City versus Country

November is a bit of a crazy month for me with travelling and schoolwork, which is why I haven’t updated much and probably won’t get the chance to very often. The beginning of November/end of October started of with our 4-day trip to Tassie (Tasmania). I arrived in Launceston on Thursday with a group of my friends. We were on our own for the following day/night, as we were meeting up with Arcadia (my program provider) who had an organized itinerary for us the rest of the weekend. Launceston is Tassie’s second biggest “city”, if you could even call it that. The weather was crisp and cool, making us all nostalgic for fall weather back home. After checking into our hostel, we wandered around until we found a supermarket, where we bought pasta, bread and wine to cook back at the hostel for a big family-style dinner. It was nice and homely, and again I had one of those moments where I realized how wonderfully and truly happy I was.

On Friday morning I went cable hang-gliding with two of my friends from our group! After skydiving, this was less exciting but still pretty cool as I flew down the zip line, looking down at a gorge. We then hiked up to Cataract Gorge, which was absolutely stunning. Friday afternoon we met up with the rest of the Arcadia group, consisting of two staff members and a few American students studying at other Australian Universities. We exchanged information about where we were from and where we had been, and it was interesting to hear about other people’s study abroad experiences. We were then transported to Cradle Mountain, Tasmania’s main attraction and absolutely beautiful national park far out into the country. We passed sheep farms and saw fewer and fewer cars along the way. We had no cell phone service. We stayed in cabins close to the mountain, where we had comfortable bunk beds and we had to boil water and then refrigerate it overnight.

We spent the next two days backpacking in Cradle Mountain National Park. Google it. It’s as beautiful, if not more, than it looks. The pictures I took couldn’t capture its glory. It was great hiking – pretty steep at some parts, and at one point we were climbing along the face of the mountain, which was pretty tricky. Still, it was an amazing experience and I literally felt like I was tramping through something out of Lord of the Rings. Close to the summit of the mountain, we started seeing mounds of snow and obviously stopped to have a snowball fight. It was the one and only time I’ll see snow here. We saw wallabies and all sorts of other fuzzy animals, although no Tasmanian devils. The birds, too, were pretty spectacular with the sounds they made. They can be quite aggressive, however – one swooped down to steal my friend Kristina’s sandwich! Overall, it was a really fun and I felt exhausted but happy and refreshed after hiking in the backcountry wilderness of Tassie.

            I spent this past weekend in Sydney, where I was visiting my Uncle, his partner Ghila, and my almost now two-year old baby cousin, Bas. It was great to be with family again and have fine dining out and drink wine that didn’t come out of a box. I also got to do some solo exploring around Sydney harbour, which was actually really nice and I found that I enjoyed going at my own pace. I was back in the hustle and bustle of a major city, and I found that I hadn’t missed it at all. Needing a break away from city life, I was determined to study abroad somewhere less urban – and after visiting Sydney I knew I was right in making that choice. Don’t get me wrong, Sydney is such an amazing city and anyone who has the chance to go there should definitely visit. It’s just that personally, I’m less of a city person than I thought I was, which I discovered after my first semester of college in DC. Cities are fun for me to visit, but ideally I want to settle somewhere outside of a city and closer to the mountains, like Burlington, Vermont or Denver, Colorado. The Gold Coast, actually, is pretty ideal: it’s very spread out, so it doesn’t have a very urban feel to it, and its located on the beach (thus how it gets its name) and beautiful mountain ranges are about a half hour away. While I had a good time in Sydney, I was happy to get back to campus and prepare for my next two trips, both outdoorsy and adventure themed. On Thursday morning (2:30 am!!!) my friend Cam and I leave for our outback trip to Ayer’s Rock, which I’m really looking forward to. We return Sunday and are on campus for two more days, and then we leave next Wednesday with two of our other friends to go roadtripping in a campervan across New Zealand’s South Island! So naturally I’m pretty excited. Life just continues to be awesome.