Wake Up Sydney, Three Years Later

Almost three years ago I was sitting on this same couch at 1am, watching my friends construct a furniture/foosball table fort around a barefoot drunk stranger who had passed out in the middle of the lounge room. It was my first time in a hostel, and I remember checking into the six story building with a bar in the basement, receiving a key for an 8-bed dorm room, and reading the slogan “Wake Up Sydney: Wake Up Next to Someone New!” thinking “oh. My. God. What have I gotten myself into.”

I had no idea at the time, what this place would be the beginning of: an incredible adventure tour across Australia, the beginning of a relationship, a handful of long-term friendships; the future crossroads of both my college memories from the past, and my present career path which has brought me all of the same elements in a completely different context of life. 

Walking back down the hallway to the bright yellow door of my dorm room, I can’t help but see flashbacks of Maddy and John leaning against the wall laughing hysterically, quoting Anchorman and yelling for us to come see the pictures they took on their cameras. A few doors down, I remember Annie with the beautiful flowers her now-husband sent from overseas, all the girls in the room oogling them and chatting over curling irons and piles of makeup, getting ready for a night out. I’m laughing to myself in this quiet hallway, remembering the boys singing “whiiichhh wayyy shall we gooooo” from the common room, imitating a group of Irish guys they heard coin the phrase. It doesn’t seem like that long ago, but standing here, I realize that I haven’t talked to many of the people in my memories since then. Our lives moved on from there, back to our respective real worlds. That crazy month together is all we really had, but if we ran into each other now we’d still at least have that in common. 

Returning to the room now, the crossover really begins – I open the door to what three years ago was my “fam”: a group of good friends sharing my age, stage of life, endless inside jokes and an excitement for the shared experience of travel and exploring a new country together. Friends whose lives I still think and hear about every so-often from facebook, whose connection I still relish in, the few times life lends us to catch up. But now, the room is filled with a new “fam” – a group of fellow recruiters whose lives are as crazy and unpredictable as mine. Two partners who I’ve spent months sharing meals, rental cars and hotel rooms with, a group of people who can recite verbatim the same lines from our meeting script, can understand the exhausting effort of classroom announcements, and in some unexplainable way share the same brand of crazy that brought us all to this point in our lives together. All, in past and present, people I would never have met if weren’t for that life-changing summer that started this whole adventure. 

So when I say my “ISV family” now, it means a lot to me – more than I ever thought it would. It means my memories from that summer – the people I still keep in touch with, who’ve shown me Southern hospitality, shared my first love, counseled me through difficult and uncertain times, and still remain some of the closest or most pivotal people my life. And it also means the family I’ve grown within the organization – my fellow recruiters from all over the globe who make me laugh until it hurts, who inspire me to keep traveling and be out of the box, and who understand and relate to me at a level beyond explanation. 

So I think at the end of the day what I really want to say, is that I’m thankful. Even beyond thankful, for life and its amazing opportunities that have brought me back here in different shoes. I am thankful for the people who have colored my world and fostered my optimism that lives in the memories of this place – in the fact that I’m even back here in Sydney, writing this right now. Three years ago I naively signed up for a summer volunteer program that I found on google, and dragged my best guy friend to go along with me. Now, this program and organization is my life – my job, the places I travel to, my closest friendships, and even my boyfriend have all grown from that one decision. So I am thankful for my unpredictable life and the beautiful people in it, and for making that choice that landed me here in the first place, waking up in Sydney once again.

Excerpts from My Paper Journal: Finding My Voice & Aboriginal Loneliness

Finding My Voice

Augh. What is wrong with me? Here I am in this beautiful place, in Australia, working a job for a cause I love, and yet somehow I feel unsettled.

...Well, maybe because unsettled is the very nature of where I life I am right now.

I want to write. I know that there's this huge piece of my voice that has passions and insights to share... but it pains me that I've only been able to share a little piece.

So why is that? What is really going on with my life right now? Well, I'm staying in an old-fashioned bungalow in a town full of people I don't relate to. Young moms, toothless old women, aboriginal people dressed in Jack Daniels t-shirts and walking the street barefoot and homeless. I'm alone, and I like to convince myself that it's okay, but sometimes it's difficult. Sometimes especially when I say goodnight to Shaun and can can only give him a virtual *hug* through a computer screen. Times when it's pouring rain outside, and I don't want to move from my comfy haven of food, suitcase and laptop to catch the 45 minute bus ride into campus.

