I started off 2016 by flying over 20 hours from New Jersey to Australia – the beginning of what would become the best four months of my life. Everyone I know who has studied abroad talks about how it was the greatest experience they ever could have asked for . . . I have heard that so many times, part of me felt that there was no point in writing this article. Everyone writes about how studying abroad changed their life. What makes my article so different? Why will anyone want to read my article if it says the same exact thing as every other study abroad article?

Maybe no one will read this; maybe lots of people will read this. I have absolutely no way of knowing, but living on the other side of the world for a semester truly changed me as a person, and I need to talk about it.

I spent most of my life afraid of change and independence. I relied on my parents for everything. The idea of going away to college excited me until it came time to actually leave. I had gotten so accustomed to my previous life – my same group of friends, my same high school, the same home I spent the last nine years of my life living in. Suddenly, I was thrown into an entirely new environment, and instead of learning to swim, I drowned. After a miserable first year at college, my family assumed my previous dream of studying abroad in Australia was a dream no longer.

I did put my dream on halt for a while. How could I go to the other side of the world when moving an hour away from my family made me want to vomit? However, one night while stuck in a vortex of watching weird video after video on YouTube, I stumbled upon a vlog of three students studying abroad in Sydney, Australia. The second they showed the Sydney Opera House, my dream returned.

I was terrified. My mind was racing with “what if” questions as I boarded the plane. I was away from my parents for a total of thirty minutes and I was already homesick. Not even the soundtrack to “Hamilton” calmed me down. I spent over 24 hours in an attempt to get to Australia – transferring to several different flights, eating nothing due to nerves, barely able to sleep a wink. When I arrived in Australia, I was exhausted, starving and just as nervous as I was before.

The entire first week in Australia, I sent my parents about . . . hmm, I want to get the number right . . . twenty million text messages asking if I was allowed to come home. I had not adjusted to the time difference. I was being ushered around during orientation with groups of people I did not know. I missed my best friends. I missed my family. I missed my home.

Now, my heart aches for Australia every single day. I am homesick for my home away from home. I honestly do not remember the exact moment I fell in love with Australia. I do remember going to Sydney for a weekend trip with one of my good friends. We saw a musical inside the Sydney Opera House (a dream of mine ever since I was little), attended a concert where I spent two hours swooning over Aaron Tveit’s incredible voice, made friends in the hostel we stayed at, and spent an entire night talking with those friends until we realized we had about three hours left to sleep before waking up to catch our flight back to the city our school was located in. I sat on that flight thinking, “This weekend was perfect – I wish it didn’t have to end.”

I traveled to the other side of the world, lived there for four months and traveled back home by myself. I fought with people at the airport who claimed my flight back home did not exist. I learned to navigate cities in Australia to the point where even now I could tell you how exactly to get to the apartment I lived in to the nearest Woolworths. I traveled to Bali over Easter break. I explored the Great Ocean Road. I took a surfing lesson and successfully learned how to accidentally front flip off my surfboard, face-plant into the water and pull a muscle all in about five seconds.

I started off 2016 naturally afraid of life – afraid of making my own appointments, afraid of driving somewhere new, afraid of meeting new people – and I’m ending 2016 ready to take on the world. Australia not only provided me with great new friends (one of which is coming with me to BroadwayCon in January, and I am so excited to see her again), but it made me into a well-rounded, independent person. I learned that I am capable of so much more than I ever imagined, and I owe that all to my experience studying abroad.