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Hello [laughter] I'm Ben, and I'm Alex
And we just moved to New York City.
We live now in Washington Heights which is up a little bit on the island of Manhattan,
and have loved...most of it. Not every minute. It's been an adventure and that's the whole
reason we wanted to come.
There are moments, when I'm standing on the side of the road, but I'm stopped and I can't
move. And I look around and there's people everywhere, there are bright lights, there
are buildings all around me. And I stop and actually realize, "I am in New York City,
and we did it, and we're here. And we're in a place, we're living in a city where everybody,
at some point in their life, wants to try and live, but doesn't necessarily have the
courage to do that. And I stop, and like, I can't believe we just kind of through everything
to the wind [laughter] and just took the courage and did it.
Well we both grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. And we went to school there, and we met at
Georgia State University. We got married shortly after my senior year. And for the last four
years of our marriage, we've been putting each other through grad school.
We got to a point where we were like, "we need a change. We really need to experience
something else. A new culture, a new way of life, a new people group, a new style of communication.
And at that point we were like, if we are ever going to have an experience like this,
we need to do it now. Even before we got married, we had always
talked about the possibility of living in New York. And the excitement of the city and
all the possibilities that the city had to offer.
People thought we were crazy, I think. I think people thought, "You've got a good thing here.
Why in the world would you change that all up and start all over." And people were like,
"do you know how expensive it is to live here?" And we were like, "yes, yes!" But, I don't
think we actually did.
We had to take the leep. And I don't think either of us had jobs at that point in the
city. But we knew this is where we wanted to be, so we came.
It was a calculated risk. We decided what we would do is, do a 3 month sub-let. We knew
where we were going to live before we even got here. And so we thought, "well we have
between August and November 2 to find a job. To settle, to figure out if we like it. And
if we don't, if we don't fit in or we don't like it, we don't get jobs, whatever it might
be, well we're going to have to fly back anyway.
I think even if we do go back home, if it is not the experience we wanted or not everything
we hoped and dreamed it would be. The fact is, we wanted to do something. We talked about
it, we prayed about it, we got a lot of advice about it, and we had the courage, God gave
us the courage and the strength and we did it.
To people who are considering doing something like we did, I would say, a lot of times you
just have to go for it. And it is going to be a leap of faith. But I think it is part
of finding who you are, and finding what you're capable of. Yeah, what you're capable of.
You're stretching yourself and your, kind of seeing your personal limits. It's been
a very rewarding experience. It hasn't all been easy, but we're both very glad that we're
here.