Yup, Still Alive - Fort Lauderdale Edition.

Hey Friends! Sorry for the absence, we arrived here almost 5 weeks ago (5 weeks?!?!) and life kinda got away from us before I had a chance to process what was going on around me... never mind write it down for the blog. Anyways, I seem to have acclimatized myself to life here a bit, and hopefully I'm back in the saddle!

When I last left off, we were still getting ready to go. We had some great going away parties...

And we (well, maybe just me...) were doing some last minute shopping, and skyping our lovelies...

We spent our last night at home at my mom's house. It actually just turned into a packing explosion. We came down here carry-on only.

 INDEFINITE TRAVEL, CARRY ON ONLY.

 I'll let that sink in for a second while you contemplate my crazy level. (I'll post more about what we packed, and how it's working for us soon!) But, before we left, it looked like this:

Next Stop: Waterworld. 

As we flew over the everglades and into this city that would become our new home for now, all I could see was water. There are canals and bayous and ocean and lakes and canals and rivers and pools. Even the air is wet. I'm pretty sure that alligators live everywhere - but now I feel like i've moved into their habitat, not the other way around.

We arranged a ride to our crew house and got picked up at the airport. It was the first of a series of "OMG. This is my life now" moments. When you don't have your own car or home, you end up getting rides everywhere and staying in odd accommodations. It's a strange combination of becoming more independent and more reliant on strangers.

We walked into a giant house, with slight travel-hangovers from the long day and say a scene that looks  something like this:

It's a giant house, it's boisterous, busy and full of people who all know each other. I've never travelled and stayed in any kind of hostel or crew accommodations before (married young!)...so this was all new for me - and to be honest quite overwhelming. We snuck up to our cozy private room to get settled.

Before going back down to the main section of this house, which houses between 18 - 32 people...

It's crazy here! 

But as it turns out - 

I love it. 

Living with lots of people is really fun (most of the time). We make 'family dinner' about once a week, and we're all working towards similar goals (for the most part). There's always someone putting on a movie, or going out to a pub, or making dinner. My new crewhouse family helps me out lots. We work together and we hang out together. They know where to get the best tacos and what agencies to sign up for (more on job gettin' later). They lend me interview clothes, and the girls all get overdressed and go out to ladies night on Wednesdays. There's an amazing sense of camaraderie that, having never really played on teams, I haven't quite experience before. It's so fun.

We got ourselves some bikes, and started checking out Fort Lauderdale. Our strange new home.

 

More to come soon, thanks for your patience and thanks for all the support we've gotten already!

High Five!