The Longest Winter

I find that when I tell people I’m going to be studying abroad in Australia for the spring semester, I’m usually faced with one of two questions in response: 1) Why so far away? and 2) So…why are you still home? The second question, addressing the slightly awkward limbo I’m in—not at Georgetown but not permanently at home—is answered by the Australian semester schedule, the first running from February to June and the second July to November. The first, however, is one that took me a while to figure out myself, even after I had made the decision to study at the University of New South Wales for my junior spring semester. I was just as apprehensive as my parents were when I told them I wanted to spend five months on the other side of the world, especially considering I’ve never even been out of the country and my closest connections to Australia were found in waking up at odd hours to watch the Australian Open final each year and a childhood of watching the Mary-Kate and Ashley classic Our Lips Are Sealed (seriously, check it out—you won’t be sorry).

So why so far away—why Australia? Before this past summer and school year, I had always written off studying abroad as something that would be too scary, too difficult, and just too out of my comfort zone. I’m not exactly sure where or when it happened, but somewhere along the way I realized that I had come to Georgetown after being away from my house in New Jersey for a maximum total of three whole days on a high school trip and was somehow now living on my own, rarely homesick, and with a wall lined with just as many pictures of friends from college as from high school. Just as going to Georgetown has been an amazing experience that has made me so much more independent, so will (at least I hope) studying abroad. And if I was going to go, I guess I was going to really go—sixteen hours ahead, an eighteen-hour flight away, living the Mary-Kate and Ashley dream.

Of course, I’m definitely a lot more anxious about leaving than I let on, which is why I think this extra-long winter break has helped me get a little more prepared. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to spend time with my family for the holidays, take random trips to Atlantic City and New York with my friends from home, and get my fill of D.C. and my friends at Georgetown before I leave. With four more days left, I’m going to try and squeeze in my last goodbyes, one last night of my mom’s pesto pasta, and a quick day in L.A. with my dad before I finally take off for Sydney. While I’m definitely nervous to be so far away with no one I know at as close of a distance as I’m used to, I’m excited to see how truly living on my own, away from everything I’m familiar with, will be. And, of course, to escape the winter weather—I’ll take summer in Coogee Beach (my home for the next five months) over a thirty-five degree New Jersey any day.