Cruise Agenda

For those of you who would like to follow along on our adventures here is our cruise agenda.

Thursday Sept 2: Fly out of SLC at 8 AM

Friday Sept 3: arrive in Istanbul 10 PM

Saturday Sept 4: Istanbul, Turkey

Sunday Sept 5: Istanbul, Turkey

Monday Sept 6: Cruising Dardanelles

Tuesday Sept 7: Kusadasi, Turkey

Wednesday Sept 8: Santorini/Thira, Greece

Thursday Sept 9: Cruising Mediterranean

Friday Sept 10: Sorrento, Italy

Saturday Sept 11: Rome/Civitavecchia, Italy

Sunday Sept 12: Florence/Livorno, Italy

Monday Sept 13: St. Tropez, France (also happens to be our 2 year wedding anniversary)

Tuesday Sept 14: Monte Carlo, Monacco

Wednesday Sept 15: Cruising Mediterranean

Thursday Sept 16: Barcelona, Spain

Friday Sept 17: Fly out of Barcelona 11:20 AM arrive in SLC at 7:15 PM

From Fairfield to Laguardia and everything in between

We left Fairfield New Jersey around 4 pm on Saturday August 21st and headed for NYC. We took the bus to Port Authority in NYC and then walked up to Times Square. We knew we wanted to see a show that night, we just couldn't decide on which one. Our list consisted of Lion King, Phantom, West Side Story, Jersey Boys and Mary Poppins. Conveniently when we left the subway station and headed up the the street the first thing we saw was a giant Mary Poppins sign. So we decided to the sake of ease on our time restraints we would just buy tickets for Mary Poppins. After buying our tickets we headed to the upper west side to Natalie's apartment so we could leave our luggage there while we went out for the night. It was so sweet of Natalie to let us leave our stuff there, it would have been so annoying hauling it all over the city all night. AFter we dropped off our bags we found a great Thai food restaurant in Hell's Kitchen (there are so many wonderful places to eat, i can't wait to go back). Our food was absolutely delicious and very quick. After dinner we bought some I love NY shirts for jess and stu and then headed to the theatre.

Mary Poppins was a really fun show. Great family show full of lots of fun music. My favorite parts were the park scene when Mary takes kids into the painting (the dancing was great) and then the Steppin time Number. (burt walks all the way around the procenium and is even upside down for part of it, really cool) and then at the end when Mary flies out into the audience.

After the show we got some ice cream and then wandered through time square with all the lights. It was just such a nice, relaxing evening full of great food and great entertainment. (if you notice in the back ground is the billboard from Project Runway's Challenge Winner)

We headed back to Natalie's to pick up our stuff and visit for a while. Around 1:30 pm we headed to the subway and on to Laguardia. It took us about an hour and a half to make it to Laguardia. But the whole way Travis and i just kep thinking while are all these people up? and why are so many young children running around on the subway at this time of night?

At 3 AM we arrived at the airport. Security was closed down so we waited til 4 to actually go to our gate. once inside we waited til about 5:30 and then boarded our plane. Once we sat down on the plane travis and i both crashed. Neither of us remember take off or landing for our first flight. We had a suprise hour lay over in cincinnati (not fun). then we boarded the plane again. And again, once we sat down we crashed. Neither of us remember take off or landing. the only thing we remember is waking up, drinking a glass of Coke from the beverage cart and then we were out again. We had one more lay over in Denver (this one we knew about) before our final flight back to SLC, which both of us were awake for.

overall it was such a great weekend. it really felt like a vacation since we were able to sleep in every day and final get answers (great ones) that we have been trying to get answered all summer. we are so excited for our next adventure in life. i can't wait to see what is in store for us.

Sorry the last couple posts have been so wordy and the pictures are such horrible quality!

Just a quick Disclaimer...

If you notice the lack of pictures on my posts or the poor quality its due to this little guy!

when we arrived in New Jersey i realized my camera battery was dead and we had forgotten the charger and all they had at Target was a waterproof camera with no flash! AH! oh well.

New Jersey

As I mentioned we were so excited about moving to New Jersey and felt like everything was really working out in our favor until we received the news that there might not be a position open for us after all at the studio. However, we already had our travel arrangements lined up and it was too late to back out now, so off we went. We arrived at laguardia around 7 PM on Wednesday August 18th where we were met my Bro. Bridges (the father of the wonderfully generous family). It was so comforting arriving at Laguardia knowing that someone was there to help us find our way to Fairfield.

When we arrived at the Bridges' home we called Gary just to get an idea of when our lesson's were scheduled and also to get an idea of our schedule for the weekend. During the phone call Gary proceeded to tell us that we no longer needed to look at the other studio because he for sure had a position avaible for both of us (such a relief), then he proceeded to tell us that for our lessons we would receive the employee discount (another relief which saved us about $60) and also that we were free to use the studio to practice as much as we wanted while we were there (another relief since usually there is a floor fee per hour you use the studio so we saved some more $$). Needless to say we slep really well that night!!

The next day we went to the studio where we were able to practice for about 5 hours (which felt so good since we haven't practiced all summer we have been so busy with work) after practicing we went and looked at an apartment in Lincoln Park called Beaver Brook. It is really nice place with a pool and your own garage and we really liked what we saw. The only thing we weren't crazy about is that rent is $1100 a month plus you have to pay for the electric. However, by this point we were resigned to the fact that that was a good price. so we took an application and told them we would be faxing our information to them. That night we went bowling with some friends from the studio (BYU alumnists) it was so fun and nice to just relax and not worry about working. It was also really great to catch up with Natalie and Dawid and just spend some time with them before they move.

