Going to be moving in just a few weeks, and it’s hard to believe I spent the last 8 months in Arizona. Time has just gone by so fast and it almost feels like yesterday I was still sitting in my room in Pennsylvania not doing anything with my life. Lots of lessons have been learned, and my time in Arizona has been of the most life changing times for me ever. I’ve grown and matured as an individual, and learned some important things about myself. This series of blogs will just be to look back on the time I spent here, and the memories I’ve made. I will also make a blog at the end summing up my likes and dislikes of my living here. Enjoy.

I got to Arizona in mid December. I remember being extremely nervous as this was the first time I was moving out on my own, plus the furthest I have ever been away from home. My plane flight had gotten delayed back about 6 hours as well, so we didn’t get in the Phoenix airport until about 10PM. I remember coming in on the plane that I thought everything looked really bland. I was expecting to see desert everywhere, but the Phoenix Airport was like a city in itself so it was just all concrete and asphalt. Once finally getting off the plane, I remember everything in the airport looked really different. Maybe it was just because this was the first time I was at an airport at night, but it was also extremely huge. One thing that caught my eye were all these shoe shining services, where they had hot girls in short skirts shining your shoes for like $10 bucks or something... I was like WTF.

Anyway, because it was late, we were unable to get into my apartment and had to book a hotel room. We picked up my car from the place that had towed it for us, and we booked a room in a hotel. I remember my mom was being really picky on choosing a place, but it turned out really good because the place I picked just happened to be right across the street from my apartment complex by mere chance. We settled in our room, but were starving so we decided to scope out some places to eat. I was doing all the driving, and I remember being not so much nervous, but just very cautious as everything was extremely different to me.

True it was night time, but Arizona was not what I expected it to look like at all. I had just expected lots of sand and cactuses, but the city of Mesa and Tempe are actually very commercial and its mostly just roads and buildings. Things became clearer the next day though, as in daylight, Arizona looked once again very different, but still not as I expected. Even now after 8 months here, there is still a huge difference between the day and night scene here.

The truth was Arizona actually had a ton of really nice nature, and more that I would discover as I spent more time in the state. Everything was built out of this tan clay stuff too, so every single building and house pretty looks the same. There's tons of commercial stores, and everything I could ever need was walking distance away. The roads are pretty large, but its easy getting around because everything is flat and set up like a giant grid. It's just all big squares. The weather was absolutely beautiful as well, and I remember being so happy stepping off the plane with my jacket on from PA, and feeling the 70 degree weather in mid december. This was unheard of me before, but I loved it.

There was lot of interesting things I’ve seen, and many cool things I pointed out, but for the sake of not writing a 10 page blog to describe it all, I’ll just skip past it and move on to other stuff. If you recall, prior to moving to Arizona, I blogged about some changes and goals I wanted to go about doing once I got to Arizona. I looked at my move like a rebirth, a new life. Among those goals were to try new things, become more social, more trusting of people, hang out more, get a girlfriend, etc etc. (among studying of course) Looking back 8 months, sadly I never accomplished any of my goals other then succeeding immensely with my studies. I did though make a great effort at them in December.

I didn’t start school until January 8th, so I had almost 4 weeks to do whatever I wanted. I actually did for awhile start doing a lot of stuff. I actually found myself in my first few weeks going to many new stores and places, just to look around. I visited malls, went to see attractions, and more. I did a lot of exploring around by just driving around for a couple hours and I was feeling glad I was doing this. I also tried to become more social. I had contacted some of my future classmates off of facebook, and we had arranged to hang out. I started hanging out with them exclusively, and they lived in a place where many students from my school lived, so I quickly found myself hanging out with a large group (about 5 or 6 each night) of friends each night.

This quickly began to wear thin on me though. Mostly they were only interested in drinking and smoking weed every night, and as you know, all of that is just not up my alley since I don’t really do either. We often would go out at night and drive around, but it almost always ended up with some alcohol trip to walmart which I thought was really lame. I remember we would always go places to eat as well, and they always wanted to leave without paying. They may have been very well joking, but I don’t take lightly to jokes like that, or I’m just really gullible.... I personally think they would have done it if I didn’t convince them otherwise...

