4/11/2017 0 Comments Life: Outside the bubbleMy friends at home have been the same since grade 8. We've spent some time together. Actually it's probably easier to count the time we didn't spend together. We have had some of the best, most hilarious moments of my life together and also some of the worst. We get on each others nerves like brothers and sisters but would do just about anything for each other. (Andrew did you hear that? That means you should loan me your cabin for a while....) I think its easy for us to forget about the outside world. We got a taste of it when many of us went away for university. But every summer there we were on Eagle Harbour field, kicking around a soccer ball trying to think of ways to get up to no good in the retirement capital of the world...shoutout to West Van. It was always easiest and a lot of times more fun to morph into this comfortable bubble and chill. I think that’s why travelling felt so outside my comfort zone. I’m not kidding, the drive to the airport I thought I almost thought I wasn’t going to do it. I barely spoke....to the point that my mom quite seriously asked if I actually even wanted to go. I told her I’m just going to make myself get on this plane. And goddammit thank goodness I did.
Because what I’ve learnt is that people are everywhere. Taking nothing away from my friends at home, I’ve realized there are people all over this earth who can crack you up with a shrug of their shoulders. Who can listen and understand you without you even having to explain. The first day we got here we met two girls from Finland and within a three minute conversation we were planning a road trip to Byron. We then hung out with them for about a week in which they morphed from new friends to old friends, the transformation as invisible as our language barrier. Then I came to work at a hostel in Byron Bay. I knew one friend from home here but that didn’t really help with the nerves of having to meet so many new people.But I can honestly say the feeling that I was meeting “new people” lasted roughly three hours. The group I work with and have met here make me feel like I have been here much longer than three weeks. Maybe because in ‘hostel time’ three weeks is a lifetime….but I think it has more to do with how open and hilarious and awesome every single individual is. Coming to understand that there are people like this 11,916 km outside of my little bubble...weirdly makes the world feel smaller. You would think it would make it feel bigger. Finding more and more people, making more and more friends. But it doesn’t. It makes me feel like there will always be a person around to corner to make me laugh, listen to me cry, or help me finish my box of goon. To my friends at home, I miss you greatly and I’ll be back for you, but to my new friends I have met in Australia thanks for making my world a little smaller. Y’all legends. -Leah
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |