The Next Experiment

Big news: the Dalagers are moving to the States - specifically, back to New York State!!

I've suddenly developed an
inexplicable amount of school pride
for a school I've never even visited!
I even had them winning my March
Madness Bracket. That didn't go so well...
but I still won my family's Bracket pool!!

In less than 3 months, I will be starting my Masters of Public Administration at Syracuse's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. It has been a long road of applying to schools (Jacob and I applied to 6 each), then waiting for decisions and funding information, and finally weighing all the options and coming to our decision.
Maxwell is a top ranked public affairs school, and has offered me a graduate assistantship, which will allow me to work part time on campus, likely doing research, while I earn my degree. Another bonus is that it is a 12-month program. Jacob is planning to work part time, practice a ton, find gigs all over NY, and take auditions. And possibly train a new dog, because our last defenses against getting a dog are eroding quickly. Our tentative plans beyond that are for Jacob to enroll in Manhattan School of Music for an Orchestral Trumpet Professional Studies Certificate in the Fall of 2015. He was already admitted and is deferring for a year. After 6 months of living in limbo, it is a big relief to have plans in place for this upcoming year - plus, I am so excited to be a student again!!

Syracuse is in Western NY, actually just 90 minutes from our former home of Rochester! We're looking forward to reconnecting with friends in Rochester again - and we may be calling some of you for help in the next couple weeks. My program starts on June 30th, so I will be flying back to the Midwest in early June, and Jacob will be coming back in mid-June after finishing up a couple more weeks of lesson. We're hoping to get in lots of visiting!

Amazingly, though not surprisingly, as soon as we flipped the switch and decided to move, we immediately began noticing all the lovely things about Singapore, realizing the many things we will miss. But there are also many things about the U.S. that we are so excited to get back to! So now, in the 2 months we have left in Singapore, we have quite the bucket list to work through - sites to see, things to do that we put off because we planned to do it eventually. Now the clock is ticking, and we're going to go all out! We've even booked our last SE Asia travel adventure - 5 days in Myanmar (Burma...still trying to figure out which is the right name!) Can't wait to share that in May - and to see many of you soon after in June!