Traveling to a place and living within a place are different experiences entirely. Travelling to places for short periods of time and being a tourist, although valuable, doesn\u2019t really give you a holistic view of the space you inhabit. For instance, when I arrived in Australia, in Melbourne, I was a tourist. Most of my time then was spent between various tourist destinations and I didn\u2019t get a sense of daily life in Australia. My mindset was one of having fun and seeing as much as possible as fast possible.<\/p>\n
At this point, I\u2019m a part of the fabric of Sydney. I go to school, get groceries, have favorite spots, hangouts, and routes through the city, and I feel at home here. The things that initially drew me to Sydney, namely the multicultural landscape of the city and the simultaneously laid-back and frantic pace of life in Australia\u2019s Capital. As finals come to a close, I can\u2019t help but feel a sense of loss, as if by being so absorbed in my studies I haven\u2019t truly had the time to truly experience even a fraction of what this city has to offer.<\/p>\n
For this reason, I\u2019m staying in this part of the world for as long as possible, so I can experience Australia more like an Australian, and less like a frantic college student. I came into Sydney expecting for this to be a test of my own strength and will. I would be \u201calone\u201d in a foreign country I had little knowledge of at one of the hardest programs. I envisioned this as a rite of passage for myself, and as an escape from Florida. What I found was that my support network followed me here, and I had help from friends I made here and my family and friends back home every step of the way. I guess one of the things I ended up liking most about Sydney is that I was never truly alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Traveling to a place and living within a place are different experiences entirely. Travelling to places for short periods of time and being a tourist, although valuable, doesn\u2019t really give you a holistic view of the space you inhabit. For instance, when I arrived in Australia, in Melbourne, I was a tourist. Most of my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sydney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11351","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\/392"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11351"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13840,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11351\/revisions\/13840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}