One Month Post-Australia Update

Blog Entry #5: One Month After the Program

(Thursday February 20^th, 2020)

Wow. It’s been a whole month since got back from Sydney, Australia. It honestly doesn’t even seem real that I was a couple thousand miles away in an entirely different country. I think this was because Australia was actually quite similar to the US and I didn’t have to assimilate too much. Overall, this entire trip was really great. I met some great people and had some really good times getting to know them and having fun with them. No, I didn’t make a lifelong friend or bond with someone to the point of continuing a friendship back in San Diego, but I really learned a lot about myself and how I function in different social settings. I also became super aware of myself and what I do and say, which is good but can also prevent you from stepping out of your comfort zone and doing something out of personality. Either way I really enjoyed myself, had a good balance of fun and schoolwork, did pretty well in the class and learned a lot not only about abnormal psychology but about Australia and Sydney, specifically. I was constantly noticing all the things we did or didn’t have in America and with the things we do have, I would analyze how and maybe why they were different. I am a very analytical and critical thinker and this trip had me constantly thinking and analyzing. It was exhausting sometimes but really allowed me to be present and take in as much as a I could in the short 18 days I was there.

Some things I wish I knew were the weather differences. Obviously, the weather app and news people can only predict to a certain extent, but I didn't realize exactly how hot it was going to be at first and how chilly and windy it got at night and in the middle of the week. I wish I had brought more pants and long sleeves and less summery clothes. I also wish I had brought more formal clothes when we went out to dinner because I felt underdressed sometimes. Also, I wish I had known more details prior to departing. I realize that you can’t know exactly everything that’s going to happen, but I was worried about having to figure things out on my own. Specifically, with my phone service. I had never been out of the country while needing a working cell phone, so I was paranoid it wouldn’t work the right way and I’d be alone and have no cell service or internet service. Of course, when I got there, I just bought the data and the phone company sent me a text when I needed to buy more cell data and it was really easy and self-explanatory, but I was thinking all the worst things. Also, I was worried about transportation. I knew Uber was in Australia and that's  how I got to my hotel from the airport but, since the first day, we were using only public transportation and it was very complicated for me to understand because I very rarely use any in the US. Uber is way more popular in the US than in Australia and there is a really nice, clean and easy transportation service from trains to buses to light rails and to ferries where you just have a card with preloaded money on it and tap it on a pad while getting on and off the service. It took me a while to get used to it and remember where to go from the hotel to get to the correct transportation service, so I relied on others in our group when we went on excursions. I wish I knew more about how it worked and how to navigate it successfully because if I was ever left alone during the first half of the trip I’d be lost without cell data to be able to google maps how to walk somewhere or how to know which service to use and from which station to which. But, like with the cell service, it all worked out in the end, I eventually got the hang of it and never had any issues taking the wrong transportation service.

Recommendations: Don’t worry too much if you don’t find a group of friends or a friend right away or at all. Just try to go with the flow and experience things for yourself. Focus on what matters like your learning experiences, success in your classes and experiencing a new culture. Yes, having a group of friends may allow for more fun things to happen, but if you go along with a bigger group, you don’t have to stand out and be the life of the party. You can just be there and take in all the experiences for yourself and have time to reflect and enjoy. But if you are the super social and extroverted type of person, you will easily find a group of people because everyone there is scared and experiencing something new too and would be glad to be friends with you if they wanted someone to experience things with. Don’t stress too much about the socializing part, like I did before and during the trip, because it took away from me realizing all the amazing things I actually did do and enjoyed. Not every moment has to be a super exciting, Instagramable, and social moment. Have moments to be alone and reflect on yourself in this new country. It will be worth it, I promise.

End of the Trip and I'm Pooped

Blog Entry #4: Thursday January 16^th- Tuesday January 21^st

16^th: Today was a super relaxed day, and I woke up really late again! I finally fully unpacked though and had some time to rest. It felt really nice to have all my stuff organized and I wish I had done it earlier, but I was just so tired every time we had free time. One thing I will bring up in this entry, since we didn’t do much today, is the fact that I am having a little trouble finding a group of people to identify with. We do a lot of things in really big groups and that is really stressful for me and not my ideal social situation. I thrive better and socialize better when I am in smaller, intimate settings. I had hoped smaller groups would naturally form after the first week or so but that never happened so when I'm with the big group I feel kind of left out and invisible because I’m so quiet in big groups. The reason I bring this up is to really put into perspective the realities of studying abroad for anyone who reads this. Yes, it is a really cool experience but not everything is perfect, and you will most likely experience some hardships whether it be homesickness, troubles socializing like me or even stressing about the class or classes you are taking. It is really important to remember why you are here and to remind yourself you are doing something very impressive and important and you should be proud of yourself. You can do it, you will get through it, and focus on all the positive times, no matter how small they may seem.

