One Month

Two years ago, I started teaching voice and piano full-time, loving the working world, building a career, earning twice as much as I am now.

One year ago, I returned from Austria and Germany and was googling my life away researching graduate programs in schools there, while simultaneously spending countless hours every week learning German on my own before signing up for a class.  I had come back from Europe determined and in love with so many things, still hard-set on returning.

Now I'm living in Austria, teaching, speaking German, and continuing on the path of growing and bettering myself as a musician, teacher and person throughout all these experiences.  I couldn't ask for more out of life right now.  I am right where I want to be, and everything is in it's right place right here, right now.

So far, the world seems to just get smaller and bigger at the same time.

Many other peers in the Fulbright program have been taking trips every weekend (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Switzerland).   As exciting as it is to be a stones throw from these amazing places and to easily say yes to going along since it'd be less expensive, I've held back on going.  I haven't gone on the trips because a) I already have these trips planned with other people in the coming months, so therefore b) I'm trying to not go anywhere twice since c) I'd rather save that money and travel more East and South on the globe.  While there's still so much for me to see in Europe, being here has made possibilities in life bigger and more realistic, and yet I also have this sense of the world feeling even smaller, giving me even more wanderlust.  It's easy and quick adapting to a country such as Austria, and it's made me want to step outside and explore different worlds where it's harder to adapt within a culture, society, and way of life.

I crave new challenges, experiences and surroundings, and I hope I always will.  I try and almost always reflect and appreciate everything I have on a daily basis - all family and friends back home, where I am living, and what I am doing - but through the daily routine, the most I can ask myself for is to make sure I see and do something new everyday, take every opportunity given, but to also choose wisely what I do and don't do throughout my time here in order to make my future what I want it to be, as I did the past few years:

"You can't control the future, but you can control your destiny."  I look back on the last two years as a time of a lot of working, learning and saving, and it was what got me to where I am today.  While I want to live that same way during my time here (but with less working), I want my lifestyle to include more people, building of relationships and daily enjoyment and appreciativeness of the small things: the most important things in life.