Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Preparing to be Unprepared; An Overview of My First Week in Sydney

Sydney, Australia has been the one place on the globe I have wanted to travel to since I was a little girl. I’m not sure if it was just because Finding Nemo was my favorite movie growing up, or because of its natural beauty and wildlife; all I knew is that I would get there someday.

Until a couple weeks before I left, it never really occurred to me that I would be flying halfway across the world, living on a different continent for three months, taking classes and having an internship- all while being a sophomore in college. When my plane landed in Sydney early Wednesday morning, I felt every sort of emotion possible: anticipation, fear, relief, and even some homesickness. Even though I was feeling all of these emotions, I knew I had wanted an experience like this for my entire life and I knew that this would be good for me. I didn't know this experience was about to change the way I perceive the world forever in such a small amount of time.

It has only been a week since I first arrived in Australia, and it has only taken less than that for me to fall in love with this country. Sydney is nothing like I thought it would be, and I’m getting more accustomed to this city every day. I’m finding my way to restaurants and shops without a map, successfully navigating my way through the train station, and meeting new people who are completely different than me.

Even though there were things I had to quickly adjust to, everything about Australia I have dreamt about since I was young has become a reality (or will be in the near future). I've gotten to tour the Sydney Opera House, go to the Taronga Zoo, see the 2000 Olympic Park, and relax on some of the most well known beaches in the Pacific. In just a few weeks, it'll be time to head off to New Zealand, scuba dive in the Great Barrier Reef, and explore the island of Tasmania. We all have so many things planned in these few short months, but something is bound to not go according to plan. 

The truth is that you will never know what to expect when there is an opportunity as large as this in your life. Before coming to Australia, I had an entire idea of what I expected this trip to be like, and in only a few days that idea was already not going the way I planned it. Students who came to Sydney last year on this program tried to give us advice of what to do, what not to do, the good places to eat and which sites to see, but truthfully, you'll never know enough until you're living it for yourself. You can buy every travel book and write down every note on what those students from the past have said, but there will always be something that you won't be prepared for, and that is the biggest lesson I have had to learn in this short period of time.



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