Arrival

It's funny how before you visit a place you imagine it in your mind--its look, its feel--but then you arrive, see it, feel it and you can no longer remember what you imagined. The authenticity of it blows your depiction away. This is my experience with my recent venture to Sydney, Australia. Over the last few months as I prepared for my semester abroad I drew a mental picture that I'll admit was stereotypically dominated by the Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House. I chatted up friends with Sydney experience, searched Google images for "Sydney," "Australia," and "kangaroo," and read half of Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country, ultimately trying to quench my thirst for the Land Down Under.

Unsurprisingly, the only sufficient quencher was actually experiencing the city. And experiencing is exactly what I aim to do in this Asian-influenced, but European-feeling, tropical metropolis. That's why on my first cliff walk from Bronte Beach to the renowned Bondi Beach I snapped not one picture. Ok, well actually my camera battery was dead and the charger was traversing the Pacific via UPS. But this issue is something I had thought about before. The digital whirlwind that is Facebook, texting and emailing can get in the way of actually experiencing life and all its adventures. Detailing trips by taking pictures incessantly puts a distance between me and the beauty I am supposedly enjoying, and I don't want to see the world through the viewfinder of my Fuji point-and-shoot. I want nothing in between Australia and me, New Zealand and me, Thailand and me. Undistracted by documenting I hope to feel the places I visit rather than just see them, and besides, after each picture I have snapped, I sighed "a picture just doesn't do it justice." Of all places to build your photograph collection, Australia is among the best that I've seen. Simply, every thing and every one is beautiful, so I will return home (if I go home) with pictures to show my family and friends, to hang on my walls in an effort to mentally return to this expansive and lovely continent/island. However, you'll have to politely forgive me that collecting scrapbook material is not my main pursuit in this journey.

So now that I've arived after a comfortable and seemingly quick Air New Zealand flight from San Francisco and settled into my simple and sufficient one room apartment with one of my dearest friends, let the journey begin. This trip in which I will live and work in the South Pacific's largest city marks my first independent, international adventure of what I hope will be many over the course of my life. I'm obviously not the first to study abroad, and of the study abroad locales, I'm in an arguably familiar setting (although the Aussies would disagree with that.) I'm not the first to chronicle travel abroad. And I'm certainly not the first to vow to lose myself in the culture of a distant land. The only originality I offer is my open mind and my desire to let a different culture influence my life experience. I'll use this space to share my experiences in and impressions of Australia and beyond over the next four months for those who care to read. (That's you, mom.)

Katelyn de Diego