No Great Expectations

Australia has been on my radar for years. Ever since I heard of my Aunt Kate's time living on this tropical island continent with surfing and hopping mammals and laughing birds, I knew I wanted to see it for myself. I never thought about how I would get here, and I certainly never considered that I would be here at 19, travelling without my family, living and studying in one of the world's greatest metropolitan hubs. When I envisioned myself in this country, it was in the outback, like Crocodile Dundee. I was going to be a scientist or maybe a journalist, braving the wilderness in a cool hat with a wardrobe made entirely of tan safari outfits and an arsenal of boomerangs. Then, of course, I got older and I realized how off-base I was. Now, I'm here, sleeping in a comfy bed in a lavish student apartment in Ultimo with a very colorful wardrobe and not a single boomerang to call my own. To put it plainly, my expectations of myself at this time were way off.

That being said, I never really put much thought into what Australia would be like once I got here. I have traveled abroad in the past, both to Italy for a brief time and to France for a month. I had expectations walking out of the airports there. I had an idea of what I thought I could expect of the places I would see and the people with which I would interact. Was I wrong? Well, yeah, in a lot of cases, but once in a while I hit the mark. The thing is, I had expectations. A lot of what we have been asked to do in this first week is to evaluate the differences between our expectations and the realty of living in Sydney. There's just one problem. I didn't have expectations. It never crossed my mind what the harbor around the Opera House or the building's interior looked like. It never occurred to me that Sydney was so far south, almost the same latitudinal distance from the equator as Charleston, South Carolina. I never stopped to think about living in an Anglophone country where I have trouble understanding the people. I came into this three-month experience with very little premonitions about the country I was entering.

Fortunately, having little to no expectations has made this first week of the experience full of nothing but pleasant surprises. I've learned so much about a culture I never considered to be different than the one in which I grew up. I've learned that Sydney feels like the American South with its hot and humid days full of sunshine and polite, smiling people. I've learned that the drivers don't have time for you to decide to cross the road. I've learned that food expires in five days, but it tastes five times fresher. I've learned that calling the United States a cultural melting pot seems generous after seeing the diversity here. I've learned that this is one of the most expensive cities in the world, but you can see what you're paying for at every turn. Honestly, coming into this with so few expectations has made this a much more rewarding experience than I could have imagined. For the first time in a long time, I am getting to learn something from scratch, building my knowledge and experience from the ground up. That's rare, and I am cherishing every new opportunity to learn.