17^th: So far, the go go go has been diminishing as, I think, other people are getting tired as well. Also, the group’s communication isn’t the best when it comes to sharing what people are planning on doing and when. A lot of the plans are last minute and that is stressful for me. But I am enjoying the more relaxed vibe of the last part of the trip, and I can reflect better and get more sleep. Today my roommate, a new friend she made, and I all went to a shopping mall a few miles away after getting some food. We passed a small pet store and saw some kittens in the window which were so cute! And I was really observant about how US and Australian malls are similar and different. We went to Target and, let me say, it was not as good as the US Target. It was a lot smaller and we couldn’t even find flashcards that we wanted to use to study for the last test! Then later at night we all went to this really fancy hotel/ casino/ club place that felt like Las Vegas, but almost the entire class met up there and had a lot of fun all dressed up together.

18^th: Today we were supposed to go to the Gladesville Asylum and have a tour but, since it was a mainly outdoor tour and it was raining, it was cancelled. I was really excited for this tour because it was one of Australia’s first insane asylums and I have never seen one! But instead the program director bought us aquarium tickets for anytime during the day, so a group of us went to the aquarium and saw some other classmates there too. The aquarium was very cool and had lots of colors and types of sea life. Afterwards, we all exited the aquarium together and went to get ice cream at the same place where we got burgers and then walked around Darling Harbor together.

19^th: Today was another calm day that ended in studying for the final exam for many hours because I knew I needed to do well in order to try to get an A in the class. I got food by myself at the mall food court across the street and just sat around in the hotel room and studied It was not the most exciting day, but I was honestly pretty pooped and ready to take the test and go home in two days.

20^th: Today was the final exam and afterwards I went on a little excursion myself. I really like cats and Sydney has a cat café called Catmosphere where you can get a coffee drink and play with kittens with a group of other people for about an hour. It was so much fun and I took tons of pictures of the kittens. I went by myself and then walked around the area before making it back to the hotel while barely using my maps app. I felt so free and independent and was really proud of myself for not relying on others to do something fun.

21^st: Today is the day! The day we go home. The class is over and, honestly, I am ready to go home. I miss the routines of being back in San Diego and having my classes and days all planned out.  And I miss my family because I only got to see them for a small amount of time during Christmas before I left for Australia. My flight was at around 2pm so I didn’t have to get up too early to get to the airport and I was NOT looking forward to it. Luckily, I got the entire row to myself and could lay flat down and sleep, although I barely did. Because of the time change, I got back home to California before I left Sydney since Sydney is an entire day ahead of California. My parents picked me up from the San Francisco airport and I tried to sleep in the car ride back home 2 hours away but to no avail. I was so excited to be home that I forgot I was so tired but then I finally took a nap for nearly 6 hours until dinner time. Time flew by so fast! I can’t believe I’m already home. It felt like I just left but since I did so much it also felt like I was gone for a really long time.

Getting Used to Things

Blog Entry #3: Friday January 10^th- Wednesday January 15^th

10^th: This was our first free day of the trip with no pre-scheduled activities and no class for today and tomorrow. Nearly half of the class took a one-night trip up to the Great Barrier Reef, but the flights were expensive and longer than I would have liked, and I have still not gotten time to myself to relax and unpack. So, today I met with the social worker who spoke at our class at her office at Weave. I sat in on a meeting they were finishing up and then she treated me to lunch at this really cute café. We had a really great time talking about our lives and how I got into psychology and then wanting to do social work! She had so much insight on the process of getting to where she is and also the tasks she is met with on a daily basis. We clicked really well and talked for a couple hours over lunch and even more on the car ride home where we stopped to look for directions and got in such a deep conversation, we completely forgot to look at the directions! Afterwards, she said her goodbyes and wished me luck on my journey into the world of social work and I am so glad got to meet her. Although the Great Barrier Reef would have been amazing, I’m so glad I met with her because it really got me excited and motivated about social work and my future career goals.

11^th: I went to bed late last night after watching some Netflix and relaxing in my hotel room by myself. My roommate went to the Great Barrier Reef and I woke up pretty late in the day to my roommate getting back from the airport. Later that day her and I went for Chinese food around the corner from the hotel and had really nice talk together. At night we hung out with some other people in the hotel room and then went out and had a blast! What a great two days off!

12^th: Today we had a Blue Mountains hiking tour with no class! We took a train for 2 hours and I slept the entire way! Once we got there the temperature was quite chilly and it felt nice to be out of the hot and humid weather. Our tour guide was very educated on so many categories of the environment, and I really learned a lot and enjoyed the tour. First, we took a bus trip and saw the valley area of the mountains where we saw wild wallabies and kangaroos in the distance! Then we went on an actual hike and learned about plants, animals and the indigenous bush people’s way of living may years prior. It was absolutely incredible and peaceful and educational! It was very foggy that day but, like I said, better than hot and humid. During the two-hour train ride home, I slept again. After the hike a group of us went to Darling Harbor and ate at a really yummy burger place with ice cream! Then we went to a playground and, like the children we are, played on the playground.

