Brisbane Australia

Snippits of my trip abroad to Brisbane Australia and a description of what I learned from it!

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Couldn’t have asked for a better group to share this experience with. 

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The Sydney Opera House.

In Sydney, we learned about the most historical places in Australia, including The Rock where the first restaurant was founded. In our free time, we took the time to explore the city as featured in the video below.  Some of those placed included the Botanical gardens right next to the Sydney Opera House and taking a ferry to an island where we met up with one of our leaders and explored a red and white lighthouse looking over the city.

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Sydney

This video is about Sydney

The last excursion we went on included going to Sydney Australia, how touristy RIGHT?!  There, we went to museums and had free time to explore anywhere we wanted, and during that time we went to the Sydney Opera House! We learned what little acts of kindness could do, such as giving a homeless man some extras of our lunch and lifting their day a little.

During that time also, however, one of our girls from our group was united with her family! It was wonderful!  As this happened although, I instantly began to miss my family, as I saw them reunite after four months.  It gave me hope for going home, but also sadness because I would not be returning back to the group, but flying alone.

Let me go into a little more detail.  I mistakenly booked my flight back home to the United States to fly out of Brisbane, although the last excursion we had was from Sydney, where (little did I know) everyone was departing back to the U.S. from.  LOL, it was sad when I had to leave everyone and fly back to Brisbane by myself, while they headed for home, however, it did give me time to stop and reflect on my experience and have one more night with my host family, which I absolutely enjoyed. I learned specifically from this last Sydney trip How even being around the world, we saw families united and although I’ve been chasing places I still long to be home and with my own personal family.  Throughout my trip to Australia, we learned a lot about the concept of place focusing on how no matter where you go, you can lay down roots and get connecting and that new place can become a part of you. We must, however, be willing to step outside our comfort zone and there is honestly no place like home, and I can go all over the world, yet still have my connection to my place here in Gaithersburg Maryland.

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One of the things I learned on this trip was how to let go.  How to be free in the confidence that everything will work out if I work hard and to the best of my abilities.  Right here, I was feeling the relief of finishing all my assignments and seeing all the hard work paying off in a wonderful trip with new friends I’ve grown to love!  Although the day was rather rainy, we celebrated with fish and chips at a restaurant on the island and ended the day with gelato in the city :)

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Cara and Nicole.

These are two best friends who decided to study abroad together. They were inseparable and the sweetest two friends you could meet. They both go to school in Tennessee and they both taught me the importance of hard work and determination to get good grades.  Also, they were able to make new friends on the tip simultaneously maintaining a healthy bond with each other, which is something I admired so much about them.

This was at a tea shop Kimberly took us to where saucer item had a picture of Queen Elizabeth II on it! 😂

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Behind me is the Aboriginal flag, the Red symbolizes the land, the Black for the people and the yellow representing the Sun.  The Aboriginal people have a strong identity in the concept of dreaming, and how your dreams have the ability to speak to you and show you your path.  In this particular mural, they combine this concept of your proper path being shown to Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of having a better future for the American people.  This combination revealed the unity countries can have by sharing a vision, in this concept, the vision of freedom for both the Aboriginal and African American race causing them to be unified, although they may be 10,000 miles apart. 

Also, this is where the music video "A Sky Full of Stars" by Coldplay was filmed.  So I was super excited about that too.

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This is Pepper, the spunkiest, outgoing soul you’ll ever meet. This girl kept things super fun and exciting on the trip.  She most definitely taught me the art of speaking up and making sure you are clear with your views no matter what is thrown your way.  She demonstrated to me the power of strength and the vitality of humor to lighten the mood in every situation.

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This is Macy, Lexy, and Vicki, some friends with whom I became very close with throughout my study abroad experience.  Who knew that I had to fly around the world to meet some more awesome Americans?

