Everyone who knows me knows I love my family. I do. I even did a piece about my mother last week, during our performance after a week-long workshop with famous theatre practitioner Tim Miller (but that's a story for another time).

For the past two summers, I have gone back home after college, working as an Administrative Assistant at a culinary school owned by a family friend. I've stayed home with my parents, enjoyed weekend trips with my brothers and family, and spent the time I needed in my island and home, recharging for the upcoming year.

You can even see how happy I look from selfies I took while AT WORK. IN AN OFFICE.

Office work is not particularly the kind of work I want to go into after graduating, but it builds a resume and it pays the sorority dues. However, the people I worked with were amazing and so understanding, and my supervisor actually cared about me as a person. She even took me to lunch on my last day of work!

So why did I decide to apply for internships for this summer?

The answer to that could be simple, and in a way it is, but I feel like it needs to be more.

I've spent so much time home that it's time to spread my wings. Yes, I'm so far away during the entire academic year, and I love going home. But I don't plan to after graduation. The theatre industry in Puerto Rico, from what I've heard, can be clique-y and hard to break into, and I feel the need to try to make it on my own.

I also need to build a significant resume with the kind of work that I actually want to pursue.

And having a Sound Internship with the Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago is a great way to start that resume.

I have friends who live in Chicago, so I won't be left floundering, and it's where I eventually want to end up post-graduation. I've only heard good things about this company, and have had several conversations with my supervisor that only make me more and more excited about the summer.

I feel incredibly grateful to have been extended this offer, and everything still feels like I'm dreaming. Honestly, someone please pinch me, because I feel like I'm about to wake up from an amazing dream. I will miss my family, a lot. I won't get to spend birthdays with my father or littlest brother, and I won't get homemade food every night, and I won't get to speak as much Spanish as I want to. But this internship is like everything I wanted and more. Things actually seem to be going right for me!

(I'm also looking forward to having an abundance of theatre work without the added stress of mounds upon mounds of homework waiting for me once I get home from the show, but that's just the added bonus of it being, you know, summer.)

So this is my way of saying that I will be starting a "Chicago Adventures" series here, where every once in a while I'll be writing about the weird things I've been up to. After my Travel-Learning trip to London, that is.