Goodbye 20s, Hello 30s!

I figure this is the perfect opportunity to look back on the last 10 years and give thanks for the awesome stuff that's happened. That way I ring in the next 10 on a positive note! So I'm going to list 10 awesome things from this last decade - events which were important to me and made a difference in my life.

So here they are (and they're in order of what occurred to me, the numbering isn't some sort of David Letterman-style ranking system):

1. Board game parties with my friends - we've shared lots o' food, drink, and laughs over the last couple years. Whenever a party's over, it leaves me wanting to schedule another one for the very next week. I love all my awesome friends! :)

2. Walking my Dad down the aisle when he and Steph got married last year.

3. Living in France - I left for Calais to teach English about two weeks after 9-11. The French welcomed me in to their school and their lives. Being able to speak French on a daily basis energizes me like an endless battery, and the fact that the French system has awesomely built in so much vacation time meant that I could travel all around Europe during the 7 weeks of vacation (in 8 months) and all the long weekends I had during my time there.

4. Traveling - I've had the wonderful opportunity in the past few years to go to Toronto for a wedding, Paris twice on vacation, and Cairo just this year on vacation. Cairo especially was fascinating, just because it's the most exotic place I've ever been. It's full of places you see in books and movies, but don't seem quite real until you're standing beside them with your mouth open. I even got to walk down into a pyramid. Bartering at the market has to be one of the highlights.

5. Moving back to Boston - What I really appreciated about St Louis is that living there exposed me to people with a lot of different viewpoints than my own (especially politically speaking). Having grown up in liberal-land (and being very liberal myself), I feel like my sense of the world was enriched by being able to understand the perspectives of a completely different group. That said, I love Boston so much more! The colors are more vibrant here, I'm closer to my family, and the activities just seem so much more prevalent and interesting.

6. Teaching group fitness - If you'd asked me 10 years ago whether I'd ever get up on a microphone in front of a group of people and led an exercise class, I would've thought you were seriously smoking something. When I started learning how to teach, I thought my heart would pop right out of my chest, it was beating so hard. But eventually, I learned that the anticipation of teaching class was so much more nerve-wracking than actually teaching. Now that I'm used to it, I think nothing of grabbing that mic and spouting out aerobics jargon. I think that I was already headed towards a higher sense of self-confidence anyway, but teaching fitness definitely kick-started it. I'm no longer the quiet girl in class!

7. My friends - this kind of goes along with #1, but just in general, I've found an amazing group of friends, and whether we're hanging out over dinner, or movies, or whatever, I always enjoy their company.

8. My family - love 'em all, for their support with everything, from emotional support to helping me buy my condo, to just being their awesome selves.

9. Buying my condo - it may be a shoebox, but it's my shoebox, and I managed to avoid all that predatory lending rigamarole. The first awesome thing about having my own place was being able to build (with my father's help) floor to ceiling book shelves. Damn it if they're not full to overflowing! Off to IKEA for more bookshelves...

10. Food! - ok, so this probably seemed like a given on this, my food blog. But now that I've learned how to cook, and I cook often and with local tasty ingredients, food has become a big part of my life. Whether it's discussing it with you guys on my blog, filling my freezer with homemade frozen dinners, cooking for a party, eating out at restaurants, finding out healthy alternatives, making seasonal recipes, or what have you, it's been a journey.