When we saw free weekends, we quickly filled them with day trips or hostel reservations.
A week before I left for Australia, I received a barrage of emails from distant relatives wishing me safe travels, asking for pictures and urging me to make the most of my time abroad.
“Never sit still,” my uncle wrote.
As I tick the days off my calendar, I am hyper-aware of just how little time I have here. I want to see as much of this country as physically possible, so that Saturday night planning session was more than necessary. My friends and I are all afraid we might miss something, so we have plans to go somewhere new just about every weekend.
But “never sit still” is a tall order. Planning trips and traveling often is exhausting. We’re all feeling the pressure to make these few months the best they can be, but that means spending as little time in Brisbane and at The University of Queensland as possible.
Staying in your host city isn’t a bad thing. I want to get to know this country, but I don’t want to feel like a stranger in the city I’m living in for five months. I want to know which grocery stores have the best selection of Tim Tams. I want to be able to make it into the city without having to check Google Maps for directions.
So we’re traveling a lot, but we also picked a few weekends to sit still, to stay in Brisbane, to go to the West End markets or watch our friend’s tennis match. At the end of this semester, I’ll be able to tell you if Gold Coast or Sydney has better beaches, but I’ll also be able to tell you if the bus or the ferry is faster when you’re trying to get to downtown Brisbane.
The bus is slightly faster but the ferry is more fun.