Here I am, traveling, on the other side of the world, and all I really want is connection - with my family, my boyfriend, my close friends back home whose lives I only get bits and pieces of from facebook messages and brief Skype chats.

And that's the problem, I think, is that I'm in another transitioning time. I've decided to take the scenic route, and very often, it's breathtaking. Times I like to write about: the things I've seen and the people I've talked to; those little pictures of my experience I want to share. But then other times, it's a trek. A rough, uncharted road that I'm walking with the moral support of friends and family behind me - but at the end of the day, it's just me charting the course,alone. And that's really daunting sometimes. Times when I realize that the blogs I share are only the pretty viewpoints along the path, with only a small trace of the mud on my shoes.

Somehow, I don't know how to share the rougher parts. Or maybe I just haven't wanted to. The uneasy moments when I know that I'm trekking toward a fulfilling destination, but I have no idea if my coordinates are even on track. And admitting that is what I've been lacking: that I too am human, and oftentimes I'm not even sure where the hell I am myself.

But in the struggle lies the meaning, and the true beauty that is so much more than just facebook pictures or bits of dialogues from people I run into. And I know that, which is why I want to find my voice - here, somewhere within my descriptive narratives. Between the "here's where I am and what I'm observing."

So bare with me as I figure myself out. As I change and grow in my writing style, and learn how to share and reveal those piece of the world that aren't status-update worthy... but are pivotal markers on the progress of my path.

Aboriginal Lonlieness

Oh, Townsville. I have a strange relationship with you.

On one hand, I love your colors, your warm ocean, the exotic flowers, trees, all the lush green landscape and luminous creatures that fly above and crawl along the surface of your cityscape. But on the other hand, I'm oppressed by your gloomyness; the traces of devastation from the cyclone, the barefoot people that limp across the street at night, the dark clouds that threaten to burst at any moment.

Every time I look for the good and the beauty in this place, I'm overwhelmed by it. Smiling cashiers at Office Works who give me half off my purchase (since it's for a good cause), the radiant anthropology professor who invited me to speak in her class and encouraged her students to sign up for the program. The breathtaking view from the top of Castle Hill of a turquoise ocean and glowing sunset. Even just the reddish-orange Gecko who smiles at me when I turn on my light, and creeps into my room when no one else is there.
But then, there are the strange things that haunt me. Loneliness being the primary. Working at a campus without a partner, 12,000 students and I don't recognize one face. Performing an announcement in front of a room full of peers, and getting a wild applause... then leaving out into an empty hallway. Walking down the street  to the store at night, alone - knowing that it wasn't the best idea, but doing it anyway. Passing by an a skinny aboriginal woman who held out her hand to reach for me. "See ya lata love" she said, with the strong Queenslander accent that still sounds strange to my foreign ear.

"The original Australians; they're still with us. They are among us, as our classmates, our friends"

 the Anthropology professor said as she ended her lecture last night. Her words have been haunting me, and sitting in my mind in a strange, uncomfortable way. Every time I find myself noticing a person with those distinct features, I feel self-conscious -  like I shouldn't be looking. I shouldn't be analyzing the context of seeing old men and women in the streets, on buses; young adults my age, sitting in lectures with friends, while at the same time their pictures are displayed on posters holding diggery doos and wearing traditional clothing. Their artwork and traditions are sitting there, both on the shelves of museums and in the windows of kitchy tourist shops.

"It's not like they're going to go back into the Outback and hunt Kangaroo with a Boomerang." said Tristian, my newfound Australian friend in a long discussion we had about the state of the aboriginal people in today's world. "The government gives them plenty of resources, and they're still drunk and on the street. So at this point, what more can we do?"

It's strange. And tragic, because I see both the love and the pain of loneliness in their eyes as we catch each others' glances in the street. They're not asking me for money... just trying to connect with me. But I don't know how - or even if it's safe for me to. ...And I may be solo this week, but I'm not alone. This is how differ. If only I could even begin to understand their world.