Wow, sorry to leave you all hanging for 4 months. Lemme try and bring you up to speed. After I was hospitalized in Thailand with a god awful bacteria infection, bit by a wild monkey, and kidnapped by Vietnamese bus drivers, I finally made it back to Australia only to be unceremoniously dumped by my boyfriend. He wanted to live on a deserted island for 3 months and then permanently relocate to the occupied territories of the West Bank (ya know, the usual). Needless to say, I was a bit of a hot mess in the beginning of my second semester. I started having these horrible panic attack episodes that I just couldn't shake off without receiving consolation from my amazingly supportive roommies and a few glasses of wine. Other than a couple random nights of salsa dancing I was either on the couch or in the computer lab reading or writing something slightly morbid and depressing (the usual IR topics of debate). This was nothing like the first semester I had experienced in Australia, and through my bouts of hysteria I came to a couple of relatively sane conclusions:
1. If there is such a thing as fate or destiny, than I am obviously not meant to live a normal life. I'm currently working on coming to terms with this. I used to envy the people who cruised through life, keeping things static and safe. I know I've seen some of the most beautiful sides of life and some of the most horrific sides of life - and I'm grateful for both perspectives, each one humbles me.
2. This journey was not, nor has it ever been, about getting a degree - that was only my excuse for getting to Australia. Originally I didn't know why I had to come here I just knew I had to leave LA. I've since realized a big part of the purpose of this journey was so that I could learn fearlessness, and more importantly, learn to perceive the unknown as exciting and not scary. Once you become fearless, you can actually LIVE life.
3. Strength is seeing the darkest side of humanity, yet still maintaining the capacity to find beauty in every corner of your world.
4. The best way to learn about the world is to experience it. We live in quite an extraordinary place and we have a very limited period of time to learn as much as we can, try to take advantage of it.
5. While this traveling lifestyle might seem cool (it kinda is) it's really difficult to maintain old relationships and form new ones. The old friends you miss a whole lot, and the new friends (and boys) seem to come and go in and out of your life very quickly, so it can get lonely. And I miss MY bed - that moment when you come home to your space and face plant into your bed out of sheer exhaustion and throw the covers over you and stay in bed for the rest of the day. It feels more comforting and acceptable to do this in your own territory. It's hard to explain.
Of course I have some Australianisms for you, just a couple things I've noticed and a few interesting facts. Often times you'll see (mostly younger to mid 30s aged) people walking around barefoot, grocery shopping barefoot, filling up gas barefoot, it's pretty much acceptable to be barefoot almost everywhere that doesn't have a dress code policy. We might view this as beach style, or hippie, or brittney spears-like-behavior at the peak of her meltdown, but to Aussies its totally normal. I really wanna do it just because of the "when in rome" factor, and Brisbane is a really clean city, but I just can't get past the sanitary issue of walking barefoot on an inner city sidewalk. Gross. Interesting fact - Australia (or at least Sydney and Brisbane) is having a major counterfeit problem with their $50 notes. A tour guide in Sydney pointed this out to us but there are lots of fake $50s floating around, they are really easy to spot too! I don't have two $50s on me but the one pictured above is fake. You can tell because all Aussie notes have a picture of someone on them and it has their name printed under their picture (as the $10 note shows the name written just below the photo on the right side). This is clearly missing on the $50. It's only $50s that I've seen fake versions of and for some reason I haven't seen any kind of news on this. Since about 1 in every 4 or so times I receive a $50 it's fake, I'd say that's kind of an issue. So, other than that one glaringly huge fuck up, it's a really good fake.
Amidst all the study madness I was able to get away for a bit during the break and visit an old friend in Kununurra, which is located in Western Australia. I have always wanted to see a bit of the outback and I got a pretty good glimpse of it on my 10 hr. bus ride from Darwin to Kununurra. Kununurra is specifically referred to as being a part of The Kimberleys. It's gorgeous and very scenic with beautiful jagged cliffs and red dirt and the sunsets just illuminate all the vibrant desert colors. It's a pretty beautiful place that photos have a difficult time capturing. I spent a night camping in the outback and laid awake at night looking at the stars, thinking of all the millions of deadly animals in Australia and came to the conclusion that the majority of them were probably right outside my tent, waiting for me to emerge so they could devour me whole or something. so that was fun. But seriously, it was fun. It was rugged and cowboy-like (as any girl would agree that anything rugged and cowboy-like is a good thing, like brad pitt in Thelma & Louise... Sorry, sidetracked). Anyway, more serious, there are lots of aboriginals in Western Australia, and it doesn't take a lot for an outsider to look and get an idea of what their story is. You can tell they were pushed into these areas and made to live in underdeveloped towns in the more desolate and uninhabited parts of Australia. They often sit under trees all day, not only cuz it's fucking hot(!), but because 1)they are given pensions to live off of from the government and 2) they were never properly assimilated to a "western culture" or "western style" of living 3) and there is a huge prejudice against the aboriginals so the majority remains unemployed. Is this starting to sound like a familiar story? Many of them also have drinking issues as part of not knowing how to cope with this transition. It's very sad to see especially because the actual recognition of aboriginals as people that deserve rights and freedoms didn't happen til the late 60s and early 70s, so for a people that had previously inhabited the country for thousands of years, this transition has been fairly recent. To this day Australia's deplorable treatment of the aboriginals remains as the country's dirty secret. I share this not to be depressing but to create awareness, and if an Aussie ever gives you shit (as they love to give Americans shit for everything we do) this will be your ammo to throw back at them.
So after a lovely boozy time in Kununurra I wrote one of my papers for class completely hung over on the bus ride back and managed to pull a 7 on it - miraculous! (7 is the highest score in the grading system, also known as high distinction). It was a proud and confounding, but mostly proud moment for me. After the semester wrapped up I packed up a majority of the life I have collected here in Australia and moved it back to LA in preparation to live a nomadic lifestyle. I promise I will start to write more frequently!
Enjoying the ride,
Jillian aka Jilly, Jillypet, Jillybean, J-Bones, J-Dilla, and sometimes Crabcakes
