couldn't wait to get going but wasn't quite ready to leave.

It's been almost officially five years since my parents and I pulled out of the driveway on Scio Church Road in Ann Arbor to move to Eau Claire, yet still I cannot seem to shake the fear that all endings are fully finite, even though I've been proved otherwise many times. I'm still friends with those I left in Ann Arbor; I'm still friends with those I graduated with in Eau Claire; I'm still friends with those from DePauw who I've been away from this entire semester. These success stories, though, cannot win against the pit in my stomach that arises at the end of an era, any era, from which I'm not quite ready to part. I'm sure you can imagine that the last few weeks, this week, hell, the past 24 hours, have been a constant reel of "the last time we'll do this" or "the last time I'll see that"; I even mentioned to Maddie the last time she was going on Facebook in her room at St. Hilda's College on the eve of her departure. My mind has been trained over the past five years to categorize these memories, to take snapshots of these seemingly miniscule everyday absurdities to keep in my mind in case they ever need to be remembered in full detail. Ever since I was 16, endings, goodbyes, have plagued me and made me bow down to them as if they have the right to tell me something is really and truly...over.

It's been a long road, this trip to Australia. I've done more, seen more, traveled more, felt more, loved more, missed more, than I ever thought possible, but it feels like yesterday that I stepped off the plane in Melbourne and into the infamous Miami Hotel of my very first blog entry. How is it that something I spent so much time planning for and anticipating can be over in the blink of an eye? What if I'm not ready to give up this time, this precious time, that was given to me simply to figure myself out, away from the assumptions and constraints on who I've always been in my past lives? I know that I can always come back here and find my way breezily around the CBD and Queen Vic; I know, too, that I can always skype Dejan in Auckland to say hi, and call Maddie on my blackberry when something funny comes up...but I'm still left wondering if it will ever feel the same as it has felt over the past five months, when the places and the people were held in suspense and it was just us, now, escaping the rest of the world together, finding our own way in a place and a time unknown. Maybe I am just afraid that when I step off the plane on Saturday, my normal life won't be enough anymore...or maybe I'm scared that my next adventure isn't one over international waters, but one that requires me to find out what my next step in life is going to be.

That said, I am here to say goodbye to a place I've come to love. I have learned that I love being able to step out of my door to walk to a nearby café or sushi haunt in a matter of minutes, a feat rendered impossible by my semi-rural roots. I've learned to order coffees as "regular long blacks," and I've certainly come to appreciate saying "heaps" and "I can't be bothered..." Most people are drastically misunderstood about Australian culture, gathering from popular American media that Australians are all tan and trim, surfing up a storm all year long and taking nothing more serious than which pub serves the cheapest jugs of beer. They are wrong, you are wrong. I beg you, before accepting these stereotypes and passing them on as truths, to learn more, to dig deeper, to come here and see for yourselves that Australians are reserved, committed, proud, vivacious, and genuine. Australia is a young and often misjudged country. It is fighting battles that are going mostly unnoticed on the international stage. Australia is now the world's most obese country, but most of you would assume that America still held that honor and that, of course, all Aussies are swimsuit-ready year round. You might also read that Australia is ever becoming more multicultural and diverse in its growing metropolises, but there is an inconspicuous and haunting racism against their indigenous people that is continuing unscathed, and desperately needs to be addressed and confronted. They are a nation that still struggles with their embarrassing past as an imperial convict colony. That is not to say that I haven't fought my fair share of fights in defending America to Australians, who occasionally belittle us with their ancient British bias. Left alone in a different country, one must carefully embody all the accepted traits of American-ness, while also combating the ugly traits with which tourists before you have tainted your unassuming image. I simply implore you to take a closer look at a place that rarely receives consideration on the world stage-most people pass it off as a far-away southern utopia, distant from the problems of the rest of the world-but I can only hope that someday you can learn as much from this place as it has taught me.

