Blessed with the Little Moments

Hi there!

Today, Wednesday 23 January, 2018, we took a coastal walk from Coogee to Bondi beach and everything I saw was simply breath taking. As I was walking along with the group, I found that I usually ended up in the back as I strayed a bit to take photos of the landscape around us. I am constantly amazed at how nature can produce such exotic colours and landscapes around us. I kept thinking to myself, this is so beautiful, I want to live here so I can constantly take pictures. It makes me realize just how blessed I am to be on this trip and how blessed I am to be able to experience everything here, because in every experience I have learned something new. Not many people will be able to say that they did this program and had the same experiences as us. Dr. Miller mentioned something similar in class today, that even though others will come on this program and others have been on this program, no one will experience the same things we do today, tomorrow and in the future. What we live through today, what we do will be with us forever and effect each of us differently which I truly think is amazing. It makes me so happy that I was able to come on this trip. It truly is worth it.

            And the fact that I am able to go on coastal walks in Sydney is amazing. It really has made me appreciate the little moments in every day that we can sometimes take for granted. When I decided to do this study abroad program, my main reasons were to grow and get out of my comfort zone so that I could grow, but also to discover myself. What I didn’t expect was that discovering yourself comes in the little moments of each day. Being here for a week already, a lot of us have had to overcome challenges and obstacles we might not have had to overcome at home: being badly sunburned, walking long distances where our feet hurt a lot, or even just learning to live with other people. Yet, for me, this has made me enjoy the trip more because I’m recognizing little things that I appreciate, like the fact that on the walk from Urbanest to the store, I find it allows more time to talk to people to get to know them then if we were driving there, because we might be listening to the radio or be on our phones.

            So far, this adventure in Sydney has allowed me to truly feel blessed about the little moments we sometimes don’t think about. I love the fact that I can look around at any point and just take a little moment in the city to find something new about it or when we’re a group, to be able to really talk to someone to get to know them. There is so much time in a day that we sometimes don’t know what to do with it or it goes by too fast, but Sydney has shown me that each moment counts if you just take a second to stop and live in it. I love that this is something I’ve learned this first week because I can’t wait for all the other little moments that I’ll have while studying abroad here.

Cheers,

Gabi