Since writing my reflections and thoughts on the upcoming year in my blog post Five Months and New Year, I have tried everyday to work on some piece of those goals.  I’ve written more postcards and emails to connect with people, I’m started my volunteer modules for Girl Scouts to be more involved and this month I have been able to get out and get active!

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We’ve created a space for ourselves in the forest. The girls have a partial fort built and are pounding rocks into powder. I got creative and am using the rocks as weights/kettle balls to exercise with, a tree for kickboxing and an unstable rock for balance exercises.

 

We have our plane tickets home; we’ll arrive in Seattle on June 30th.  We don’t have a trip to Ireland planned but we are spending 2.5 days on a layover in Iceland.  In searching for the cheapest flights I ran across this option and jumped on it (hopefully, I won’t regret our hasty decision).  At the end of June, Iceland will have 20 hours of daylight.  It’s been on my “list” to experience this so I am beyond excited about it.

While we don’t yet have housing worked out we have decided that we will rent short-term, return to our condo in December when the tenants lease is up and prepare to sell it in the Spring 2016.  We’ll find out next week if Lavender made it into the Spanish-Immersion school kindergarten.  Although, even if she gets in it won’t be until the end of summer that the other two can try to test-in into the school.  So schooling is still up in the air – I am not having them in different public schools.  As always, I would like to keep homeschooling – as would the girls.  I have my eye on some rental apartments in the different school boundaries so we can keep the most possibilities open and I have my eye on new homeschooling opportunities.

We’re going to apply for summer jobs.  Jeff will apply to teach summer school.  I will apply to some different places for a summer job, including working in the office at summer school.  I am also going to try my hand at shopping thrift stores and garage sales for books to sell on Amazon.  It’s likely I’ll reach out to my previous employer(s) to check for any part-time work for the summer as well.  I would also like to volunteer for the Girl Scout day camp in our area.  Not only will it be getting me more involved, it will allow me to have a reduced rate for the girls.

Last month, I started feeling more upbeat and motivated and found myself with lots of ideas and projects (Onto Something to Do) to keep my busy.  Outside my June Cleaver duties that is!   I had wanted to come up with a new name and layout for my blog but in doing so I came up with an entire new blog (business??) venture that I am pursuing.  I feel really motivated and I have pages and pages of ideas handwritten in a notebook.  Everyday, I have worked on learning more about blogging including cross-marking, branding, affiliates, disclosure policies, copyrights, and best practices.  This is the reason you have not heard from me in a week.  My idea, it’s potential and the hopes I have, have been consuming me.

The potential of volunteering at Jeff’s school has fallen through but our neighbors want to meet with us regularly now to speak English and Spanish.  I was concerned that without a job here, I would have nothing to put on paper (i.e. Resume) for my time here.  But the experience itself is resume worthy and I’ve been working to put into bullet points what exactly that experience includes.  I haven’t made it far.  What I have decided is that in addition to creating a new blogging venture (and selling used books online and a seasonal job), I am going to pursue being a High School Student Exchange coordinator.  I’ve spent hours and hours researching different groups that bring students from around the world to the U.S. trying to determine which would be a good fit.   At the beginning of this exchange, I thought the language acquisition would provide the greatest employment opportunities when I returned but it would take more than a year exchange to be able to claim I am fluent in Spanish.   What I’ve realized is the experience of my exchange, in particular my day-to-day needs that I struggled through and the inherent ups-and-downs are my most valuable asset that I will be able to transfer to a workplace.  Becoming a student exchange coordinator seems like a good fit and use of my new found empathy and knowledge from this past year.  It will also tie into my new blogging venture; unlike selling used books.

So tell me….what’s new with you?