Sailboat Reflection

WELCOME

Welcome to my blog about our new adventures about moving from sub-tropical coastal South Carolina (Charleston) to a city in the Sonoran Desert (Tucson). My first struggle is to learn to spell Tucson correctly as I tend to want to switch the c and the s!
Just a brief history of each city first:
Charleston (formerly Charles Town) was founded in 1670 and moved to its present location in 1680 by English settlers. Charleston was a focal point for the American Revolution (1176-1785) and was seized and was under British control through 1782. it was also the first state to secede from the Union and the first shot of the American Civil War was fired here on to Fort Sumter where the Union army was holed up. It is city filled with history and has been beautifully preserved. It is continually voted as one of the best cities to visit and the friendliest people.
Tucson, Arizona is located about 120 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the Mexican border. The Spanish colonizers tried to seize the land from the local Native tribes in the 1770's, It was officailly founded by the Irish exporer Hugh O'Connor in 1775 and is one of the oldest cities in the United States.Tucson is considered one of the "Mega-Trend" cities of the 21st century. It has the beauty of the Sonaran desert as well as being surrounded by five mountain ranges. It is also considered a very "artsy" area which is good for me. It is a huge area for photography and hopefully, will make me grow and push myself further in that field.
Tom will be working at Raytheon Missile Defense Systems. He will doing speechwriting and other executive communications duties.
We are looking forward to all of our opportunities and hope you will check back with my blog from time to time to see how "jen's journey" is proceeding.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Last night here. We are headed back to Charleston tommorrow. I can't say I'm not glad. We are missing our green!
House hunting again today. It is just so overwhelming all the houses we have looked at. We have several that could be good choices but we have not seen one that we say we love and this must be it. Tucson is very spread out and we have been in every direction. Unlike Charleston, we can't find an area that seems to be better or particularly worse than any of the others. So that does not help us to look in a specified area. We have 6 houses in the running at this point. But there are pluses and minuses to all of them. One that we like is in a "green community". All of the houses and businesses are built to green standards. That is very appealing to us but we're not sure about living in such an extreme close environment where your house just about butts up next to the ones on either sides. And then there are major power lines nearby which I thought are not supposed to be "safe" to live near but they seem to be everywhere around here. Another favorite is a Santa Fe style house that is pretty cool but it is in short sale which can be a real pain in the arse. In addition, they took one wall down between bedrooms and added floral carpet and stripped light fixtures, etc. but it could probably be a really neat house after these obstacles are overcome. And so it goes with all of the houses- some possibilities but no clear choices.
Okay, back to Charleston to put our house on the market and then To has to be back here Saturday. (poor Tom at this sped up time line! From what we understand here it is very unusual for Raytheon to move so quickly so they must really want my hubby!)
See you on the East coast...

No comments:

Post a Comment