I would like to formally take back control of goodbyes and endings in my life now, after a submissive five years of worrying and reminiscing, fearing I will never get the same friendships or the familiar places back when I close a certain chapter of my life. Bill Bryson wrote that "Melbourne had a settled and gracious air that was much more European than North American, and it rained, rained all week, which delighted me inordinately because it was so totally not what I had expected." This study abroad experience, this city, was so totally not what I had expected, and because of these unforeseen and amazing surprises, I know that this is not an ending, not a goodbye. Not yet at least. Not while I still have so much more to figure out.

a minnesotan in melbourne.

When I was 17, I went on the trip that has since launched 1,000 trips. It was a summer tour of England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. As young student ambassadors, we had four teachers as our guides throughout our European summer. From meetings with members of Parliament to seeing Ellen Pompeo at Windsor castle, it is easy to say that this trip, and the people on it, changed my life. I am still in close contact with my best friends from that trip: Lauren, who attends St. Olaf, and Allison, who happens to attend DePauw. And every time we manage to get together, we reminisce about Marie, the youngest guide on the trip, from whom we learned so much about the kind of young adult we wanted to be in a future that, as it turns out, really wasn't so far off.

Marie, a native Minnesotan who now resides in San Francisco, got in touch with me (again, the wonders of Facebook prove invaluable at helping me make connections while abroad!) when she found out I was spending the semester in Melbourne. She told me that her brother Eben and his wife Daniella live here, and that we should meet up. Ironically enough, Eben met Daniella when he, too, was traveling in Australia on a People to People Student Ambassadors trip based out of the Twin Cities. Anyway, myriad messages were exchanged between the four of us, but no plans ever came to fruition due to crazy travel and school schedules on my end. With all my friends since gone from Oz, and with little plans on my agenda, I thought it'd be a good time to get in touch with them and finally make something happen during my last week down under.

On Sunday, June 20th, while my family was celebrating Father's Day in Eau Claire, Eben picked me up on Royal Parade and drove me to their house in Reservoir, a northern suburb in Melbourne. I entered their 1960s bungalow greeted by dogs Hank and Bowswer, and I met Daniella as she was pulling baked eggplant, ricotta pasta, and garlic pizza out of the oven. Safe to say, I knew I was really going to like these people. This was my first time in a real home since I left Eau Claire on February 2nd. I relished sitting around a full kitchen table, with dogs underfoot and a lit fireplace just around the corner. We spent dinner exchanging opinions on American cereals and midwestern weather, and telling tales of distant Spanish cities that we've all visited. Following dinner, we settled in to watch "Where The Wild Things Are" with a plate of Tim-Tams (classic, addictive Aussie cookies) and some glasses of wine. All in all, it was a relaxing and refreshing night. It served to remind me why a home truly is where the heart is. Essentially alone on this continent now that most of my friends have departed, it was nice to feel welcomed into a home by such a young, friendly couple. So, thank you to Marie for initiating the meeting (wish she could have been there!), and thank you to Eben and Daniella for stuffing me to the brim with homemade Italian. It's always marvelous to make another small world connection, especially one that is Minnesotan, in a far off land.

lucky ladies in the land down under.

I’m a lucky girl. Lucky enough in the first place to be here, breathing this air, walking these streets for five months...lucky to be able to travel throughout this diverse country, lucky to have the privilege to attend this school, lucky to have made some pretty incredible friends. Most recently, I’m lucky to have had the absolute pleasure of hosting one of my closest, best friends (practically a sister), Emily Stortz, and her mom, Laurie, and sister, Amanda, for a full week in Melbourne.

