I quit.

Three weeks ago today I gave my boss my notice that my last day at my job is on August 4th, 2008. The plan was to give them 4 weeks notice, then have 3 weeks off here in Madison, 3 weeks off in Hawaii, and then on to New Zealand.

I'm getting ahead of myself here - I still haven't told you why I'm moving to New Zealand. That all starts a little over a year ago...

The day was July 3rd, 2007. Turning 20 was a big thing for me. That was the first birthday where I was really alone. My parents moved to Hawaii before my 18th Birthday, but I still had friends in town, and I ended up going out to Hawaii for my Birthday. My 19th Birthday I still had a lot of old friends from High School, so that was nice. But on my 20th Birthday I was alone. Not really, I had more friends than I give myself credit for, but it still felt lonely. My parents were gone, I was single for the first time in 4 years, and I didn't talk to any of my friends from my childhood (<18). Somewhere in the 6 months before that day I got this idea into my head that drinking would open up new social opportunities for me. I had my friend Jesus get me a fake ID from one of his friends, and thus my drinking career began. July 3rd was my fake ID's birthday, just two days before my real birthday. I concocted this idea that celebrating my birthday on his birthday would allow me to celebrate as I imagined one who drank would celebrate - go out to various bars, get free drinks, and black out never to remember the night. That didn't happen. I went to Jolly Bob's with my friends Kurt, Christine and Justin. Justin wasn't drinking because he had mono, and Kurt and Christine didn't drink too much. We went out around 8, and I was going to meet some of my other friends there around 9. Storms came rolling in and Ryan was delayed - he lives halfway across the state in Belleville. He still made it out, but was a little late (10pm). Kurt, Christine and Justin left at 9, so I sat at the bar alone and drank. When Ryan arrived I had a few more drinks, and then Jesus and Co showed up around 11:30. Jesus and Co were my normal drinking buddies. When they got there they decided to play a game called "It's my friend's birthday - you should say hi." Now comes the part I haven't told Amy yet (you'll meet Amy later - be patient.) Jesus's friend from Chicago - we'll call him Bob because I don't remember his name) - would go up to groups of people in the bar and introduce me. Bob was using me as bait to pick up chicks in a Madison bar. Well, after several rounds of fishing and a few bites, I spotted a few a young lady across the bar who was very cute. Now interested in this fishing game (but still not good at it) I sent Bob out to fish for me. Bob went up to the young lady and her friend and told them to say hi to me because it was my birthday. He then told me to go up to them and say hi, which is how I met my girlfriend Amy.

That's not the full story of how I met her, but it's the beginning. Since that first day of meeting Amy and ever since I started dating her I knew that there was one thing and one thing only she wanted to do - Travel. That's not a bad thing, in fact it's very cool. It's not at all what I had in mind for my life. I was destined to work a corporate job for the next 40 years, buy a house, get married, have a few kids, and die after living a normal boring life. That will probably spur another blog about "Goals" but for now we'll continue with this. After 2 1/2 months Amy moved to Martinique to teach English for 7 months. A month and a half later I was down visiting her, and we got to really talking about our long-term plans. She came home for the Christmas and asked me "Where can we go next?" It wasn't a, "I'm going here and you should come with me" question, but more of a "I really do want to be with you but I want to travel too. Where can we go together?" We discussed South Korea, which I was very open to. There's a certain stigma associated with South Korea that causes most people to think that we would be living in a little shanty down with a militant dictator telling us what we can and can't do, that I'm hoping to end right now. When we discussed South Korea we were discussing Seoul - the second largest metropolitan area in THE WORLD (over twice the population than the New York City metropolis). That being said we ended up not going to South Korea, and instead deciding on New Zealand.

We started the whole process a month and a half ago. We filled out forms applying a BUNAC work-in-New-Zealand program, and sent them in. We got accepted to the program, and then had to apply to get our work Visas. I started making phone calls, figuring out plane tickets, etc, and before I knew it I had spent $5,000 on tickets for Amy and I to get from Madison to Hawaii to New Zealand. The last week has been very exciting for me as things are starting to come together. We got our work Visas back and I'm now in touch with serveral people at the New Zealand Internation Exchange Program. We've begun flat-hunting (apartment hunting) in Wellington, and have found several viable flats. Now all that remains is finishing up my last two weeks here at SVA.

My boss asked me to stay an extra week at SVA, thus making my 4 weeks notice 5. I've been at this company for over two years, and have met some of the best friend's I've ever known through SVA. Over the last 8 months the majority of those friends have left, and now it's just Craig and I. Had someone told me a year ago that I'd be quitting my job and moving half way around the world I would have called them crazy. It still hasn't quite hit me yet. I'm not the kind of person to do this. I like knowing what's comming for me, and I like having a plan. Amy's been nothing but good to me, and I love her more than I thought possible. There's a Bon Jovi song that has a line "As drunk on love as you can get..." and I definately put myself in that category. I quit my job and I'm moving 6,000 miles for a girl. I didn't do that for my parents - what does that say about me?