that one week that changed my life

Looking back, it seems like such a small part of my life, just one of my twenty one summers spent,  yet, looking forward its sending my life spinning in a direction I never anticipated or dreamt of!
This week, two years ago, was the week my life changed. I've only spoken in detail about it to a few people. Now, as I have time to sit in sweet nostalgia, seems like the appropriate time to finally write it down.
 
June of 2011 consisted of exactly EIGHT days, EIGHT, between me getting a Skype call from two strangers, and me boarding a plane to move across the globe to live with them. I was off to be  nanny for the summer! My friends always ask me if I was scared, If I knew what I was getting into. My answer is no. You see, I can only explain this experience by comparing it to one a few years earlier...
 When I was sixteen I went to New York City for dance trip, roomates, Broadway, classes at NYU the whole bit! The first morning I was there: I remember standing on the street, seeing the tourists staring up into the sky with wonderment. I looking up and around, then back at them, I didn't understand.... All I saw was a building. And from where I was standing, I couldn't see the top. As my friends and I walked inside, I saw the granite walls and a gold logo reading "Empire State Building".  We took the elevator to the top, and ONLY from the top, did I realize why those tourists were so amazed! You see, from the ground, I couldn't see it, I couldn't comprehend what was going on, it was a gray building, only later, as looked out onto all of NYC was I able to appreciate the size of that building. So it was with moving to Australia, booking a plane ticket and moving in with perfect strangers seemed like a no brainer to me! Only now, can I look back and see what a massive decision that was, and how it would leave the biggest parts of myself...changed.
 
I left on a Sunday afternoon. That morning I went to church and in a last minute passing with my Aussie neighbors and friends, I found, I was moving to the same area they were from. In all the commotion they quickly jotted down the name and number of their dear friends, and told me if I needed ANYTHING, I should call them. (They should have warned me then and there I'd fall madly in love with those friends' son Josh.)
 
To my surprise, my flight was actually the best I could imagine. Even though I flew coach, I was the only person on the entire 747 who had an entire row to herself. If you've ever had a long-haul flight, HELL, any flight, you know what a blessing this is! The man sitting opposite of me looked like he walked straight out of Crocodile Dundee and for a moment I thought I was literally going to jump out of my skin with pure excitement.
 
For the entire fourteen hours and ten minutes between LA and Sydney I had my headphones on, listening to a playlist made up entirely of Angels and Airwaves. It was the only way I knew I could keep myself calm, as I was realizing my bridge between endless possibilities and reality was closing. My imagination was running a marathon of ideas. My nanny family could be any kind of people, the mum and dad could be classy high rollers, or they could be sport fans, they could live in the mountains or a short stroll from the beach. As I sat on the plane the possibilities were endless, but I knew when I got there, whatever was, well...was.

 (my coming and going from Sydney)

My beautiful calmness lasted all the way through customs and my Sydney layover. And stopped abruptly in the Brisbane Airport when I realized no one was there to greet me. After a little cry fest and a $150.00 pay-phone call home, (you read that right) my calmness was back, and I scooted my light blue suitcase onto the next train bound for the Gold Coast. Here I sat, in a foreign country, with no working phone, only knowing the names of two people, not knowing where I was in proximity to where I was going. You'd think I'd be having a panic attack but instead I giggled to myself over how red the dirt was outside the train window. The second I got off the train, one of the workers greeted me with a "Hey, are you that American girl?" I looked around and thought.... I know Aus has a small population but I'm sure there's more than one of us American girls.... I replied yes and she took me to my sweet nanny mum who was waiting. The rest is pretty smooth sailing from there.
 
Its absolutely blows my mind to think, how little I knew back then. I had NO IDEA I was just weeks away from meeting the love of my life, how on a rainy evening I'd get my last first kiss, how I would obsess over this boy, how within 18 months we would spend nearly ten grand on our transcontinental relationship. How I'd grow to know and love the coast, how I hope to raise my family there. Sometimes life hands you opportunities, and just like me and The Empire State Building, you can't see what your looking at until you take that chance and see it from the top.

With Love, Lacey