What a Decade Brings

As I am typing this, the American east coast is less than an hour away from welcoming the start of a new decade.  Ten years ago I was in a very different place.  We were welcoming in a new millennium, and geographically speaking, I was about as far away from where I am now as I can be.  It was also about ten years ago when Sydney hosted the 2000 Olympic Games.  During the coverage of the Games, the idea of coming to Sydney first snuck into my consciousness.  I specifically recall watching footage of an NBC broadcaster doing the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb.  In retrospect it seems a bit silly for the bridge climb to have been my initial inspiration, but that's what I remember.

Going into my final year of school, I started looking into spending a part of the year in Australia.  I had the application filled out and recommendations lined up from a couple teachers, but finances proved to be a bit tough to pull it off.  Furthermore, I had my college education to start thinking about.  My initial sites were set on going to university in New York City.  In fact, I was supposed to visit the city to have a look at NYU and Fordham the second week of September.  Fortunately, my plans were postponed and I spent September 11, 2001 writing a perspective piece for my local newspaper back home.

Still, Sydney stayed on my radar.  During orientation at my university, I heard several fairly unoriginal speeches that dropped "opportunity" and "possibility" into every second sentence.  Yet, my ears perked up at the "opportunity" to spend a semester overseas.  In August 2005, I landed in Australia to kick off the beginning of my last year at university.  Nine months later, I returned to Sydney with my degree under my belt and no real plan of how long I'd be here.  Since then I have traveled up and down a good portion of the Australian east coast.  I've photographed wild kangaroos on the beach, learned to surf, dove at the Great Barrier Reef, and of course climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  I've ticked a lot of the "touristy" boxes and I would encourage everyone to do the same.

That being said, I've also had an incredible amount of really unique experiences here.  I've met and developed great relationships with so many people.  I've also found that sometimes being an outsider is the perfect perspective for discovering or even really appreciating a city (or a country for that matter).  Over time I realized that my open mind led not only to the city becoming my home and adopting me, but myself adopting much of the city and embracing it.  Will I ever leave Sydney?  I'm sure someday I'll be keen, but for now I am happy being an American Sydneysider.  Of course, I'd be a bit happier if I could get into the habit of updating this blog more often.  Perhaps I've found myself a New Year's Resolution to take on.