Friday was also a great day. we went to the studio and practiced for a few hours and then had a lesson with Gary followed by one with Diana. Both of which were extremely helpful and we are excited to begin working with them on a regular basis, they are really great coaches! That night the studio had a social, which was fun to just go chill and see how the studio works a little bit. After the social we went out to dinner with our friends. During dinner we were lamenting about housing prices etc when Dawid proceeded to tell us about how he lives in the basement apartment of a home owned by the studio owners and what a great place it is. He suggested we move into the apartment after he moves out. After dinner we drove to West Orange to check out the home and decided we would ask Gary if that would be available for us to move into.

Saturday was another great day. we had another lesson with Diana (we are now half way through our new foxtrot, which is SO much better than our old one). After our lesson we spoke with Gary about the West Orange house. He said it would be available and he would charge us $800 a month (which by now you can tell is a steal!). The great thing about moving into this home is we don't have to sign a year lease, $800 includes all utilities, and we don't have to pay a security deposit (which saves us around $2000 up front).

After our meeting with Gary we went back to the Bridge's home to say goodbye before we headed to NYC for the evening (more to come). All in all it was such a perfect weekend and we are so excited to move to new jersey now that we have all the foreseen kinks worked out and we are going to be able to keep our expenses much lower than anticipated. I CAN'T WAIT!!!

Bro. Bridges dropping us off at the Bus Stop before we left for NYC for the night. What a great person!! we can not say thank you enough to this family! (can't you see how excited travis is about everything)

Housing

During our preparations to move to New Jersey we were looking into apartments in the area and it seemed we couldn't find anything for less than $1200 a month unless it was located in a very shady area. Well, I don't know about the rest of you but I was devastated by this bit of information. $1200 for a one bedroom tiny apartment. AH! Well after many hours of searching online and a number of breakdowns (if you can't tell its been a rough couple of months for me) I was at my witts end, so I decided to have Travis call the Bishop over the ward that lives in the area we were goign to be working in.

I can not begin to tell you the overwhelming outpouring of love we istantly felt from the Caldwell ward. Within hours we had e-mails from multiple families offering to help us in our search and wanting to know more about us. We told them our price range and what we were looking for and when we would be in the area to look for apartments before we actually moved and they were instantly on the hunt.

After corresponding with one family in particular they offered us their home, car, GPS, food and hospitality for our weekend trip to New Jersey. I can not begin to tell you how many prayers they answered through every e-mail. What was looking to be a very expensive trip for us suddenly turned into an exciting adventure.

That is until we received the not so great news about the possibility of no longer having a position at the studio.

Background Information

Alright, before I give you all the great news about New Jersey, i'm going to start by giving you the background information of what has taken place the last 9 months; in the hopes that it will make you appreciated the next post.

As most of you know this past year was our last year at BYU and as time passed Travis and I were trying to decide what we wanted to do after we graduated from BYU. Unfortunately Travis had a few student loans from before we were married so we decided to audition to dance on a cruiseline, since they pay really well and you don't have any expenses while you are there (plus free travel). We were so excited about the idea and started preparing to send in audition videos. (extremely exhausting let me tell you). The worst part wasn't even preparing the dances, it was edition the clips to send in, but after many breakdowns (i had taken some editing classes so i decided to do the work myself) the discs were finally ready to be mailed out. We sent our resume, headshots and video of our dancing to Royal Carribean, Princess and Crystal Cruises (we had never head of Crystal Cruises but decided to send it just becuase we had already put the material together). And then the waiting began...

A few weeks after sending in our videos Travis and I were talking about our future plans and the more we talked to more we realized we didn't actually want to dance on a cruise ship since it meant a minimum of 6 months on the boat at a time and we were eager to begin our professional career. Luckily we decided this on our own, because as time passed we never really heard back from any of the cruise lines.

Around the end of February Travis and I decided LA would be a fun area to live so we began contacting studios in the area to see if they were in need of any new teachers. We came in contact with some great people and around April we set up appointments to check out their studios in June. We were feeling really blessed by this point to have everything work out so smoothly, but decided to keep investigating just to see if anything better came our way. We decided to give a fellow BYU tour team alumnist a call since he left BYU about 6 or so years ago and basically has been able to accomplish everything we want to do (his name is Mayo). So we called Mayo and spoke with him and long story short he told us we should consider moving to New Jersey to work at Roger's Dancsport Center (which is where he started teaching after he left BYU) and gave us the contact information for Gary McDonald. Mid May we called Gary and things sounded promising, we set up a meeting with Gary while we were in Blackpool, England at the beginning of June. We met with him in Blackpool, things were great and we decided to prepare to move to New Jersey and set up a preliminary trip in August to check everything out.

During all of their meetings with Gary we received a call from Crystal Cruises. Crystal Cruises offered us a position as a rotating dance instructor on their cruiseline which means that about once a year they will send us on a cruise (all expenses paid) plus pay us to teach on one of their ships. We were elated!! We are now going on a cruise in September to the Mediterranean and couldn't be more excited (more information to follow).

A week before we were scheduled to fly to New Jersey for a visit we called Gary to just iron out a few details of our trip when we received some less than stellar news. He said that he possibly wouldn't have room for us at his studio anymore, but that he would help us get a position at a nearby studio. While we would still be in the area, the main reason we wanted to move to New Jersey was to actually work at Gary's studio. So needless to say we weren't quite as excited for our trip anymore.

Last Weekend

For those of you who are interested, Travis and I went to New Jersey last weekend to check everything out and all i have to say is that the weekend could not have gone better! We are so excited, photos and details to follow.