They arrived on blustery Tuesday, June 1^st, after a rainy and rushed weekend in Sydney, where they arrived delayed due to United’s shortcomings. Here in Melbourne, finally, I had the privilege of guiding them through all the greatest sights: the University of Melbourne’s campus on a fall day, dinners and gelato on Lygon Street, the banks of the Yarra River, Melbourne Park, Federation Square, Young & Jackson bar (where Emily and I willingly drank a beer-can you believe it?), Chinatown, the laneways, Melbourne Museum, Eureka Tower, the Old Gaol...we even made our way down the Great Ocean Road and into the Yarra Valley’s wine regions, and managed to catch a showing of Sex and the City 2 on top of it all. I did my best to be a mindful and trustworthy tour guide, and I hope that I was able to pass on some of the special treats and highlights of my home away from home to them.

It’s a pretty special feeling to have three people that are not immediately related to you fly across the world to see you and see a place you’ve come to love. I cannot thank the Stortz’s enough for enduring the woes of international travel to come to chilly, rainy Australia to see what they could see. To Laurie, Amanda, and my dear Emily, thank you for a memorable and action-packed week. It was lovely to see you out of our usual context, and I’m so thankful to have had a little piece of home during my last month down under.

wear sunscreen.

I would hope that at least some of you are familiar with the well-known speech, “Wear Sunscreen.” Originally, Mary Schimch wrote it as a newspaper column, but the more popular version is that set to music by Baz Luhrmann. It’s been used as a graduation speech frequently, and it’s also often used in creative writing classes. I’ve always liked this speech-each time I listen to it, a new verse seems to strike a chord, and I always emerge from the seven minute speech wanting to go out and seize the day anew. If you are unfamiliar with the speech, I highly recommend that you look it up-ignore the kitschy back-up singers and focus on Baz’s voice-I know it sounds cheesy, but truly listen to what he’s saying and I think you, too, will be shocked at how many of these advisory sentiments are prevalent to your life, no matter what your age. The reason I’m writing about this is because I’ve listened to the speech a few times while I’ve been abroad, and I’m consistently struck by how humorous and newly meaningful some of these lines are. I apologize that I seem to be doing a lot of lyrical analysis in recent posts-hopefully I can promise you that, with this post, I will be done sifting through my iTunes for blog ideas.

Baz’s first piece of advice is also the title of the piece: Wear Sunscreen. He initiates his memorandum by arguing “the long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists.” He also concedes that “the rest of [his] advice has no basis more reliable than [his] own meandering experience.” Most of you know that the sun in Australia is intense. Not just intense heat-wise, but intense because there is a noticeable hole in the ozone layer surrounding this fine island, country, and continent. This hole means that the UV radiation is much, much stronger here-cancer advisories abound and sunscreen is a must, no matter what your skin tone or what the weather. For those of us already concerned by the aging process (see blog re: wrinkle cream), this piece of advice is a necessary part of being a temporary Australian. Even if you’re not in an area suffering from ozone depletion in the southern hemisphere, I think Baz is right in issuing this warning.

Baz (or Mary, whomever we’re giving credit to) is especially adamant in saying “you are not as fat as you imagine.” Really, Baz? Are you sure about that? Because I seem to be eating more than my fair share of peanut butter toast and Cadbury eggs (Thanks, Mama!)...I seem to drink more wine than I ought, and I always find a whole string of reasons to legitimize going out to eat on Lygon Street bi-weekly. “Market Friday,” when Maddie and I dive into garlic stuffed green olives and Turkish bread with capsicum dip at the Queen Victoria Market is becoming a dangerous habit, too. Through all of these munching manias, I will try to chant Baz’s soothing mantra in my head...I am not as fat as I imagine...I am not as fat as I imagine...I need to go on a few more 6 mile runs before coming home...

“Floss.” Please still be my friend after I share this with you. Baz simply states at 1:38 in the speech to floss. This is a legitimate piece of advice, and I’m sure the American Dental Association is much obliged to this public mandate via song. This would be much easier advice to follow if my underprepared self had packed floss back in Eau Claire, and if floss didn’t cost nine dollars in Australia. With a price like that, Australia is basically asking me NOT to floss. There was no way in h-e-double hockey sticks that I was going to be shelling out a $10 bill for a simple wheel of floss. Sorry floss, but frugality wins on this one. Thankfully, I have hygienic friends who admonished my dental practices and lent me an occasional string of floss before Mother Mary saved the day yet again by bringing good old cheap American floss to me in April.