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This video is about my life in Brisbane, Australia

-Learning to cope with a new family was first very different because of my life growing up with older siblings and all of us being over the age of 15.  My initial thought of being placed in a home of parents in their 30s and children all under the age of 12 was that this semester would be very challenging.  However, being placed in the Andrews household proved to be a dream.  At times, of course, there were challenges because of their tendency to be louder than usual in the morning because of school, and sometimes they had the tendency to leave the house full of toys I ended up tripping on, but for the majority of the time, they were such a blessing to know.  The children were so well behaved and constantly tried to include me in activities in their everyday life.  They were all so active in sports and events in school, which I admired so much.  You can even see Sian doing flips on the trampoline and a full Ariel Flip in their front yard in the video.  The youngest child, Rose, was the most adorable, as she was so energetic, and outgoing which made the trip so much more fun.  Although they were not home most times during the day, I found that this time, from 8-3 alone gave me the time to do homework and just relax and then have full energy to hang out with the kids when they all came home from school.  We did things such as chill in their front yard, and have little photoshoots sometimes when they wanted.  The family took me places such as Eat Streets which was a place full of food trucks and movies on a huge lawn, which is great because the food is my absolute favorite <3. They also took me to Surfer’s Paradise on the Gold Coast which is featured in the video and displayed so in the following picture.  

 The second part of the video shows the school Christian Heritage College where I attended.  Although it was smaller than Messiah, I found that the small environment helped me have more one on one time with the professors to help improve my grades even further.  I took four classes including an Australian Indigenous, and worldview class where I learned a lot of about the Australian culture and the history behind it, along with a Drama and Old Testament Bible class.  D block (featured in the video) is where all our Australian classes were held taught by the director of the Australia Studies Centre Kimberly Spragg.  She was a wonderful professor, always engaging us in new topics about Australia and ways we can see differences from Australia compared to America.  Living so close to the school, we would walk to and from it, which was wonderful exercise and also gave me a chance to see a little more of Australia.  We also took buses, which taught us the public transport system, which I ended up loving more than I thought.  We simply would use our pre-paid Go-Cards to hop onto any bus and be whisked away to anywhere we pleased (as long as we remembered to press the stop button on time).

  Throughout the time there, we took many trips into the city for food, shopping, and just pure exploring.The city held many things to do, and that’s where I felt I spent most of my time with no regrets.  I spent time exploring the city and getting to know the city of Brisbane Australia. Brisbane also had an event called “River Fire” where fireworks were set off just as an annual parade of celebration.  At one time, a few girls and I when into the city for food and went swimming there in a South Bank Brisbane beach. The end video where we were just joking around with a song that was stuck in one of the girl’s heads 😂

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This was taken outside the Christian Heritage College library.  This was one of the last days.  Luckily we were able to live close to the school and these three girls and I were able to walk to school together, which ended up bringing us very close together.  This particular trip taught me especially about the vitality of reliance on others.  For sometimes, we would have to hitch rides with one another when the weather didn’t prevail. We learned many things about each other, in particular, the girl directly to my left had a strong love for the Golden Girls which prompted her outfit that day.  We bonded over little things like that, along with the fact that we two had our service placement together which really brought us close. 

Our service placement took place at the Micah Projects in Brisbane city.  The placement consisted of me and Vicki (The girl to my left, (in the Golden Girls shirt) going into the city to prepare and serve a dinner for mentally challenged, homeless, and socially isolated people to help foster relationships between them in the community of the Micah Projects building.  All the individuals lived in the building as tenants and came every week to the Wednesday night dinner where we discussed their past lives and shared a meal together. Because of protection, we were unable to take pictures with the tenants, however, the conversations we had with the people there will forever stick in my heart. The compassion the tenants encountered by being welcomed in by the workers and volunteers of the Micah Projects encouraged tenants to return to school to finish out their degree in a subject they love.  I was inspired by everyone who worked there, and by the tenants who taught me about persevering despite difficult situations.

One man I encountered was named J. J talked about living under a bridge for two years.  He talked about how hard it was, and when I asked him questions about his life, a lot of his responses started with, “Nobody has ever asked me that before..” then he would trail off to answer the question, still shocked at the fact that someone cared enough about him in that moment to seem interested in his story.  This touched me to realize that, many of these folks had been rejected by their very own families because of either their poor mental state or poor choices they may have made in a previous lifetime.  All they really needed was a person to care enough about them for a second to show them that they were not forgotten or shunned by at least one other person on this Earth, and that is what the Micah projects provided; a safe place for socially isolated individuals to express themselves without feeling rejected.

