What I'll Miss About Living in Australia

So I've got a few more entries to add to this blog before it's finished. I'll get them all posted before the end of June. Here's the first one summing up our experience abroad:

What I'll miss about living in Australia...

      Being special

In Australia, I was unique. My accent was a conversation starter, my name was unheard of, and people wanted to know about my life in America and how I ended up in the Land Down Under. While substitute teaching, I had a built-in time killer just by letting the kids ask questions about my home country! In the United States, I’m just another everyday citizen with the same story as everyone else.

The wide range of activities

Melbourne has everything…festivals, sporting events, concerts, outdoor activities, great restaurants, markets, theatre performances, celebrity visits, clubs, and more. I realize that this is something that could probably be said about many large cities in the United States, but it’s especially cool when you’re in a different country. For example, I went to cricket and footy games, I saw Cadel Evans and Queen Elizabeth II, I ordered awesome chai lattes and kangaroo fillet at restaurants, and I went surfing on the weekends.

    Living in the moment

We knew we were only going to be in Australia for a limited amount of time, so we took advantage of every opportunity we could to make the most of it. When you live in your home country, you often get complacent and don’t even visit the awesome places right around you. Australians often told us that we had seen more of the country than they had. There weren’t many weekends when we sat around the house doing nothing. Not that there’s anything wrong with “doing nothing,” but I loved that our calendar was full of fun times with friends and trips to places near and far.

There are tons of other things I'll miss (great friends we made, the accent, amazing markets, the beach, etc.), but the three above are the ones that really stand out. More to come!