I could go through each line, I’m sure, and relate it somehow, someway, to this crazy Australian life. “Get more calcium”-yep, because all I eat is carbs. “Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle”-yep, because I’m 15 hours ahead of everyone that I love, which makes talking and staying in touch more difficult, albeit more meaningful. “Do one thing every day that scares you”-yep, because, really, isn’t that the point of studying abroad, conquering fear in the little things as well as the big things? Maybe this was a fruitless blog entry-it was in my head, though, so here it is for your eyes. Feast away, and remember to wear sunscreen.

couple kids running loose in the wild.

I’ve never really been what you might call a nature enthusiast. Sure, I enjoy running and walking outside, and I’m not the type to turn down a beach vacation, a boat ride on Burt Lake, or skiing at Beaver Creek. But I’ve never really been good at nature, if you will. My family didn’t go camping when I was younger, and therefore I was never conditioned nor taught to pitch a tent or pee outside. Because I didn’t know any better, I displaced this lack of comfort and knowledge into “nature hating.” Although I’ve made mild improvements in my nature repertoire over the past few years, sleeping in a tent at Country Fest and jumping in a murky Brazilian swimming hole with unidentified green slime, to name a few of my growing inclinations, I realize now how wrong I’ve been spending the last decade of my life “hating” and misunderstanding something as unselfish and invaluable as nature and the precious time we’ve been given to explore it. Leave it to me to have my nature epiphany in the middle of the Australian Outback, one of the harshest and most unique natural environments in the world.

At approximately 6:00 AM on May 7^th, Ellen, Maddie, Alex, Kelly, and I found ourselves aboard The Rock Tour bus, with 16 new friends and a small Kiwi guide named Sam, heading down the highway out of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. A few hours into the drive, we stopped to hike 6 kilometers in King’s Canyon, the Aboriginal counterpart to our very own Grand Canyon. We romped up and down, through and between the rock structures and interfaces, learning the secrets of ancient “bush tucker” and creation stories. Following this hike, we drove a few more hours and pulled over on the side of the road to use the “bush toilet” (which denotes finding a particularly leafy tree to hide behind and hope with all of your might that your Rock Tour cohorts are not within a 50 foot radius of your chosen location) and gather firewood for the night. Upon arrival at our campsite, we set about cooking our dinner on the fire and organizing our sleeping bags and swags. I was nervous enough when I had assumed I’d be sleeping in a tent for the weekend, with only a thin layer of nylon to protect me from the dangers of dingoes and red-backed spiders. You can imagine my horror upon learning that Sam expected me to sleep enclosed in a canvas sack, bare and vulnerable to the land, the sky, the creatures of the perilous Outback. It is actually a small miracle that this discovery did not send me into apoplectic shock: the nature skeptic to sleep on the ground...in nature...in the OUTBACK...without a tent? After a slight panic attack, though, my tired body (and Maddie’s calming comments) goaded my mind to sleep beneath a perfect canvas of expansive stars.

