It’s time once again for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings. This week’s challenge is all about us, rather than the ancestors:

1.  Where did you go the first time you moved out of your parents home?  Did you have roommates? Did you live by yourself?  Did you get married right away?  Tell the story – your children and grandchildren will want to know!

The first time I moved out of my family home was when I left New Jersey to attend college at the University of Rhode Island in the fall of 1970. I lived in a brand new dormitory on campus – Gorham Hall – which was so new, we had plastic covering our window when we moved in. I spent all four of my college years living in Gorham, although in three different rooms.

Living at college might not really count as moving out of the family home, given that my legal address was still in New Jersey.

However, I finished my degree in January of 1974 and immediately got an offer as a long term substitute in the English as a Second Language program elementary school classroom in Providence, Rhode Island.

Rather than commuting the length of the state (yes, it is only an hour each way, but in snowy weather, that was no fun), I moved into my first apartment in North Providence, Rhode Island. The building was quite new, but I don’t remember if I was the first to live there or not.

My apartment was a studio. I don’t remember the rental cost, but I think it was about $150 per month. My first salary was about $750 per month, but I had a car and a short commute, so the rent was very doable.

My apartment was pretty much a fat rectangle shape. Walking in the door, the living room area was kind of the bottom of an L shape, with the kitchen straight ahead. There was a back door out of the apartment in the kitchen, but I never used it.

The full bathroom was off the kitchen and completed the northeast corner of the fat rectangle.

My parents helped me furnish the apartment, but it was bare bones. I had a sleeper sofa, a couple of lamps and a small table that seated four people. I think I had a couple of small end tables, too.

I already had my own small TV and record player and purchased the basics for cooking. The apartment had a refrigerator and stove.

I stayed in my apartment during the summer of 1974, but was job hunting once again since it was an era of teacher layoffs in many places, including Providence. I was out of work because, being hired only five months earlier as a substitute teacher, I had the “honor” of being #1 on the layoff list. I thought I might be moving back to New Jersey.

However, later that summer, I had an offer to teach in a bilingual elementary school classroom in Central Falls, Rhode Island, which I accepted.

I spent two more years in Rhode Island, teaching in that program, but I decided I needed a change and, one rainy Sunday afternoon, I applied for a new job that was advertised in the newspaper.

There was an opening for a third grade teacher in another bilingual program. I applied and was offered the job. It meant a big move, though. I left Rhode Island and moved to Mexico City!!

That’s all there is to the story of my first home away from home.