Life on The Island...: Update and new blog title

First of all, you may notice that the title of the blog has changed from "Matt's journey to the keys" to "Life on the island". If this is your first time reading my blog, I can now finally make this public information, since both of my employers now know I am leaving! Since my last post, I went down to KW to explore, look for jobs, meet some locals, and to just get a feel for the place. Everything about this trip validated my plans to move down, so I decided to start looking for jobs. I had success with this on several fronts...

1) Key West High - As april is an awful time to be looking for school jobs, this trip went as well as it could have. The school year is 2 months from being over, and they are still at least a month away from knowing what vacancies they will have for next year. Having said that, the principal (who is retiring and won't be doing the hiring for the fall) suggested that if KW High was truly my first choice that I should volunteer a few hours a week in the school for the rest of this year. This would give me the chance to meet the right people to know for the fall, which would give me a tremendous advantage over anonymous people looking to relocate. As I've said in other posts, I can also substitute-teach for the rest of the year as well.

2) Bar/restaurant jobs- This is what I would do for the most part during the summer. I had good talks with the management of several places that would be great to work at (most notably, Louie's Backyard and the Westin resort). After hearing my experience, they all said "It sounds great, come talk to us when you actually live here". I plan on doing just that :)

3) Florida Keys Community College- This one just came out of nowhere! While browsing the education websites in the keys, I saw that there were several summer classes with no teachers and they are actively hiring adjunct professors to teach math courses. They have 2 classes with no teachers for the second summer session (June 21-July 30), and after seeing my qualifications, they said I would be perfect. While this will be very part-time (each class meets for 2 hours a day, 4 days a week), the pay works out to about $32 an hour, not to mention a GREAT addition to my resume.

So thats the job front. With the college job, volunteering at the HS, and the abundance of bar/restaurant job openings, I decided after a lot of thought to go ahead and chase my dream. It was then time to look for a place to live, and after 2 days of searching, got a callback from a guy with a room for rent, so I went to look. Now, this was advertised as a surprisingly inexpensive place for the location (right in the middle of Old Town, 2 blocks off Duval, and smack in the middle between the Atlantic Ocean and the Seaport district). The house is great, a 3 bedroom conch house, and the roomates are a mid-50's Australian chef, who has owned the house for over 30 years, and a mid 30's writer...very nice people. I asked why the rent wasn't higher (its not cheap by any means, but low by KW standards), and he said for a few inconveniences, he didnt feel he should charge more. The house is unrenovated with old appliances and such (who cares?), no washer and dryer, but there are laundromats everywhere in old town, and he wants to keep a quiet house, meaning very few, if any, overnight guests, and no loud music, etc. On the plus side, the room is fully furnished, air conditioned (a must in KW), and includes all utilities, and is a month-to-month lease so I could leave relatively easily if I had to. I loved the area and the house, and get a really good vibe from both of the guys, so after checking out a couple more places, I decided to go with it. My official move-in date is May 1st, so I'll be loading up the yellow beast and heading down US1 then. Now that life is getting more eventful, I'll update this blog much more often, so please sign up to subscribe if you haven't already! Now for some pictures..

The house, on a quiet street in Old Town in the middle of everything.....