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These are my little host siblings!! (Three of them at least) They still have a little boy that’s second in the lineup, but he doesn’t like to take many photos. Ariella is the first, then Noah, then Sian, who is in the third picture holding a flower and lastly Rose, the most vibrant, hipper, determined 6-year old I have ever known. Rose would always nickname herself the CEO of the family even though she had no idea what the acronym stood for.  She was always so happy, and I always looked forward to the times when I come home from class and hear her little voice say “ABBY?!? your hOme!”.  We would then proceed to play with her Barbie’s, take pictures, or do whatever her little heart desired.   This is one of the times we had a little photo shoot a few weeks before I left. I definitely miss their little faces, but they promised to visit me in the states very soon :) So hopefully I don’t have to wait so long!

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One of the weekends my host family took me to Surfer’s paradise on the Gold Coast in Brisbane.

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 These are one of the nights a few friends and I went into the city and just took a last few pictures of the city and remembered all the times we rushed to class in the city and got coffee together.  We remembered the times we had to rush to finish tough assignments, the times where we peer reviewed each other’s papers to help each other improve our grades.  Here, in these photos, we couldn't help but smile because we made it through an eye-opening experience stronger than ever.  Stronger in our relationships with one another, with our host families, and stronger in our education about different cultures, and how they can relate to us.

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One weekend, five of us decided to go snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef. Four of us decided to go snorkeling while one of us decided to scuba dive.  We decided it was something that we absolutely had to do because the Reef is slowly dying and losing color.  Despite that, the Reef still was vibrant in the area we snorkeled, as we saw massive turtles and a countless of zebrafish.  The first picture features me and Lexy about to plunge into the freezing water.

During the trip, we stopped at an island where we picked up a couple who had been camping for 7 days.  They were both from Ireland and had the coolest accents.  Despite our engine problems on the way back and the two-hour trip taking about 5 hours in total, we kept ourselves entertained by playing games, and laughing with the crew until we arrived back in Bundaberg where our hostel was located.  This trip taught me that, it definitely does not matter what happens to you that defines character, but what you do with the situation that really counts.  Wheather you’re stuck in the middle of the sea in a different country or given a hard assignment, your attitude 100% defines how the situation will turn out, it can be great or it can be terrible, but it depends on how you do what you do.

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New Zealand

This video is about my spring break trip to New Zealand

SPRING BREAK rolled around signaling the middle of our Australian experience.  Weeks before, a girl in our group named Macy had her dad arrange an entire trip to New Zealand in the cities of Waitomo, Rotorua, and Taupo.  The first part of the video showed our first-night stay in an Air-B&B home in Waitomo where we toured caves for the day, explored a general store where we bought dinner for the night and woke up to a beautiful sunrise.  We then hopped on a bus and headed to the city of Rotorua where we were shown a reenactment of the Maori people and their learned how they lived their life in years past.  The Maori people showed us traditional games such as spinning small balls on strings and a game where you could not let a stick drop while spinning in a circle. We then were provided a meal and entertainment by leaders of the Maori tribe while we enjoyed the food.  The Maori people showed us the importance of family and sticking together, I learned more about their culture and the ways they differ from the Indigenous folks in Australia.  They both share similarities such as family being the most important aspect of their culture, and how if you have a strong family, you are considered successful and respected. Afterwards, we toured the Hobbiton, where the movie Lord of the Rings was filmed and saw many, and I mean MANY hobbit holes.  We were shown the luscious green lands of New Zealand and were allowed to simply walk around and enjoy the fresh air while learning about the movie and little details that went into perfecting it.  Lastly, we went on a forest walk high up in the trees in the city of Taupo and finished off the time at Lake Taupo simultaneously getting closer to girls in the group while making dinner and providing a birthday celebration for one of the girls.

Throughout this trip, I was shown what a small world it was, for on the forest walk, we met other Americans, some even studying abroad like us! We met one girl that actually knew some people from Messiah and who lives currently in Pennsylvania.  I ended up growing closer to the girls on the trip, which in turn resulted in no drama and endless memories for us to cherish forever.  I was shown how important the concept of rest can be, and purposely taking time out of one’s schedule to revive oneself to come back to school refreshed.  The trip ended up a huge success, thanks to Mr. Randall, (Macy’s dad) who arranged the whole thing!