Where have I been? So many places.

A photo posted by Amanda (@mandalyn93) on Jun 13, 2016 at 4:25pm PDT

As I sit writing this, I'm in Dallas sipping a hot cup of coffee and listening to David Ramirez. I've been a lot of places in the past month and a half. Chicago, Denver, Salt Lake City, Louisville, Phoenix, Ecuador, Prescott...and soon I'll be trading Dallas, Texas for Tulsa, Oklahoma.

It's been a whirlwind of a summer thus far, and everyone has been asking me "how do you travel so much?" or "wow! Why so much traveling?"

Sky Harbor feels like home.

Only one of these trips was in my plans before April 25th, and that plan was Ecuador. Even then, I only ended up on the Ecuador mission trip I just returned from because I was unable to go last August. All of these trips have otherwise been planned in the past month and a half.

When I found out I was accepted to Teach for America, I made plans to go to Chicago to help Jackie move home from Phoenix before moving to NYC. I had money saved up to go to Iceland in the fall, but as a teacher, I won't have the ability to take two weeks off of work to go and do that.

So I chose to help a friend move, and then I took advantage of the fact that I was on the opposite side of the country (Illinois) and decided to use that trip to spend some time on a train and some time visiting a few other friends who had offered to host me.

To Denver

I had plans to return to Phoenix after Denver and Salt Lake City, but I found out my great uncle had metastasized cancer while in Denver. My parents made plans to drive to Kentucky to say their goodbyes, and I changed my end-of-trip flight from Phoenix to Louisville.

I stayed in Louisville for about a week with my parents, and we spent most of it with my great aunt and great uncle, sitting, talking, and watching tv game shows.

While I was road-weary and just wanted to be home, I'm glad I took the time to go to Kentucky and visit him because he passed away while I was in Ecuador.

I'm sad that he passed away--he was like a grandfather to me--but I know his death was painless and clouded in elderly dementia. He had forgotten he had cancer, and often times would forget within the same day that we had visited him earlier in the day. He lived a long life, passed away peacefully in his sleep, and I'm grateful I was able to see him one last time.

Soon after returning from Kentucky, I turned around and went to Ecuador on a mission trip (I'm talking more about that in a travel blog post). After Ecuador, I was in Phoenix for a whopping four days and then I boarded a plane to Dallas, where I currently am.

Dallas is my last chance to experience a bit of peace and rest before I start an intense five week training program with Teach for America in Tulsa, so I'm reveling in this last bit of real vacation. If you need me, you can find me by the pool or eating tacos with Hannah.

And there you have it--I've traveled some 15,000 miles in the past five weeks or so. While I love traveling and visiting my friends, I'm eagerly awaiting July 23 when I return to Phoenix (for good) so I can spend more than four days with my cat, cousin, parents, friends and favorite coffee shops. For now, I've got five weeks of living in a brand new city up ahead of me.

Goodbyes

I'm not particularly a fan of the whole goodbye thing. I've helped three friends move across state lines in the past two years, and I usually end up in blubbering tears, boarding a train/plane/sitting shotgun with an upset stomach because I hate leaving and knowing my friends won't be within two hours of me. Granted, I'm ultimately comforted by the fact that my friends are growing and experiencing amazing things in their new lives--but that doesn't make it easier.

Jackie just graduated and moved to New York to pursue her dream job of public relations for Broadway and theater-related places. After graduation and before going to New York, she had to go home to Chicago, and I accompanied her.

We spent time in her suburban home town as well as the big city, and took ample time scoping out the picturesque train station where I eventually boarded an Amtrak to cross the country. We cried big ugly alligator tears as we hugged goodbye, and she cried in the taxi to her podiatrist and I cried in the station waiting to board my train. 

We've only been friends for three years, but in those three years of tight knit friendship, we've never lived far apart for a long span of time. Our friendship blossomed in the craziest way--we were randomly matched together to be roommates at ASU after I signed up to live in the dorms a few days after the cutoff, and after a few of her previous roommate plans had fallen through. We knew nothing of each other, but we bonded over an intricately made music video that piqued our interests.

Hannah, who I helped move to Dallas in January, is my closest friend. We've known each other for 20 years (give or take a few months). She moved away for a lucrative job offer, and now she's enjoying eating at Velvet Taco all the time.

We were blubbering messes when she dropped me off at the airport to fly back to Phoenix. I cried all the way through the TSA lines, and the TSA employee was surprisingly sympathetic for someone who is so often associated with long lines and terse interactions.

I finally stopped crying about her being gone once I landed in Phoenix (no joke--in all the years of our friendship, she and I have never lived in a different state. I cried off and on the whole way home). Occasionally she comes back to Phoenix (but not while I'm in town) and I also plan to go visit her on my way to Tulsa soon (more on that later).

Brenna, the first friend I helped move across state lines, is also one of my oldest friends (but, long story short, we weren't close until about 2011.) Two years ago, I drove up to Portland with her, her brother Ben, and our best friend Raquel. There was one moment in the car ride when I realized that I'd be leaving her there, and I was overwhelmed with sadness.

We made the most of the day and a half we had in Portland, and then left to return to Phoenix. The ride back was sad and filled with stomach aches because I missed her so much already. Now, two years later, she is doing swell and my upset stomach finally subsided. She's got a good job at a local Portland, Oregon shoe store and she's almost done with her Bachelor's degree.

