Adios, Hejdå, Au Revior, Goodbye, Cheers!

Hi everyone! Welcome to my Australia blog!

For those of you that don’t know, I’m studying abroad at Macquarie University in Sydney this semester. My classes go until June 30^th (but don’t start until February 25^th), and after that, it’s pretty much up in the air. I’m planning on traveling around South East Asia for a month or two after classes, but I don’t know where (hopefully though, it will include Fiji, Thailand, Malaysia and New Zealand), when or with whom. I do know though, that it will be very exciting.

Now, I do have a preface for this blog, and it goes as follows. How I feel about blogs is the same as how I feel about Crocs; they are only appropriate in a select few instances (for Crocs, if you’re a gardener or work on a farm. That’s it, end of story. And only if they’re black). In order for it to be appropriate for someone to write a blog, there should be something very unique about themselves or their life (for instance a worker in the sex industry, and person missing a limb, an astronaut...you get the idea). I do feel that a student studying abroad falls under the unique category, but only while they’re actually abroad (so this will not be continued upon my return to the US). The main reason I elected to start this blog is because I really didn’t feel like composing separate emails for everyone I wanted to keep in touch with, or telling ten different people what I’ve been up to. This way, if you’re interested in knowing, read away, and if you’re not, then don’t.

This being said, I encourage you to comment or ask questions, because I most definitely will want to hear from friends when I’m so far away (and yes, Dad, you too). I will update this blog as often as I am able but (believe it or not), I don’t have internet in my apartment-style dorm. Check back often, put me in your favorite places!

I leave on Friday, in two days, and I finally packed. I’m pretty much done. I have a layover in San Francisco during which I will be getting dinner with my god-parents. Then it’s time for the thirteen hour flight. I have my Benadryl Allergy packed, which will hopefully knock me out for at least ten of those hours. I land on Sunday at 8am Australian time, which is by the way, sixteen hours ahead of US Eastern Time. Orientation starts on Monday, and classes a week after that. I’ll post as soon as I can after I get settled into my dorm and let you know how it’s going (how the person I live with is, how jet-lagged I am, when I see Melissa). Oh, right. Melissa is my best friend from when we were two, and she’s in Sydney too. We have plans to do many things like surf camp, explore vineyards, hold baby kangaroos and koalas at the zoo, see Edward Scissor hands at the Opera house, snorkel the Great Barrier Reef, eat all the delicious Vietnamese and Thai food there is, the list goes on. Basically...it’s going to be an awesome semester.

I will miss you all, but I’ll be back before you know it (or I know it).