13 Weeks Later and I Still Have Not Been Eaten by a Crocodile

My time in Australia is quickly coming to a close and I am extremely disappointed that nothing has tried to eat me yet. I've come face to face with multiple emus, pet wallabies, hung out with kangaroos, held a koala, fed a tiger, gotten way too close to spiders and cockroaches, and attempted to convince Sophie to let me dive headfirst into an enclosure with a 13 foot long crocodile and here I am, completely unscathed. Boring. I thought Australia was supposed to try to kill me.

However, even though Australia hasn't maimed me so far (I still have a week left to see what damage I can do), I sure have had one heck of an experience down under.

If you've read every single one of my blogs, which I highly doubt unless you're Dr. Miller or Dr. Swan or maybe my mom (Mom, do you read these?), then you know I suffered a pretty brutal breakup a week into arriving in Sydney. At the time, I wrote a blog post about how I thought the experience of a horrific breakup combined with an entire semester abroad was probably going to lead to a lot of painful personal growth and oh boy, was I right. It was awesome.

Every time one of us in the group finds a picture from the first week or two, we all have this joking moment of "Oh, we were so young and innocent then" and even though it's 90% in good fun and 10% completely true because at that point we hadn't experienced the living despair that is Ivy, I do feel like almost everything has changed since I stepped off that plane on January 17th.

First of all, I kind of know things about Australia thanks to that history class we took at U Syd that I'm still not sure I passed because our final exams still haven't been graded even though it's April and I'm about to go home. Sorry for throwing shade, but seriously, what's going on, Mick? Are you okay?

I learned a lot of things about Australian history. For example, the Dutch probably stumbled upon Australia before the British did (losers), Australians basically bullied their first female prime minister out of office (um, yikes), and, most importantly, Australia lost a literal war against my new favorite animal, the emu (AMAZING).

I, of course, also had a great time working at my internship site, Eastside FM. I learned a whole lot about some behind the scenes stuff that I haven't gotten to experience at WUTK back home and, most excitingly, I hosted my own reggae/punk show on Monday nights from 9:30 pm to 11:00 pm. I didn't even get stuck with a graveyard shift, so that's pretty cool. It was a little less cool scrambling to learn literally anything about reggae since I knew...absolutely nothing other than Bob Marley's name, but now I would consider myself "knowledgable yet struggling" and that is still a step forward since January 17th.

I've also traveled quite a bit around Australia, which I was really not expecting to happen given the state of my finances. It's at this moment that I have to say both thank you and rest in piece to my mother's bank account. Love you.

I went to Brisbane over spring break in February and met up with two of my friends that I'd met online for the first time seven years ago, so meeting them in person for the first time was surreal and incredibly awesome. And then they took me to ride heaps of rollercoasters so that was DOUBLE AWESOME.

Then Liam, one of my Brisbane friends, convinced me to take a weekend trip with him to Melbourne, which was 100% not even on my radar as something that I could or should do, but that was a lot of fun as well, so thanks for that, Liam! I know you've read at least one of my blogs because you told me I got your friend's name wrong so hi! Miss you.

And last weekend, I had literally the best day of my LIFE. Nine of us flew up to Cairns to go to the Great Barrier Reef and I'm in absolutely none of the pictures because I was off swimming around underwater the entire four hours that we were let off the boat. I chased two sharks in an attempt to reenact Jaws and they, unfortunately, did not agree to my plan and I swam in the middle of a school of rainbow fish and cried five times and had to go back up to the surface to empty tears out of my snorkeling goggles or whatever they're called.

My favorite aspect of the trip though definitely has to be the friends that I've made along the way. From Emilie and Liam in Brisbane to Max, Lauren, and Rike at Eastside and the 18 other kids from UT that I'm not going to take the time to name because there are way too many, you guys are definitely what made this trip for me.

Sophie and I already have plans to see A Quiet Place when we get back, Victoria is working incredibly hard to convince me to go to Disneyworld with her at some point in my life, and Joe and I have standing plans to be best friends until the day we both keel over and die.

Everyone I've met has listened to me cry about my breakup more times than I can count, watched Black Mirror with me, marathoned 48 races of Mario Kart until 2 am, experienced the cesspit that is Ivy (I really hate that place), beat me at pool, and provided me with so many laughs from all the dumb stuff that we've done that I really feel like I've got 18 new best friends to go back to Knoxville with, as well as reasons to come back to Australia and visit Chicago, Germany, and France.

And, most importantly, none of you actually let me get away with jumping straight into the mouth of a crocodile (yet), which my mom says she appreciates.

This is basically a big sappy post to say thank you to all my new best friends that provided me with quality entertainment over the past three months, as well as emotional support and all that nonsense, and to say thank you to Dr. Miller, Dr. Swan, and ISA for making this happen, and to my mom, who paid for all of this, answered phone calls when I was freaking out, and gave birth to me so that I could be here to experience all of this and gave me the life I have been trying to so hard to let these weird Australian animals take from me in the name of good fun and memes.

I really hope to enjoy my last week here in Sydney and to remain friends with everyone when I get home. Until then, I will definitely be spending the next six days antagonizing as many Australian animals as I can to see if I can finally be eaten by a crocodile or kicked by a kangaroo. Cheers, mates!