13^th: My roommate and I woke up late because the day prior was so tiring, so we got breakfast at a café by ourselves and then went to class from 2-5pm. Then after class everyone got together, and we went to the top of the Sydney Tower in the Westfield mall, which is the tallest building in Sydney. There was a restaurant and bar at the top where we got dinner and the whole thing slowly rotated so we got a 360 view of the city in about an hour! It was an incredible experience and definitely a must see in Sydney and only cost $25.

14^th: Today we took a tour of the brand-new psychology clinic at UT,S and it was so cool to see something like that up close. We learned about some of the inner working of a clinic like that and learned about procedures of psychological treatment. We also learned about the clinical psychology doctorate program at the school and how new yet successful it’s been. It was a really cool experience I didn’t think I would enjoy so much. Then we had class from 2-5pm and a well needed lazy evening with studying for the next exam.

15^th: Today was exam day number two! After the first exam, I got a hang of how best to study with the time I had. I made a study guide the night before and from when I got up until the test at 2pm, I studied in our classroom for a few hours straight. The tests were sort of difficult, so I knew I had to step up my game this time, and I changed my style of studying. After the test, a small group of us went out for the night to celebrate the end of test two out of three and the fact that we had our last free day the next day.

Week One Excitement

Blog Entry #2: Saturday January 4^th- Thursday January 9^th

4^th: I got off my flight found some people I knew who landed at similar times and took an Uber with one friend to the hotel. The rooms were not ready, but we still checked in and then went out for lunch. It was really hot, humid and smoky that day and I had a terrible headache. We managed to walk to place for lunch, but it was too busy, and we ended up going to Subway and then a Starbucks-like coffee shop called Gloria Jean’s for food and coffee. There we met up with people my friend knew, and I recognized from campus. Later that afternoon, at heat of day, we had city walking tour with a recent grad from the school where our class is at, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), and she was awesome. I was so tired, jet lagged, hungry and just really wanted to lay down and relax and unpack, but the tour was so cool and beautiful and interesting! It was great to learn about the history of how Sydney came to be. I took a ton of pictures because I recently got new phone with more storage and a better-quality camera. Our tour ended by Sydney Harbor, the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House. It was an amazing and iconic view, but then we had to find our way back to the hotel on the light rail and almost immediately had to get ready for the group dinner. I was so tired at this point I could barely keep my eyes open and dinner was around 8pm which felt like 2am for me. This was such a busy, go go go day that really drained me, and I went to sleep super early.

5^th: I woke up pretty early today before my alarm and went to breakfast at the hotel down the street where we had free continental breakfast vouchers for every day. We had a little orientation in our classroom and a mini tour of the building at UTS and then our first class from 2-5pm where I immediate fell in love with the content of the class and got excited for the next two weeks of learning. The class didn’t go nearly as long as planned and we had the afternoon and evening to ourselves. We went to a three-story restaurant and bar on Coogee Beach where we all met at the top level and hung out as a large group (almost the whole class)! I was taking in and observing the landscape and the beach views but also the people, how they acted and dressed and was constantly comparing and contrasting the US and Australian young adult culture. I came to the conclusion that we are actually very similar in behavior and clothing style, but it was interesting to notice the micro differences between American and Australian culture. Afterwards, we went on the actual beach and I found some small shells for my grandma and took a video of me putting my feet in the water to show I went to a new beach! My grandma loves the beach and wanted me to bring her back something.

6^th: This day was crazy busy and crazy go go go at all moments, which was very out of the ordinary for me because I am a more laid-back person and like to have time to relax. Especially since I was jet lagged, had a major headache since I got off the plane and that my personality isn’t as extroverted as some of the other students, but I still went along! We had class at 2pm but managed to take the light rail, then a ferry and then a bus to the Taronga Zoo across Sydney Cove. On the ferry we saw amazing and new views of the Harbor Bridge and Opera House with the city skyline in the background. I took a ton of videos and pictures. The zoo was awesome! I love animals and saw so many new Australian animals up close with no fence in between. Some of the animal I saw were emus, kangaroos (obviously), koloas, wallaby’s, giraffes, capybaras, meerkats, and lots of birds and reptiles. It was a great zoo with some great animal exhibits, but we were running out of time and had to make it back to UTS to get to class! We ran to get the bus to the ferry stop, got on the ferry and I was freaking out the whole time. We were really pushing it and barely made it back to the hotel in time to grab our backpacks and get to class (which was the building right across the street). After class, some of us hung out in one of the hotel rooms and played card games, laughed, danced and had a great time, but I definitely got to bed early and wanted to have the next day to relax and unpack, which I have not even had a chance to do yet.

