I had been living in Australia for the better part of a year, which
seemed — on the front end of the trip — to be more time than I would
want, but after enduring the 20-hour plane ride, it turned out to be the
minimum
I had chosen Australia as my place of study on a lark. Seated in my
academic adviser’s office, surrounded by glossy magazines with crisp
images of the Great Wall, Stonehenge and the Colosseum splashed across
the covers, I murmured, “What do you think about Australia?” He leaned
back in his chair, his fingers tapping at his face, as he mentally
escaped to a memory Australia had once handed him. A smile played upon
his lips before he said, “Well, if you can’t have fun in Australia,
you’re not capable.”
That was the word that I needed to hear. Fun. I had spent the last three
years in a ruthless pre-med program, struggling to keep pace with
foreign exchange students who possessed more intellect in their earlobe
than I did in my frontal lobe. Things crystallized inside of that shabby
office, and the loftier concepts of history, art and foreign language
felt suddenly shortsighted as compared to the more elemental idea of
fun.
Moving somewhere for the pursuit of fun proved complicated for someone
who had fallen out of practice with it. What does one pack for a year of
fun? How much money do I need to have for fun? What level of SPF is
fun? Is living without antiperspirant fun?
It hadn’t taken long for the Aussies and other study abroad students I
had made acquaintances with to realize that I was a struggling student
of fun. My existence within my new university became startlingly similar
to the one I had been living in the United States. I could be counted
on to attend class and provide notes to those who had slept through it. I
would stay sober and drive the revelers home at the end of the night.In home display
Let’s just say that everyone knew whose door to knock on when they
needed an extra international phone card or some aspirin. They knocked
on a different door when the situation demanded condoms or cigarettes.