One week ago (at the time of this writing), I was on a 13 and a half hour flight. Why on earth was I doing that, you ask? Because I spent my summer break in Australia! I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to study abroad at some point. At the beginning of last year, I decided this summer would be the perfect time. I started looking into some programs in Australia (and checking my funds) and decided to make at least one of my dreams a reality.
On June 1, my parents drove me to the Memphis airport, and I departed for 11 weeks. It was kind of weird flying over because I didn’t exist for the day of June 2. I left on the first and arrived on the third. That’s all right though because I made up for it by living Friday, Aug. 14 twice on my way back. Despite the crazy flights, jet lag and trip expenses, I would do it again in a heartbeat! It was truly a life changing experience. I have never been away from home for longer than a month, so that was tough, but I think I grew a lot as a person because of it.
I interned at Sydney Wildlife World, which is basically an indoor zoo with native Australian animals. I got to work with kangaroos and koalas, as well as heaps of other animals I’d never heard of such as the quoll, bilby, dunnart, rose crown fruit dove, little pied cormorant, inland taipan, huntsmen spider and the Sydney funnel web. It was quite the learning experience! I got to watch an autopsy on a Mulga Snake and discovered it died because part of its intestines were dead (there was a black patch) and therefore couldn’t digest food properly. I also got to see an autopsy on a rainbow lorikeet (small parrot), which was fascinating because I had never seen the inside of a bird.
Besides all the cool bonuses of my job, I also got to explore the amazing city of Sydney. It’s enormous! I went to different places every weekend and still didn’t see everything. There were beautiful old buildings from the 1700s as well as new modern buildings and lots of parks. I went to markets nearly every weekend and bought lots of unique things. I also spent a weekend in Melbourne, which was a bit smaller than Sydney. It was nice because I could walk to most of the major sites. I also spent a week in New Zealand before my internship started. I got to travel around both islands and see several places where “The Lord of the Rings” was filmed. It was beautiful! By the end of trip I ended up with 864 pictures!
Studying abroad truly is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. If you’ve never done it, now is the time to consider it! There are so many amazing countries to see and you WILL come back a different person, if only because you understand other cultures better. I am so glad I got to visit Australia and can’t wait to go back one day! You should look into the programs offered through MSU so you too can have an epic trip. There’s just no other way to describe it.
Hannah Kaase is a senior
majoring in animal and dairy
science. She can be contacted at
[email protected].