The Gabtrotter

Before I left, people would tell me, “Oh you’re going to love it. You’re going to have the time of your life there!” When people would tell me that, I never really believed it. I just didn’t understand how one short trip, to a place where I knew no one and had no idea what to expect could really be some of the best months of my life. Now, that I am actually living it, I totally understand what they had meant.

Before I left, I saw the movie Up in the Air and although I didn’t really like the movie, George Clooney’s character said: “If you think about it, your favorite memories, the most important moments in your life… were you alone? Life’s better with company.” The best moments are spent with other people; at least they have been for me. They may not be people you’ve been friends with your whole life, or people you’ll always be friends with, but all that matters is that you are there, together, fully loving and living in the moment.

Before I left, I didn’t know whom I was going to meet and I didn’t exactly know where life was going to take me. While I am here, I’ve been fortunate to have made some friends that have made these memories exceed just a good time and people to kill time with.

This weekend we went to Byron Bay and saw Australia’s most easterly point. There is something about being someplace that is the most of anything. Aren’t some of the best things when you are the most of that situation? Where you are the most happy, the most out there, living. We were standing on the edge of Australia, the edge of the world… or the world we live in right now. I’m the type of person, that as long as I am with some friends, it doesn’t matter where we are: we could be stuck on a plane for 13 hours, or at a club with the worst music in the world, I’ll still have a good time because I know that when the time is over it wasn’t about the music that was playing, the places we were or the talks we had at the time… it’s about being where you are and just fully experiencing it. I guess this time we are lucky, not only are we living in the moments as they happen, but we happen to be living these moments in the middle of the summer of a beautiful country. I might sound a little extreme, but I’m just trying to make the most of this… or be the most of whatever it is I am: happy.

Cheers to my friends here! Enjoy some of our best pictures:

It’s funny how I’ll be turning 22 and because of my location,  my friends and family will recognize it two different times. For example, my friends in the US, on Wednesday, will be thinking about how in Australia it is my birthday because it is Thursday… and on Thursday, in the US, my friends will then be living my birthday over there.

It’s not so much about it being my birthday, as much as it is about the time: how time works. There is a line, in the middle of the ocean, that just makes time change direction, it makes time work systematically. Although hours are controlled and the days are measured: time is inconsistent, it’s unmemorable. I don’t remember my 17^th birthday, and I don’t remember my 15^th birthday… but I remember my 21^st and my 16^th. As you get older you start to remember things worth remembering, but the systematic method of time is just is in the background, counting the days as we get older… but to us, yes, there are these lists of numerical days, but the days don’t count as much as the accumulation of the moments between one date to the other.

I will forever remember my 22^nd birthday as being in Australia. Someone will ask me, what’d you do for your birthday last year, or the year before, or ten years ago? And I’ll causally respond, oh that year I was in Australia. When I’m turning 40 I will remember what year I was in Australia because of this birthday, because as you get older (I hear) the years start to blend together… and the dates blend together… and it’s just those extraordinary moments that help mark the years as they fly by.