Australia Bound

If you follow my Twitter feed or my Facebook statuses you should know by now that I'm going to Melbourne, Australia. You should have also been able to conclude that I'm am absolutely ecstatic about going!

There are many reasons for me to be so dang excited! One is that it will be my first time out of the country. I haven't even had a passport until this month! My family aren't very big travelers. My mom and grandma go to Disneyworld every once and a while (although not since 2007) but that's the extent of the traveling that my immediate family really does. So I grew up thinking that no one went out of the country unless you were rolling in the dough. Now my mentality of it has changed... I mean if I still thought that way I wouldn't even entertain the idea of going out of the country!

I made a New Year's Resolution to go out of the country this year. So I'm actually doing it! When I made the goal I was a bit nervous. I didn't know if I was actually going to be able to pull it off. I mean it's a pretty lofty goal for someone who had recently incurred a lot of bills and such. I decided that if it came down to December and I still hadn't gone anywhere out of the country that I would just drive the 4 or 5 hours to Mexico and call it good and try for somewhere on a different continent next year.

Needless to say I knew I was never going to be satisfied doing it the easy way. So I made a plan. I recently started teaching private dance lessons and group lessons and was gaining revenue from that. After the first couple of privates I taught I decided to save the money I make from teaching, or dancing of any type, and put it specifically toward other dance related events. Well after deciding that I had the bright idea to make my out of country experience and my dance event experience coincide! (Brilliant I know!) Now the only question was where do I go??

Well I came to the conclusion of Australia because 1. a friend of mine (who knew of my goal to go out of the country) kept pushing me to go to Australia, 2. a swing dancing friend of mine that I met here in LA just recently moved to Melbourne, 3. I met a friendly awesome dancer from Melbourne, and 4. I found out (via my 2 previously mentioned swing dancing friends) that Melbourne has a lindy exchange in November.

I would love to go south of the equator where it's starting to warm up as we're starting to cool down up here on the north end of things! Now I know what you're thinking... "Karen you live in Los Angeles! It doesn't get cold in LA!" That's besides the point... it will get cold enough!

In short... I'm super stoked to be going to Melbourne from November 19th (arriving in Melbourne November 21st) to December 3rd!!!

If anyone has any suggestions on what I should do while I'm there let me know! I would love to hear everything you know!