What are you going to do now? Where are you going next? Since I just graduated college, these are the most common questions I’ve been hearing the past months. So here’s a life update:

I committed to being an au pair for an Italian family with two girls, ages 8 and 9, on the coast of Forte dei Marmi near Milan, Italy! I left Granada a few days ago and have been relaxing in Valencia, Spain for the past few days to recover from my food poisoning and catch up on my blog before I head to Barcelona later today. I’ll be in a hostel on the beach there for 3 days and then finally I’ll leave to come back home!! Traveling is exhausting especially when you’re sick, disorganized and staying in hostels, which as you can imagine aren’t the most serene places. I’m more excited than ever to return home and sleep in my huge bed, take a shower with a mounted shower head, and finally have some peace and quiet. For now, Starbucks has quite literally become my third home to work and reach some type of relaxation.

I’ll be in Italy from July 8th until mid September. I’m not sure exactly what’s in store for me but that’s the beauty of it. As always, I’ll be taking advantage of every opportunity to come my way and even making my own. I’ll be in Elgin for a little over a week to celebrate an old Mother’s Day, my sister’s birthday, Father’s Day, and my graduation with family and friends! Then I’ll be going to Utah to receive another round of stem cell therapy treatment for my knee, back to Chicago for a couple days, then back to Europe!!

Throughout college I always thought I would be the first of my friends to accept a job offer from a great company and be well on my way into adulthood. At one point the goal was even to secure a job offer before graduation! Anything else would be a failure. It’s taken me a while to get over completely disregarding society’s standards but in my heart I know this is what I want to do. I love education, teaching, learning and sharing, and being able to teach English to two girls in Italy helps me achieve all those goals. I’m also a free spirited entrepreneur and I’ll be able to run my photography and videography business through contacts and friends I meet there. If this doesn’t sound like me what does! Life is too short to not follow your heart and wildest dreams because of a fear of failure or not succumbing to society’s expectations. I posted my favorite quote below which translates as follows: “An easy life, an easy love, an easy death, those aren’t things for me.” Live. your. life!!

Let’s all just hope I recover from my food poisoning so I can eat as much Giordano’s deep dish pizza and Portillo’s as I can! Sta luego!