It’s officially been one week in Sydney.

9/28/15 8pm-12:45am

I’ve made it through the first week! To be honest, it wasn’t that difficult, it was pretty much already planned out for me lol. If you’re still under the age of 30 and have no qualms about roughing it and keeping up with the young un’s, I highly suggest you check out the programs firstabroad.com has to offer. It really is a cost effective way to get to know a city and you can use it for vacations and/or for assistance afterwards. And as young as everyone was, I found that we were all in the same doe-eyed phase of landing in new surroundings looking to anyone for direction. And the group leaders were extremely friendly and welcoming on this trip, more than a usual day tour. While it took a minute for everyone to grow comfortable with one another, we really did come together by day 3. Hard not to when you’re stuck in one living room due to heavy rain while camping lol. I must say, I’m a bit jealous of these kids for doing it so much earlier on. It takes a combination of bravery and fearless curiosity to leave all you know fresh out of HS. I wish mine had kicked in that soon. Not that age matters much anyways, they were all really lovely about my old butt joining in and most of them told me they didn’t believe I was over 22 anyways. TOO NICE :) Even though it was chilly and rained pretty much all week, we still made the best of it and everyone had a very can-do attitude about it which is very important in situations like that. I know some of you have been following me on FB or Instagram, but I’ll give a brief recap of what we covered this week.

Monday- introduction to program, walking tour of Darling Harbour, Sydney Opera House, and Hyde Park, free pizza and fries at night at the local bar inside our hostel.

Tuesday- travel and work information session for after the first week, they talked about how Surf Camp was offered after this first week and a bus tour called LOKA that took you all the way up the East Coast. we were supposed to be on a catamaran cruise after this, but was cancelled due to extreme weather. we played laser tag and went bowling instead. hadn’t played laser tag since HS. still as fun as it was then. lunch was covered and we set up our Oz numbers. spent the evening packing for our camping trip.

Wednesday- left our big bags in the program offices. set up our bank accounts. journeyed on a 3 hour bus ride to campgrounds. spent the evening eating copious amounts of pizza, stalking Josie the Kangaroo to take a selfie with me, playing assorted drinking games, and avoiding possum cuddles.

Thursday- took 3 small 4WD buses to the sand dunes early in the morning where the kids slid down giant sand hills on what looked like the boards you use for snowboarding. spent no more than 20 min doing so. I am perfectly content with my decision in sitting that out. walked along the beach where one of the bus drivers said sharks can get pretty close. headed to Tomaree National Park where I only walked halfway up because it got real steep and I knew I wasn’t going to make it to the top with a weak ankle and a smoker’s lung (I know, I’m quitting, give me a minute. It helps that packs of cigs here are $25). somehow still managed to be the last one down, those kids move real fast. was served a hefty BBQ dinner with steak, chicken, and sausage. played card games and lost them all resulting in drinking myself to an early bedtime.

Friday- packed up and left for a Dolphin watching cruise. managed to get a couple glimpses of sun, but the wind stayed strong. we saw a few dolphins towards the end of the ride. the foolishly fearless kids jumped in the swim net to get in the water, if only for a few minutes. I’m told it felt like an ice bath. had a fish and chips lunch. headed back on the 3 hour journey to Sydney. once we made it back, we received bracelets for free drinks for an hour in the hostel bar. grabbed some sushi for sustenance that didn’t work at all. we drank as many free drinks (a substance called Goon, I believe it is boxed wine, mixed like sangria) as we could, got to a point where we were dancey, went around the corner to another backpacker bar where it was a way better scene to be dancey, and basically brought the partayyyy. I managed to give my number to a fellow American living here who then began an inappropriate text thread which my new friends helped me continue, make out with a different guy in exchange for a drink, and ended up doing the walk of shame at 6:30am from ANOTHER guy recovering from a break-up. a truly black-out or back out night.

Saturday- spent 6:30–10:30a trying to sleep, but really asking myself how I have not changed in so many ways. also, sharing a room with 9 other people doesn’t make it so easy to sleep when everyone starts shuffling around about 8am on. also throw up just liquid because the sushi really didn’t do anything. told my new friends what happened so they could relay to others who were kindly worried for lil ol’ me. get invited to breakfast, politely decline due to massive hangover that’s showing no signs of going away like it did so easily in my youth. finally truly sleep from noon-3p. take a long shower where I spend the first 10 min just standing there thinking ‘what is life?’ and the rest cleaning off stamps from the night. feel good enough to go grab some Chinese take-out, check out an apartment, and get ready for the last party thrown by our group leaders. the night starts as a bar crawl to 3 bars who participate in giving us our first drinks free. the taste of alcohol from last night creeps in to remind me of how hard I went the night prior. we play different games at each bar to win money off of other possible trips you can take through the program. as we hit the 3rd stop, I decide that I can’t go on to the nightclub ending my night right before midnight. my feet hurt already and I’m not drunk enough to pretend they don’t. plus I know we have a long walk the next morning.

Sunday- wake up with a fresh head. friends in room with me can’t say the same lol. we leave for the Bondi-Coogee walk at 11:30am. stories are shared of what happened last evening. half the kids are miserable. the walk helps. the beach is lovely to look at, not as lovely to walk through as the wind is relentless. we make it to the end and grab some lunch. the kids go to Hungry Jack’s which is Burger King. me and another older gent friend go get an adult lunch at a brazilian churrascia, it was the right choice, we eat 4 different meats, salad, and chips. after, we dip our feet in the water down by the beach and decide it’s not too bad, but still too cold to fully immerse. we hop on a bus to get to the train station back to the hostel. everyone splits off either to drink their last night away or pack up for surf camp.

Not a shabby week right? Of course it’s different experiencing it than hearing about it, but I tried to write it how I would relay it to one of ya over the phone. Well, the PG-est version of it anyway.

Even then, I know how misleading social media can be and while I have absolutely enjoyed my time thus far, I think it’s important that you know how my brain functions a bit. Yes, having a great time is always good and well, and while pictures have indicated that I’ve tried to do so; I still suffer from a lot of self inflicted anxiety and depression, it really isn’t anything I can turn off. I’ve learned over the years to go through the motions and most of the time, while internally painful, if I can make it to the other side; I get to see that things don’t turn out to be so drastic and can turn out better than anticipated.

Since I’m trying to be more open about myself, I’m going to share a snippet of what I wrote on the plane ride from Fiji to Sydney in my personal journal. It’s really intimate and raw for me and scares the crap out of me to write it publicly… but I do think it’s important that you don’t think I’m just carefree and easygoing and happy all the time. Because some of us rarely ever are, as much as we’d like to be; but just because we have obstacles of all sorts, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do rad things. Plus, if you’ve made it this far, you deserve some real shit.