I officially have one week of professional employment under my belt. Hooray.

Week one of work at Youth Orchestra of the Americas went pretty well. I like my boss and colleagues, and I'm pretty sure that they are pretty excited to have me on board too.

The commute isn't so bad, as long as I am able to get in and leave early. Obviously I will have late days here and there when I have meetings or huge projects to finish, but other than that I think my schedule will work just fine with them.

I left at 5:30 am on Friday, and instead of it taking an hour to get in, it took me 20 mins. That was amazing. And my drive home, even though it was a bit later than I was planning on (3:30 pm), it still only took me 25 mins instead of the usual hour. Actually on Thursday it took me closer to 1 hour, 45 mins because there was an accident on 66. I definitely like my early commute better. Hopefully it will be similarly quick mid-week.

I got a book-on-CD from the library for my commute anyway. It has been such a long time since I regularly went to the library; it has been fun re-acquainting myself with this resource.

I already have travel lined up for my work too. In February I will be in New York for a couple days while the orchestra plays in Carnegie Hall! I'm sure I will also be going to a few of our fancy fundraiser events that we are in the process of planning for February in various DC locations. One of them will be at the Colombian Embassy. I went to tour it and it is an amazingly beautiful space. That will be an awesome event.

Also, I am tentatively holding my schedule in the summer for the big tour as well: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil! My boss hasn't confirmed it yet, but I think I might be going. It will be a long time to be away from my Patrick, but will also be a fantastic experience. I have never been to South America!

Tomorrow Patrick and I start house-hunting! We are hoping to be able to find a place and close in time to meet the first-time-home-buyer's tax credit deadline. I doubt that any of the houses we see tomorrow will still be on the market by the time we are able to make an offer, but I am excited to start finding out what we will be looking for and narrowing down our search. I can't wait to own a house. I have been nuts about houses since I was a little girl. Finally being able to pick out one of my own instead of daydreaming over floor plans is going to be amazing.