As of the last post, I was a wee 19 years old. Young, shy, recently in love and culturally shocked from a then recent 3000mi. move away from my family, I still remember the days as if they were yesterday. Directly after the move I resumed my position with Starbucks in San Jose, CA, where I met many new friends. Adjusting to the environment well, I felt on top of the world and couldn't ask for anything more: a perfect spouse, an incredible location to live with a gorgeous apartment, and physically and mentally healthy.
Rob resumed work at Adobe, loving every second of it, and we went our merry way, one day at a time, through our honeymoon phase. Countless nights of beautiful restaurants, movies, bowling, hanging out with friends, birthday parties, staying in adoring one another, and etc. just affirmed that our life was great, especially in a suffering economy. Little did we know that soon enough, the economy would catch up to us.
In February, I obtained a new, better job as a Technical Manager at a small computer repair shop located in Santa Clara, CA, where I met my, more or less, second family. The owners of the business were 100% Iraqi, with their 3 children being born in America. Zack, the father of the family, quickly became a great mentor for me, enlightening me with his stories of Iraq and how culturally diverse human beings can be. Zack's knowledge of in excess of 23+ different languages/dialects, is certainly a role model we can all strive to find and aspire to be like. Kate, his wife, would always include me when preparing her families meals, and seemed to have a never ending supply if compassion for those she cared about, myself included. I am forever grateful to have found such a loving family.
A few months pass, financially unscathed, and during our ascent through life, we finally hit a speed bump. Rob, working for Adobe at the time, was a contracted employee, rather than a direct hire. With the economy in the gutter, the expiry date on his contract was rapidly approaching and very few options were in site. After countless attempts to have him hired directly, as a permanent employee, we managed to have his contract extended once or twice, but ultimately ended at the end of August. My employer, like many others too, experienced financial difficulty and had to cut my hours numerous times. Eventually we found ourselves out of a job, coincidentally at the same time. After a month or so of rigorous searching for new employment opportunities, we had finally come down to the wire on whether or not to exhaust what savings we had left staying in California or use it to move what we could back east to our family. Naturally we chose the second.
After a week or two of packing and selling what we could on Craigslist, we finally packed our cars and set what belongings wouldn't fit and that we couldn't sell, by the dumpster. This time, our journey took 5 days instead of 3, since we had 2 cars to drive (meaning we were alone in the car the whole trip), and couldn't take driving shifts. Our trip ended back to the east ended in early September, where we moved in with my family until we could get back on our feet. Fast forwarding to April the following year (2010), Rob found work as a direct hire employee for the renowned airplane manufacturer, Boeing. Shortly we moved out with my family and into our condo, while I continued to search for work. The following June, I found work with another local computer repair store, and we were officially back on our feet.
Currently, in August of 2012, we are looking to purchase our first house at the end of our lease, next year, while we continue to hold firm in our employment. Finally, after almost four years together, we have the date set to get married on our planned October vacation, in New York City. Though we've passed through some rough patches here and there, we've managed to stick together through thick and thin, and to this day, I'm still incredibly in love with the man I met when I was 19. I look forward to starting the next phase of our lives together, hand in hand.
