Where there are no worries other than deadly box jellyfish, aggressive cassowaries, sharks, crocodiles, and a hole in the o-zone.
When locals ask me how long I have been in Australia, I’ve said, “Oh, only about two weeks.” I just realized that I have been using that reply for the last month.
I cannot believe or fathom that fact nor understand where the time has gone.
But allow me to rewind, and fast-forward, what I have been doing since I arrived in tropical Townsville, Queensland on Monday, July 13th.
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A group of students (all from the U.S.) arrived in Melbourne for a mini orientation before arriving at James Cook University. We were immediately taken to St. Kilda Beach for the afternoon, then to Sorrento Beach for two nights, and finally back to Melbourne for one night.
After a day of traffic, delayed flights, missed flights, and layovers, we finally made it to our new university, or “uni” as Aussies call it (they love to abbreviate!)
Classes began two weeks after our arrival, and let me formally announce my profound love for my course schedule. I have class Mondays, Tuesdays, and occasionally Fridays. It’s a rough life coping with these five-day weekends.
And, as if academic life could not get any better, the classes themselves are unreal. Within the first two weeks of classes, I have had hands on experience with SLR cameras, practiced throwing Indigenous boomerangs and spears, and have played West African drums.
The grounds create a pure college campus. No grocery store, no pharmacy, and no restaurants that are open past four… only dorms, lecture halls, the library, and other education buildings.
It has therefore been an adjustment for this city-school girl to take a fifteen-minute bus ride to purchase every necessity. I once attempted to walk what I thought would be a twenty-minute stroll from the mall— it took an hour and I got back to my dorm with snapped grocery bags, a layer of fresh sweat, extra frizzy hair, a shorts tan-line, and a look of mystification slapped on my face that screamed “newbie.”
Lesson learned: take the bus.
As a whole, I describe Aussies as sarcastic Californians. They are laid-back, friendly, love the outdoors, but have a cultural spice of sharp wit. They certainly like keeping those who they converse with on their toes, especially foreigners.
I meet heaps (more vernacular from Oz) of new people everyday, and I feel like I have established true friendships with fellow international students as well as Australian.
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Yesterday I was sitting on the golden sand by the Coral Sea, underneath a cloudless sky and beaming sun with some girlfriends. We were talking about how time is as fleeting as the daylight and how we are homesick for a place we have yet to leave. We are homesick for a home that we are still founding.
Not to end this post on a melancholy note! That realist thought simply brought me to a realist mentality. I now have a dehydrated thirst to see as much of this side of Earth as possible, experience things that I may never have the opportunity to experience again, and meet people who will inspire me, and I, hopefully, can inspire as well.
So, cheers to what I know will be the quickest and most beautiful five months of my almost 21 years of life! Welcome to my adventures Down Unda!