Sam called to us lyrically at 5:45AM Saturday morning to “rise and shine, wakey wakey, time to get up...” and we sleepily stumbled out of our swags, frozen and weary eyed, to eat breakfast and drive to Kata Tjuta for the day. Kata Tjuta means “Many Heads” in the Aboriginal language, and is an important site for their ancestral history. A 7-kilometer walk wove us through the remarkable domes of the site. Kata Tjuta is part of the same World Heritage site as Uluru, and I had known nothing of its presence nor meaning before this trip, so I was glad to have the opportunity to both see it and learn of its significance. Finally it was time to get up close and personal with the pinnacle motivation for our trip: Uluru. Known in the Western world as Ayers Rock , Uluru stands at a height of near 3,000 Feet and is about 8-Kilometers around, and runs 6-kilometers deep into the ground; with numbers such as these, it is easy to understand its ranking as the world’s largest rock. The wonderful thing about Uluru is that it’s both impressively stunning from a distance and shockingly unique up close. From a distance, it is an unbelievable sight purely because it stands alone, rising from the red dust as a solitary rectangular figure on an otherwise empty horizon. Up close, while walking the 8-kilometer Base Walk on Sunday morning following our sunrise viewing of the Rock, we were able to view each of the Rock’s sacred sites, its caves, cut-outs, and colored indentations, weathered and formed over thousands of years, making it a much different sight than we expected it to be.

I have not said nearly enough about our tour group’s dynamic, our “Team America” moniker, Sam’s tough love, the cute Brits Ian and Paula who are on a tour of the world...I haven’t mentioned our proud sing-along to American Pie (happy to say that three of us know each and every word, with a video to prove it), riding camels, or the fact that we gleefully watched two disrespectful idiots get handed an $11,000 fine for climbing Uluru 1) against Aboriginal wishes and 2) when it was closed for weather restrictions. I haven’t told you everything, dear blog devotees, because I’m exhausted and stressed, facing four extremely long and difficult papers and anticipating the newly planned visit of the Stortz ladies in just a few weeks. I am confident that, at some point upon my return stateside, I will share these stories and learning experiences in depth with you. For now, though, from those of you who have known me throughout my blasphemous “nature-hating” years, I would appreciate a sigh of relief and a congratulatory pat on the back that I am finally joining the ranks as a fellow nature-lover, with a successful weekend camping in the Outback as my first badge of credibility.

Well I love you more than anything in the world, love your baby girl.

Those of you who are fellow country music fanatics should recognize this lyric instantly, the classic line from the dynamic duo Sugarland’s famous “Baby Girl.” It is one of my favorite lyrics, from one of my favorite songs, from one of my favorite bands. Now, whether or not you like country music, I’m sure you can at least appreciate the sweet sentiment that these lyrics pass along. Perhaps I empathize with it a little more closely because I am my parents’ baby girl, so to speak.

It is prevalent that I’ve entitled this blog with a Sugarland lyric because, upon my parents’ arrival in Melbourne on April 16^th, I was delighted to receive surprise VIP Sugarland tickets for Country Jam as a birthday gift. Other segments of this song's lyrics relate well to my parents’ visit to the land of Oz. Let’s unpack these lyrics and see what we find.

“Well it’s a long way from here to the place where the home fires burn. Well it’s two thousand miles and one left turn.” Duh. Let’s be honest, this one’s easy. I really do not think it’s possible to be more grateful for how far my parents have traveled to see me. Exchange the 2,000 for 10,000-then equate my level of gratefulness with the corresponding growth of the true distance. It has long been a dream of mine to be able to travel with my parents-I’m not talking about our drives to northern Michigan, our weekend trips to Chicago, our mostly rare beach getaways to places like Mexico and the Dominican Republic. I mean really travel. Their trip to Australia is significant because it is the first time the three of us have experienced an entirely new continent together. They are the best piece of home I could have asked for, and I am so lucky for this opportunity to show them around and share my new international digs.

“Dear Mom and Dad, please send money, I’m so broke that it ain’t funny.” Anyone who’s been to Australia, or been somewhere abroad where the currency exchange rate and the cost of living hurt you a little bit on the inside, can surely identify with this lyric. Traveling extensively in an expensive country costs a pretty penny, and each purchase requires serious, serious consideration. Pulling the trigger on these weekend trips to the Outback (coming up May 6^th!), Sydney, and Cairns is a terrifying prospect and it often requires a little handholding after the credit card number has been punched in and the dwindling numbers make themselves known on your online bank statement. The point here is that money is a very sensitive matter while traveling and no one, no matter what you have, how you were raised, or what you’ve been given, is above smart finances while abroad. Let’s just say it’s nice to go out to dinner and not worry about how much cash is in your wallet and whether or not you can afford a soda with your meal, because the bill’s on Scuba Steve and Mother Mary tonight-so let’s get another bottle of wine!

