Excerpts from Dia Vinyard’s Letters from Wollongong, Australia:

Preparing to leave home: When I finally arrived home on the 29th of June after the longest school year of my life, I had exactly nine days to unpack from school and pack for the next 8 months of my life. Within these nine days I had family and friends that demanded my time, banks, doctors, dentists and shopping to attend to. It seemed as if my entire world was in the state of pandemonium. I never slept, cannot remember eating and heaven knows I rarely had one moment doing exactly what I wanted to do. After all my suitcases were full, a mode of indifference began to set in. All that mattered was talking and cuddling with the people I love. The theme became, “If I don’t have it, I’ll buy it when I get there.”

The journey: After seeing the other students in my program at the airport, I felt a bit more comfortable. I didn’t know them very well, but I knew that we would all become great friends. We all sat and talked about how excited we were, about what we had packed and what we had forgotten. The first flight to L.A. was painless, but the best was yet to come. We waited for fifteen exhausting hours in LAX; our overseas flight left at

1:15 a.m. the next day. After about three days on the plane we were all suffering from fatigue and swollen extremities. When we finally reached Sydney I felt as if I was in a time warp. The journey to Wollongong was another hour and a half ride, but as tired as I was, I was awake the entire ride. There were houses and shops that were all new. The red roofing and peculiar shingles were all very intriguing. The ride into Wollongong was all downhill. As we rode along we could look over the crest into the city that we were traveling to. It was simply amazing.

Adjustment pains: I was ready to go home after about the fifth day. It took a long time for me to relax because there was nothing familiar. The food was bad and the shower was too small. There was something wrong with everything. I worried about my little cousins and brothers and sister. I was sick for the first month and a half that I was here and this made it even worse. Being sick in Kalamazoo is not as bad as being sick in Australia. There was no sister across the street and home was not two hours away. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was going on and I was anxious, frustrated, annoyed and homesick. I talked to my mom everyday and I think I probably spent about $200 on phone calls alone.

After a while I started to calm down. I made some good friends, but that still was not enough. I needed the comfort of home. I needed stability and consistency. There was none. The all night partying and drinking was driving me nuts and I finally had to withdraw and regain my bearings. It was hard trying to make friends and stay grounded in my faith, morals and beliefs. After about the third night of partying I had to commit myself to solitary confinement. I spent about a week by myself and got it together. Everyone wanted to know if I was okay and I was fine. I was still sick both physically and mentally but I got it together.

Now it is October and I am amazed at how the time has passed and that I’m okay now. I thought for sure that I was going to be on the first flight home…

The Long haul: For the first couple of months I had a really hard time. I cried heaps, and honestly thought that I wouldn’t make it through the 6 months that lay ahead. However, by September I thought that I had settled down. The thing about study abroad is that once you think you’re settled, something comes in, rocks your world and you’re back on the “I wish I was at home” train. Being a minority on study abroad is much harder than I though it would be. I have always thought I was a strong person, but slowly I was breaking down. I was consuming food in copious amounts and found soon that none of my clothes fit. I was miserable. My body was totally out of whack. I never realized that this was my way of dealing with the situations that I encountered. It seemed like all that could go wrong did go wrong.

In the winter it is very cold here, but since winter doesn’t last long, no building in Australia has central heating. Living in that 8’X8’ cell was a living hell! I don’t know how I was able to survive a whole three days without heat. I rushed out ASAP to the local pawnshop to buy a heater. Finding a cheap one, I thought I had hit the jackpot! I got home and the bloody thing did not work. I just wanted to cry. It was horrible. I had to freeze yet another night! I took the heater back and the lady wanted to give me another heater instead of giving me my money back. Finally, she gave me my money. I went directly to a real store and bought a heater—there was no way I was sleeping in sweats another night!

Seeing myself as others see me? I experienced a lot of frustration with the laid back nature of Australian culture. At first, I thought that it was so cool to finally be in a place where the stress levels are low and the work ethic is totally the opposite of American society’s. But pretty soon, I started to hate going places because I hated the service. Inefficiency has always been my biggest pet peeve, but I found that this was magnified by some of my experiences here. Here’s the story that will definitely knock your socks off! I dropped some film off at the Unicentre and it was supposed to come back in three days. I waited about 5 days cause I know how thing work around here. So I went to pick up the photos and I didn’t have the two-inch slip of paper that they give you (the one that resembles a toe tag). Anyway, I told the lady that I didn’t have the slip. Usually they just take your name and grab the photos. That, however, was not the case on this particular day. Apparently, I was interrupting her conversation with her fellow cashier and she asked me, “Do you really expect me to look through all those pictures to find yours?” I thought for a second and wondered if I was being unreasonable. I suppressed my smart comments, but I said “yes.”

Incidents like this make me realize 1) that it takes a lot to adjust to life in a different culture and 2) that I had not reached the level of cultural sensitivity that I thought I had. It became clear to me how arrogant we Americans can seem to others, as though we’re working all the time to reaffirm all the stereotypes that the world has about us. We were spending money all the time in large amounts, and everyone was complaining about how home was so much better than here. If you aren’t careful, you get caught up in it, and you find that you’re just as “American” (in the negative sense) as the others. The fact that I could see this was also a sign that I was changing…