nightmare with the state the economy is in.  Sure I could probably easily get myself into a McDonalds or Burger King, but no offense to people who work there but I think I could definitely get something better than that.  I’ve been looking on Monster and CraigsList, but this isn’t really working since everyone wants full time people or people that only work during the day.  I think I’m going to have to expand my horizons to restaurants and see what I can.  The biggest road block I’ve noticed with restaurants is 99% of them really want somebody that has some kind of experience.  Yeah I worked at a pizza place for a few months and worked catering with Joe a few times, but it’s not much.  

I guess the last thing on my mind is school.  I’d have to say this semester is a little rough, and I’m not doing as good as I thought I would be and I’m not really sure why that is.  Maybe it’s because I just turned 21?  Who knows, but I have found better study habits.  Instead of studying the night or even two nights before an exam I found it much much much more useful to go over the material for the week on the weekends even if it’s glancing over my notes which is why I think I did a lot better on the exam that I mentioned above.  Anyways I think that’s all I have on my mind for now. 

I’ll keep everyone updated and let me know your thoughts as well!
Andy