Then came New Year’s Eve, which turned out to be quite a revolutionary day for me. We had started by going to a block party, which is something I never did before, and I remember that there was so many hot girls just prancing around in their little black dresses. The night ended up being pretty lame though as the people I went with weren’t really enjoying the block party, and wanted to go eat. I was pretty hungry myself so we decided to go to a P.F. Chang’s a little down the block, and it had a 2 hour wait... We agreed to wait, and I recall all we did for another hour was walk into a CVS and look around and when we came out we were confronted by this extremely drunk, extremely gay guy who started hitting on one of friends and sadly kept our group in conversation for 20 minutes just rambling off about stupid shit.

We actually got lucky because we checked back at P.F Changs and a bunch of people in line in front of us didn’t show up so we got right in. After dinner, as usual we found ourselves at Walmart for alcohol and the place was absolutely dead. I really think we were the only ones in the store. It was very interesting checking out because our cashier was super hot, and very flirty with all of us. It actually turned midnight while we were checking out, and this hot cashier turned to me as I was standing by the bags and said “Happy New Year!” and she grabbed me and gave me a pretty forceful kiss on the cheek. I started acting all ackward, mostly because she was really hot, and I was still taking in what happened. Everyone said I should have asked to hook up with her after her shift, but I really didn’t know what to say.

Anyway, we got back to my friends apartment and the drinking began. I had been drinking socially before this, but recalling one of my goals to try new things, I decided I wanted to drink to see what the big deal was, so I ended up drinking a lot. I didn’t get drunk, but I did get one hell of a buzz, and I remember I felt really good. I felt really comfortable, really calm, and really confident, as if I could conquer the world. I came to understand why people liked drinking so much now.

But then came out the bong. At first I was like, man, here we go again.... Strangely enough though, after being offered it and me saying no thanks, I was given no argument. Usually in the past if I said no to someone’s offer to smoke weed, I got a lot of insults, and like what is wrong with you, and everyone acted like it was very strange I would not smoke. But no, they said nothing except, “alright, that’s cool man” For the first time ever, I wasn’t being pressured to smoke weed, and they accepted that I didn’t want to do it. Maybe I just never had the right friends, but this was what I was always looking for, people that would accept my decisions.

In the end, it actually got me curious to try it, and I ended up smoking quite a bit of weed, and much more then I should have for my first time. I really didn’t know how to smoke it so my first and second hit were not that great. I remember even after wanting to take a second hit, as I didn’t feel anything after the first, that they all urged me not to. I took it though and still felt nothing so they all said I must not be doing it right. They said I could take a third hit if I wanted, so I said sure, I don’t feel anything yet... Well they were watching me closely this time, making sure i did it right, and the guy was like, Frank. you got to inhale as hard you can.... and i did...

I inhaled so hard, and I felt my lungs immediately begin burning. I coughed a whole bunch and everyone started clapping, saying that I finally got a good hit. Within seconds I started feeling very funny. I won’t tell the whole story again as I already blogged it, but it really wasn’t the greatest experience and I have no plans to try it again. The big deal was I tried something new and I was accomplishing more of goals.

I also had many chances to go to social events as well, as going to clubs and bars was something on my goal list as I never went to either before. There were many times friends asked me to go to a bar, club, or strip club, but I turned them down. I also had become friends with my neighbor (the one that ackwardly asked me if I was a virgin) and he was constantly trying to get me to go hang out with him. I actually regret never taking up any of his offers, as he often had some pretty good ones like cookouts, pool parties, shooting guns, riding quads, as well as clubs and stuff. Plus, he was actually trying to get me laid as well. He would always talk about girls he knew he could hook me up with.

In the end though, I’m disappointed to say that other then the few new things I tried when I first got to Arizona, that they quickly died out after New Year, and even more so after school started. I do somewhat regret it, but to be honest, looking back I really don’t know if I enjoyed it or not. I often felt like I was enjoying it, mostly because it was me trying new things, but in reality I often felt I was wasting my time. I also had stopped most contact with my neighbor as he got sick of me turning down his offers, and after january we only say hi if we happen to see each other when coming or going.

Who knows what will happen once I move again. I once again plan to have many of the same goals for myself, but I hope this time I will not fail with them. Either way, stay tuned for the my recollection of January!