A look back on the Land of Oz
Five years ago today I arrived in the amazing country of Australia to spend 5 months living, learning and laughing. Because I’m nostalgic and a tad sentimental (just a tad, right?) I pulled out the journal I kept on my trip to read through and relive some of the nearly forgotten memories.
I’ve always been a big quote girl keeping notebooks full of quotes I found interesting, inspirational or simply amusing. They are littered throughout the journals I’ve been keeping since I was a little girl. So, I thought I would share a few I collected on my Australian journey.
“To live is so startling, it leaves little time for anything else.” – Emily Dickinson
“I’m good. I’m always good. Beautiful day.” - overheard from a random Fijian
“We might return to some of our oldest questions and find their answers staring us in the face. What is the meaning of life? Life. Why are we here? To be here, to be-long, to be.” - David Suzuki
“It is not necessary to deny another’s reality in order to affirm my own.” – Anne Wilson Schaef
“Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, of the taste for adventure over the love of comfort. A person does not grow old because they have lived a certain number of years. A person grows old when they have deserted their ideals. The years may wrinkle the skin, but deserting their ideals wrinkles the soul.” - Unknown
“To escape criticism: do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.” – Elbert Hubbard
“The whole enterprise, if you focus on the need and not the greed, makes the labor worth it.” - Darcy, a man who brought food to campus every Tuesday to feed those in need.
And lastly, an excerpt from my final entry. Reading it transports me back to that time and place and feeling so intensely. This is why I have always loved to journal and this is why I now love to blog.
“I am sitting in an airport waiting for Jenna and the boys to pick me up for one of our last nights 
together, for sure our last night out. New Zealand, which was always in the distant future at the end of my trip, is now over and my emotions are a complete jumble. Words cannot describe what I am feeling when I think that I will be back in Minnesota in only three days. My stomach immediately turns to knots, my heart starts to ache and yet, in a strange way, I feel like I’m ready to be home. I’m excited to see everyone and I feel like it’s time to be settled for awhile.
It’s interesting that the fears I had about coming here. My fears that I wouldn’t meet anyone I connected with, that I would miss the people at home too much, is now replaced with a fear that I will say good-bye to the people who have become some of my best friends and I won’t see them again. And I fear that everything I’ve learned here, all the ways I’ve grown and changed and all that I’ve experienced will turn into nothing but distant memories and a few pictures I look at every now and again. I don’t want to forget anything. Not one detail.”
