It’s been a week since I returned home, despite my apparent efforts to sabotage my doing so. I started packing up my room and saying my goodbyes about a week in advance, making sure I would have time to get everything done before I had to leave. That week was a bittersweet one, as all my friends were busy doing the same thing. Saying goodbye was harder than I expected it to be, as in these six months I had made better friends than I initially would have expected. Anyways, I woke up early on the 24th of November, grabbed my bags, and left campus. It was a 3 hour train ride to Sydney, and only once I was at the airport and tried to check in did I realize I had left a day in advance. My flight was the 25th, and I just hadn’t checked properly (It was the pesky time zones on the tickets that threw me off). So, there I was, with all my belongings, a day early with no clue what to do. I ended up staying that night at a hostel in Sydney and walking around, absorbing as much as I could of the people and the culture to tide me over on my trip home. The next day I got back to the airport to more bad news, I could fly to Dallas, but the reservation from Dallas to Bogota had apparently fallen through, so I couldn’t get home. It’s almost like the world was conspiring to make me stay in Australia! Long story short, after a 17 hour flight and some 2 hours fighting to get my ticket, I managed to fly back in the plane I had originally booked. Quick thing, because of the changing time zones, I actually got to Dallas before my plane left from Sydney! It really tripped me out when I noticed that.<\/p>\n
The thing that has struck me the most now that I’m back, I think, is how everything that first seemed weird when I arrived at Australia now seems weird here, albeit in reverse. I find myself walking on the left when I should be walking on the right, and even driving I’m startled by the direction of traffic. It’s strange that in such a short amount of time I could get as accustomed to all the quirks over there. Being back home is great though, I had missed my family, my friends, and my bed (yipee!). The food here is delicious, but I’ve been aching for a meat pie or a snag (sausages on the bbq) for a few days now. All I know is I’ve made some great friends and I intend to go back, there’s still a lot left to do and see in Australia. To anyone who’s considering a semester abroad in Australia, I highly recommend Newcastle, as I had a blast and wish I could have stayed for longer. For the last time, this is Sebastian, checking out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s been a week since I returned home, despite my apparent efforts to sabotage my doing so. I started packing up my room and saying my goodbyes about a week in advance, making sure I would have time to get everything done before I had to leave. That week was a bittersweet one, as all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newcastle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14316,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10182\/revisions\/14316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}