Miscellaneous (BUT EXCITING!) Update

For anyone reading our blog who might have wondered why the last post is from an adventure over a week ago, here's a quick update on all the random things that have been happening lately:

- Last Saturday, we drove from Asheville back to Charlotte to pick up our permanent license plate, my new license, and some random stuff.  We also celebrated mother's day early with my mom.  Oh yeah, and I had to buy a suit because I HAD A JOB INTERVIEW, and of course all of my nice clothes are in a storage unit on Long Island.  Yep - thanks to a connection from my awesome friend Kathleen, a great school in Charleston wanted to interview me.

- After successfully completing all Charlotte missions, we drove back to Tom's parents' in Pittsboro/Chapel Hill to celebrate his mom's birthday (and another early mother's day).  While there, I stressed myself out constantly and obsessed over my interview, scouring the school's website and preparing a demo lesson plan.  Okay, so the obsessing really started back in Savannah when I found out this school had a position open.  But it got pretty extreme once I knew they were interested in me and an all-day interview and demo lesson were scheduled for Thursday.

- Before heading back to Charleston for my interview, we stopped in Raleigh again for dinner with our friend Meredith and her boyfriend Jonathan.  I didn't blog about our explorations of Raleigh/Durham last month... Tom, his brothers, and I spent some time in these two downtowns since they were on our potential relocation list.  While Durham's American Tobacco area is awesome and they have a new center for the performing arts, it's not quite as lively and developed as we want.  Raleigh was incredible - quite different from the downtown I last saw years ago.  It was lively and full of restaurants and new residential areas.  I may have said before that Raleigh and Charleston were the final relocation contenders.  If not, now you know.  Anyway, we had dinner with them at the very tasty and eclectic Humble Pie.  Kudos to Raleigh for having a restaurant with such delicious food, and kudos to Meredith for picking it!

- After dinner we drove straight back to Charleston since my interview was the next day.  I spent seven hours on campus interviewing with all the big wigs and teaching a 10th grade English class.  Tom spent seven hours exploring Charleston.  We reconvened, I decompressed, and we went out to eat with our friend Brad (who we stayed with two weeks ago) and his uncle (who owns a house in Charleston and is a master handyman - he gutted and renovated his place himself, and it is AMAZING).

We decided to stay in Charleston for a few days to explore more neighborhoods in depth because.... drum roll, please.... THAT'S WHERE WE'VE DECIDED TO LIVE!!!  We had a big discussion with the Jackson brothers who are also moving, and we're all in agreement to give it a try.  We're feeling drawn to living by the beach, and Charleston just feels right.

So, we bummed around, ate at some great restaurants, went to the farmer's market that happens every Saturday, and started trying to picture Charleston as home.  We're super excited and are looking forward to starting the next phase of our lives there.

UP NEXT: South to the sunshine state!  Amelia Island, Fernandino Beach, St. Augustine...