The final full verse of the song brings us back to where we began, although there are other worthy, relatable lyrics in this song. Nonetheless, this is the most important lyric to me as I write this. To my parents: thank you for...exploring the Great Ocean Road (an adventure of epic proportions with Stevo driving on the left of a cliff-side road), Phillip Island, myriad dinners at fabulous restaurants from Lygon Street to Cairns’ Esplanade, movie tickets to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, bandaids, bottles of wine, trips to the Kundara rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, and much more. It’s been a treat having you down under. So although you wear socks with sandals more than you ought, and although your sunscreen is never fully rubbed in, and although you still don’t understand the strategy of crossing Australian roads properly, I still love you more than anything in the world. Love, your baby girl.

Devilish Days.

I spent the latter half of my Easter Break (not known as “spring break” here-making quite the assumption about religious affiliation, aren’t we, Australia?) traveling around Tasmania with my study abroad group. Not Tanzania, the country nestled on Africa’s eastern coast. People often hilariously confuse these two locations based on the simple assonant similarity of their names-in fact, I truly had a few people reminding me to bring my passport on this trip, my “trip to Africa.” I’m sure that Australia’s small island state is quite, quite different from the east African seaboard.

We left at the unforgiving time of 6:00am on April 7^th and landed in Launceston, the home of Cataract Gorge...and pretty much nothing else. After this quick scenic stop, we were on the road with our notoriously monotonous bus-driver, good old Glen. Upon stopping in Iluka for the night, the majority of our group embarked on a quick run on the beach and polar bear (literally, frigid. Who knew Australia was a cold place? You had no idea, did you?) swim in the Tasman Sea. The next day brought us to Freycinet National Park, the home of Wineglass Bay and Coles Bay. An unexpectedly difficult and entirely dangerous hike brought us down a jagged ladder of rock steps to the treasure that is Wineglass Bay. Only accessible by foot, it is a spectacular sight, untouched and perfectly picturesque. We quickly made up for the 1,000 calories we expended on the treacherous hike with a visit to Kate’s Berry Farm (who, as it turns out, used to be Kevin). We noshed on warm scones, handmade cream, and fresh jam-it doesn’t get much better, or more British (which is appropriate, based on the obvious elements of Australian history), than that.

Following some spooky historical jaunts in Port Arthur, we made our way to a Tassie Devil Park, which afforded us up close and personal views of the crazy devils themselves. They’re endangered and confined to tiny Tasmania (and no, they look nothing like the cartoon characters of old). I’m quite sure Mocha would find it fun to romp around with those guys for awhile, but unfortunately for her, her general good-naturedness would not bode well nor protect her from their temperamental attitudes and gnarly fangs. Our trip to the Meadow Bank Winery proved fattening and delightful-there were beautiful views from the outskirts of the vineyards and we certainly enjoyed ourselves in a gluttonous manner. Our final foray into Tasmanian life was a biking descent of Mount Wellington, the highest point in the state, nestled in the background of Hobart. There were unrivaled views of 75% of the state from this 1270-meter sandstone paradise. As it was a descent and not a climb, the majority of the trip was spent clenching our brakes for dear life, hurdling down the mountain at high speeds and hoping not to crash into whatever IES amigo was sailing down in front of you.

All in all, Tasmania was a true gem. It sure gets a lot of crap, for lack of a better term, for being Aussie’s small, insignificant island state. Take it from me, if you’re the trusting type, and give this place, and those tyrannical Tassie Devils, a try sometime.