“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” -Bill Bryson
When I look back on my ten months as a Californian in Queensland, sponsored by the Rotary Foundation to obtain a Master’s Degree in International Public Health as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, the first thing that comes to mind is that Bill Bryson is so right! What I am most proud of for the year I lived in Australia, is that I took advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity of living almost as far away from home as possible, and traveled to see every unfamiliar bit of the Australasia region as possible. Because of this, I was able to see some of the greatest tourist destinations in the world all in about 10 months time: I stood on the crater’s edge of a live, erupting volcano in Vanuatu; I snorkeled with rainbow-colored fish at one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World—The Great Barrier Reef; I cooked tucker by a campfire, slept in a swag under The Southern Cross, and rested at billabongs while bushwalking through the Outback; I learned ancient traditions of growing rice, rode on the back of an elephant, and visited 1,000 year old villages and Hindu relics in Bali, Indonesia; I ate, drank, and laughed my way through the most beautiful and quaint metropolitan city I’ve ever visited—Sydney; I worked and sweated alongside local villagers across four remote islands in the Solomon Islands in order to improve community-wide access to safe water and children’s access to a proper education in villages still recovering from a devastating earthquake and tsunami from 2007; I drove in a glaring green and purple van up the most sickening and winding roads, to be rewarded with the most breathtaking vistas of New Zealand; and I lived as a local in sunny Brisbane, Queensland, where I grew to love hot tea with milk even on a “bloody” hot and humid day, the extremely early morning sunshine that gets you up and out of bed before your alarm goes off, and the strangers who became my best friends and family away from home.
Though arriving in the Southern Hemisphere—where I knew there would not be a single familiar face to greet me—was really intimidating at first, it was actually the unfamiliarity of it all, the newness and the changes, that turned out to be the most significant, exciting and influential aspects of living abroad as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar for the 2011 school year. The following words are my final report, which fulfill my final duties as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. I hope they convey how blessed and fortunate I feel to have been given this year to live abroad, to surprise myself with my own mental and physical strength and ability to be self-reliant, to broaden my worldviews, and to see everyday things as if for the first time all over again.
When I left the U.S. for Australia, I was in tears. Then when I left Australia for the U.S., I was in tears. However, just as I knew when I left the U.S. I would certainly be back in a matter of months, I know I will certainly be back to Australia and to Rotary in a matter of years. I am grateful to everyone who made my year abroad possible—my parents for letting me go and for always being my biggest fans; my sponsor counselor, Russ Desch, for informing me of the scholarship, preparing me, and cheering me on the whole time I was there; my sponsor District 5230, for selecting me to represent the place that has always been my home; my host District 9600, for welcoming me and letting me get involved in their community; my host counselors, Brian and Cheryl Springer, for turning out to be friends for life; my RAWCS team leader in the Solomon Islands, Trevor Taylor, for letting me get involved in a life changing project; and every Rotarian, whose donations to The Rotary Foundation support the Ambassadorial Scholarship Program to allow students like me to achieve our dreams and broaden our minds.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