7^th: Today was another crazy day where we barely made it back to class again! I wanted to relax and sleep in, but the group had other ideas and I didn’t want to be left out, so I tagged along. Today we went to Manly Beach which was a ferry ride away. Then we had class and a guest speaker who worked for a company called Weave where she was a social worker specializing in criminal justice for aboriginal people! I want to be a social worker so I’m so happy I got to meet her and learn about her work. Additionally, my professor gave me her contact information and maybe I’ll try to find a time to meet with her on a free day and chat about social work.

8^th-9^th: These two days were more relaxing, but I still haven’t gotten unpacked! On the 8^th, my friend and roommate here and back in San Diego had a calm day where we got up early and finished studying for our first exam! Yes, we already had an exam and we’ve only been in Sydney for 4 days. After the exam between 2-5pm, we did some shopping and got dinner by ourselves. The 9^th was also less eventful because we had a program planned activity where we got a tour of the Sydney Opera House in the morning, went to class from 2-5pm again and then went to an opera at the opera house called La Boheme. The opera was all in Italian and absolutely amazing to witness! We were seated in the second row and could see it all! We even got the tickets extremely cheap because of a student discount and I would say is a definite must-see, once in a lifetime activity.

Pre-Departure Thoughts

Blog Entry #1: Pre-Departure

(Thursday January 2^nd, 2020)

I am sitting in the San Francisco Airport in the international terminal, alone. I just said goodbye to my family and sped through security (I’ve flown many times before, so I like to call myself a pro when it comes to security procedures) to then wander my way through the G terminal to find gate 10. I am three hours early for my flight and I’m not really sure what to do. I see the familiar sight of the black and silver airport chairs (I’m sitting in one right now in fact), escalators galore and lots of signs with arrows pointing every which way. I also see a great diversity of people wandering just like me. I hear all kinds of languages and accents that I can’t even recognize and I’m observing and taking it all in. I smell nothing in particular at the moment, but I can’t say its especially pleasant. I taste my raspberry banana smoothie that I just scarfed down a few minutes ago. But what I’m here to talk about the most are my feelings. My feelings about flying this long by myself, being in an airport I am not familiar with by myself, how to pass the time in a way that doesn’t use up my battery, how I will feel on my 15 hour long flight, what I will do when I get to Sydney and how I will make sure I’m on time to everything. But most of all, I’m here to discuss my feelings about going to a foreign country with different food, culture, weather and possible experiences all while being without my family and having to successfully complete an upper division psychology course. To be honest, I’m scared but still somewhat excited. I’m also nervous though. And I’m tired. But the feeling I would like to focus on right now is the nervousness because, due to my past experiences with severe anxiety, I never ever thought I’d be studying abroad during college. Heck, I never thought I’d be able to handle going away for college in the first place. But as I am more than halfway through college already, I have realized how much I have grown, changed and matured, and I feel extremely confident in my abilities to work through any bouts of anxiety no matter where I am in the world. So, why not explore the world when you have a chance?

Now, you may be wondering how I came about this opportunity to study abroad in Sydney, Australia. How did I find the program, how did the application process work and how I managed to get all the information and paperwork I needed in a timely manner? First, the idea of studying abroad had always crossed my mind and my parents really wanted me to take advantage of the opportunity. They wanted me to study an entire semester abroad but that never seemed appealing to me. Honestly, studying abroad overall didn’t seem fully appealing to me because of how new and different the experience would be, and I feared how I would react to the situation based on my past struggle with anxiety. One day I happened to be walking by the USD International Center in Serra Hall, where a lot of my classes were during the fall 2019 semester, and I saw an advertising board with the options for Intersession 2020 study abroad. If I hadn’t walked past that board and seen the beautiful picture of Australia and the advertised psychology class, that would be useful for my major credit, I’m not sure if I would have even looked anywhere else for study abroad opportunities. What intrigued me about intersession was the length of the program. It felt doable and a good step before the full semester experience which I feared so much. So, I proposed the idea to my parents and noted that the cost was in addition to the chunk of money they are already paying for me to attend USD. I knew there was a possibility that they would say no due to financial reasons, but they surprised me when I came home one weekend and said they were willing to pay for me to go to Australia and I was so happy I nearly cried. Maybe I wanted to go abroad more than I initially thought! Anyways, after my parents agreed, I opened an online application and began filling out questionnaires and uploading documents like a madwoman. The international center was very helpful with reminding me of upcoming due dates and pertinent information. Although, it was hard to wait on them to relay the information because I wanted to know everything as soon as possible so I could mentally and physically plan all I needed but I survived! Now it’s up to me to make it comfortably through this flight and embark on a journey of a lifetime. Of course, I’m still anxious about so many things because so much is still unknown, but I am confident I will flourish!