While it hurts to see three of my four best friends scattered across the country, I'm encouraged by them. They all moved away to pursue what they thought was best for themselves--Brenna left to experience something new and begin an adventure; Hannah left to start her "adult" life at her first "big girl job" in a city with an amazing food scene; and Jackie went to New York to pursue a life long dream of working in theater (and there is no better place to do that than Broadway.)

Now, these ladies' dreams may change someday. Their priorities may shift and they may find themselves back in Phoenix (or, you know, Chicago for Jackie.) But if they do end up back here, I have no doubt it would not be because they gave up, but rather because they wanted to pursue a new dream.

For now, even though I miss them and hated leaving them in their different new cities, I'm so incredibly proud of them for chasing their dreams, turning them into plans, and making those plans reality.

Amy Tangerine

What now?

"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit." Edward Abbey explains why I feel most alive when I'm out there in the trees.

A photo posted by Amanda (@mandalyn93) on May 2, 2016 at 11:38am PDT

Holy schneikes. I'm embarking on the final week at my job and realizing what is ahead of me.

This summer is going to be crazy.

For starters, I'm going to spend a month in Tulsa for the Teach for America summer institute. I'm going to be spending a week in Ecuador on a mission trip. I'm going to spend nearly two weeks on a Midwest train trip. And, to cap it all off, I have to take a huge standardized test and complete a 45-hour online course before the end of May.

I will be home, at my apartment in Phoenix, for three weeks total in the next three months. That's really hard for me to process. I'm not a homebody, per se, but I like having a physical location to come back to and drop things off at.

On the other hand, I've spent time traveling and housesitting and living out of a backpack, so this is nothing new--it's just something I didn't expect myself to be doing so much of this summer.

The more I think about it, my apprehension and anxiousness is replaced by curiosity and excitement.

In six months from now, I will have grown so much I'll probably be an entirely different person.

• I will have lived in a city where I don't know a single soul (albeit only for a month and a week).
• I will have gone through an effective yet condensed training program and placed in a classroom as a teaching intern. 
• I will (hopefully) have been accepted to and started grad school at ASU. 
• I will have stopped draining my savings and relying on my credit card and finally will have a paycheck after going all summer without one. 

And yet, I'm still asking myself...

What am I doing?

I don't know.

But it's certainly going to be a grand adventure.

Long time, no talk.

I haven't blogged in about a month for a few reasons, one of which being that I felt I had nothing new to say. A lot of my past posts had the theme of uncertainty and alluded to big changes up ahead-- and that's all I was ruminating on for the past month.

I was stuck in a holding pattern waiting to hear back about some exciting news that would potentially bring about major change.

I can finally tell you about that news.

A photo posted by Amanda (@mandalyn93) on Apr 25, 2016 at 7:07pm PDT

If that photo didn't load for you, it's me holding a sign that says "I'm going to be an English teacher!"

That's right, folks. I'm finally pursuing teaching as a career after dreaming about it since I was in junior high, and it's a totally crazy story how it worked out.

I'd been looking into a few certification + Masters programs including (but not limited to) the San Francisco Teacher's Residency at the University of San Francisco. I was in looooooove with the program, in which you attend USF for two years, obtain your Masters of Arts in Teaching, and then are placed in a San Francisco area school for three years.

That program sounded (and honestly still sounds like) a dream to me, except for one thing: I didn't (and still kinda don't) want to leave my city. Other than that, SFTR was the plan and the goal. I would spend the next year building up a savings account and then move to the Bay Area and pursue a MaT and join SFTR.

At least that was the plan until I learned about the Teach for America and Arizona State partnership program. If you're unfamilar with Teach for America, the dealio is relatively similar to SFTR: You commit to teaching for two years and at the end of the two years you will have earned your teaching certificate and, if you choose, a Masters degree in Education.

I started my Teach for America application one week before the final deadline to apply to join the 2016-2017 corps. Nearly two months and a lot of tears and a lot of prayers later (and after a very rigorous application and interview process) I found out I was accepted and placed in Phoenix as a secondary education level English teacher.

This summer will be full of training and practice teaching at a summer school, and then POOF, I'll be a certified teaching intern with a classroom of my own in a Phoenix-area school in the fall!

Now, it's really not all that simple. I have a two courses and one big test I need to take before I even get to begin the summer training institute, and I also need to figure out which training institute I'll be attending. I'll be in Ecuador during the first week of the Phoenix institute, so I'm hopefully transferring to either Tulsa or the Delta training institute for the summer...but no matter how it works out, God's brought me this far. He'll take me through the rest of this.

Cactus

A photo posted by Amanda (@mandalyn93) on Nov 26, 2015 at 4:11pm PST

They used to call me Cactus. I was tall; a desert native.

They could find me dusty, dirty, outside from sun up to sun down. The owls found their home in me, hooting late into the night and the mice made their bed at my feet.

They saw me stare into the dark night sky speckled with stars, arms lifted high above my head in praise. They hugged my strong core, praised my nimble structure.

They would laugh joyfully when they found the gecko on my arm and were delightfully surprised when they felt the prickles of my legs.

They knew they could find a camera wherever I was. The sun would hit me just right, the nuances of my body visible in the desert sunlight and eternally etched into a frame of film.

They depended on my strength and ability to hold my own, to survive in drought, to provide for other desert dwellers.

They used to call me Cactus; now I'm just Amanda.