Greetings and Happy New Year from Charleston, SC! Instead of acquiring more stuff for Christmas, Fiancé-friend and I elected to give each other the gift of a visit to this historic coastal city over New Year’s Eve.

Obligatory couples photo, NYE 2012.

Unlike last year’s midnight fireworks debacle, we were able to position ourselves right here, on Waterfront Park, to ring in 2013 with fireworks in all directions.

Dad and Pat loooooove (LOVE!) Charleston and have been singing its praises for years. Like most good children, I allowed 90% of their parental advice to go in one ear and out the other, so I had a shockingly impoverished understanding of Charleston. Wait, it’s on the coast? You say it’s a peninsula? It’s steeped in awesome history? [Oops, AP US History fail!]

Everything in Charleston–at least, on the ritzy end of the peninsula–is stunningly beautiful. It’s open and clean, delightfully charming, and totally walkable. It’s everything I love about the beach (that sweet coastal feel) with a lot more to do.

Everywhere you look, Swiss chard is being used as a decorative planting: the fountain at our Courtyard by Marriott, window boxes, front gardens. Fiancé-friend strongly discouraged me from picking it to nom-nom later.

This pineapple? Not so much good for eating. Good for welcoming though.

And the southern food is so, sooooo good. I had a [virgin] bloody Mary at lunch. SPICY DELICIOUS.

I’m not sure when I became an adult who walks around and admires other people’s houses [Be proud, Mom. I totally jumped up and down trying to peer in someone's front window last night.] , but somehow, I do that now.

See this house? Yeah, I want to live in it. I’m sure I could learn to love mint juleps if I had a porch like this to spend my lazy afternoons on.

I used to feel obligated to distance myself from the south and southern culture. I didn’t want to be associated with southern gentility or y’all or sweet tea. An Asian southern-belle seemed really, really goofy and not part of a persona I wanted to develop. While I don’t plan on ever cultivating anything resembling a drawl, I am finding more and more to appreciate from the south. Who knows? Maybe I’ll subscribe to Southern Living one of these days.

Once again, I am hit with the intense desire to get the hell out of grad school and settle somewhere cool. This morning on my run, I kept turning down quaint streets and saying, “Maybe we could move here! I like this street! We could walk Bodger here!” [Har, har, Mica. You definitely do not have the money-dollars to live here.]

I called for a showing appointment of this historic home. No, just kidding.

I am so glad that this upcoming semester will be my last in grad school. Finally, we are ready to embark on our next adventure. I’m scared for the inevitable moment when I realize “Oh, what is this? The real world succccccks!” but for now, it’s great to have so much openness in our planning. I am not limiting myself to one field of employment or geographic location, so I hope we’ll land somewhere cooler than where we are now. Hooray, 2013! Let’s do this!

And now, I  conclude my first post of 2013. This is guaranteed to be an exciting year, full of changes and new experiences: getting married and Wedding Victory Tour, [hopefully] finding a good job, moving to a new city, woohoo! I am excited to blog it all, as life changes make for interesting content.

Coming up: my super-awesome idea for 2013 Resolutions.