Home is where your dog is

My dog Pierre is amazing and adorable and I love him. My dog lives at my CT home, hence the title of this post. However, I believe the ideological home is where the heart is.

Pierre!

I am home and sort of un-jet lagged after an amazing semester in Australia. I got back on Saturday night to my lovely house. My flight back was not too bad. Over my 24 hours(ish) of travel, I finished reading the Lovely Bones, chatted with my flight neighbors, ate several QANTAS meals, and I watched lots of television and movies. Highlights include the Bourne Legacy (mediocre compared to the real 'Jason Bourne' movies with Matt Damon), Ruby Sparks (it was ok- did the job of a romantic comedy, interesting premise, didn't really impress me or blow my socks off), the Dark Knight (feel asleep half way through somewhere over the middle of America/ between LAX and JFK), and some Simpsons episodes. I tried to sleep and mostly failed because time does not feel so real when you pass through more than half of the world's time zones and have to deal with switching flights in LAX and going through customs in less than an hour #stressful. My parents picked me up from the airport and took me out to dinner. I was half awake and starving, so I didn't care that we randomly found a place off the highway on the way home is Westport called the Blu Parrot (e's just don't fit in at this place with painful loud music and grandmas with tight facelifts sipping on cosmos). I got a burger, which is really out of character for me, but all I was thinking was "MURICA." You know, me subconsciously convincing myself of my patriotism in my jet lagged stupor.

I will miss this view from my window in Sydney

Sunday, I went on a walk with the 'rents and dogs after sleeping in until noon. I went to the grocery store with my mom, helped make dinner, and that was pretty much it because I felt exhausted. I did manage to start watching Geordie Shore on MTV.com and even watched an episode of Psych on Netflix with my mom (if you count her falling asleep as watching). In other news, my father is obsessed with the Kardashians out of the blue and also decided he should read Star magazine on his new iPad to keep up with all of them.

Today, I walked the dogs with my dad in the morning because he is off from work until the beginning of January. I basically lazed around the house, made phone calls, and ran chores. I think I am going to NYC on Thursday and there will be an update once everything is official- still planning that. For the long bus/ train ride there and back, I got books at the library. It was not too bad driving again for the first time after 4 months. I started a Sophie Kinsella book. My brother will be coming back home Thursday, but I probably won't see him until later, especially if I am staying in NYC longer than just a day trip Thursday- we will see. I am also working on planning for Israel.

Even though I have almost 5 weeks of winter break, I feel like a lot of it is already flying by because so much of my break is planned. There is a lot of stuff I want to do, but I am not sure I am going to be able to do it. The motivated part of me downloaded some free courses on my iPhone's iTunes U app. We will see if I actually do anything with them...

Me inside a split marble at Devil's Marbles 

As for my general feelings about leaving Australia and coming home, it is very mixed. I really loved Australia and thought it was lovely, but I also missed my dogs, my parents, my friends, my bed, and even the cold weather. I am really loving up my bed and my dogs and my parents. I haven't seen any friends yet, but maybe that will happen Thursday- we will see. Something I wanted to do when I came back to the beautiful USA was skate again after so long of not skating, so maybe I will do that tomorrow if I can borrow my dad's car (he sold my 2000 Altima for $500 because it cost 3x more to repair on a yearly basis). The cold is weird because I really wanted it to snow here and it hasn't so far. It is cold and dreary. The all day darkness is completely strange to switch so quickly from nearly all day sunshine in Australia (the sun was going down at 7 and 8 pm when I left). I went from very hot to fairly cold- it is going to get a lot colder.

Melbourne was really amazing- and so was the graffiti!

I am really happy I went to Sydney and it was a really special experience. My favorite things I did was hands down skydiving, snorkeling, and scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef- just amazing. My favorite city was Melbourne (I feel disloyal to Sydney, but despite the lesser weather and beaches, my opinion holds true). The city has such strong character that varies by precinct, the people are unbelievably nice, and there is so much to do! Everything I saw or visited I wanted to return to the next day- it is a city where you can return to something over and over and find something very special and unique about it each time. Plus, you can walk almost anywhere in the city, which is a huge bonus for me because I like to walk and don't like to ride public transportation if I don't have to.

Me petting a kangaroo

Now, for life lessons time. A lot of people claim that studying abroad changes them and makes them better people. I believe them. I think I probably did change in some way, but that is hard for me to identify at this point in time, as was true with my experience in Italy. While my peers claimed to feel enormous personal growth, I still felt like the same person. I still feel like the same person. I just happened to have lived in two different countries for 4 months each and get to have really amazing experiences. I am really lucky and I know that, but I am not necessarily a better person because of it. However, I do believe that in life, one comes to many realizations. One of my realizations/ life lessons/ whatever you want to call it is that we should not be complacent players within our lives. If we were to watch a movie of our lives, many of us would be members in the audience, passively looking on from the outside onto what is occurring in our life. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it is just passivity and works really great for some people. On the other hand, I want to be active in my own life- to be the starring player in the movie of my life. Life is a stage, so shouldn't I be playing in it? This is how I have justified my life choices to go to school in NYC and go abroad to both Florence and Sydney (despite the obvious impure financial motives on my school's part) so far. I think I will stick to this thought plan. Be the starring player in the movie of your life.

Conquering Kakadu

Are you being complacent and passive or wild and active? I prefer the latter.