Are we crazy?

Dear Mallory,

First of all, I’m glad we’re of the same mind. It makes it so much easier to share my big dreams. At the same time, you ask questions and make observations that I completely overlooked. For instance, sometimes, even though I’m dreaming this big dream, I’m not sure if I’m made to go back to Australia and grow roots. I wonder if I’m crazy or if Aaron just goes along with these dreams to appease me, hoping they’ll die off before we actually have to take action! [I know the latter is not the case, though, because he admitted last night that if we could do it and make enough money to visit the US for a month at a time each or every other year then we should “totally do it.” Swoon.] And then to hear that you can envision me there… I love supportive friends! Also, your description of our little family nesting near the beach totally made me tear up. I so want that…

 Me, dreaming. It's the best I can do! All of my Australia photos are on an external 

hard drive and I am no where near that blessed piece of technology. So boo.

I just wish people would be brave enough to live their biggest dream. I wish I wasn’t so hesitant to live my biggest dream. I wish people weren’t so cynical. I wish people wouldn’t be so afraid of their ability to learn and work and pursue the scarier things in life. I wish I weren’t so afraid. Are you scared to live your dream? Because you seem fairly calm, cool, and collected about the possibility of pursuing it, which I find so inspiring. Fake it until you make it, right? You give me some of the strength I need to look past my excuses and just go for it. I hope you feel that, too.

Any ways, and first things first, your Commissary sells Tim Tams?! Holy… You’ve got to be kidding me. If they’ve been at my Commissary all this time, I’m going to kick myself. Aaron could have been showering me with Tim Tams for the past three years and I didn’t even know it! Good lord.

The best thing about Australia? Oh wow. I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to pick just one thing. There are quite a few things about Australia that make me swoon, one of which is their public transportation. They make NYC and Chicago and Paris look like amateurs. The buses, the subways, the trains, the ferries, all of them are so clean and can literally get you anywhere, usually faster than any car ever could. That is not an exaggeration. When I lived there, my friends and I would hop on a bus, subway, or train, trying desperately to get lost and discover something new. But because you can access a bus, train, subway, or ferry at any time, there’s no way you can get lost.

I miss the size of Australia. Australia is basically the same size as America [check out this map], but America has 14 times the population; Australia has 22,000,000 residents as opposed to America’s 313.9 million. I mean, I guess it helps that the majority of the Australian continent is dead. And I know all of this because I took extensive classes on Australian history, politics, culture, religion, and current events. My class was bombarded by it. We visited Canberra, Australia’s capital, and talked with embassies and their ambassadors. We trolled through their national libraries and courtrooms, talking with politicians. We spent part of our semester learning from Oomera Edwards, an aboriginal woman who was ripped from her mother and raised by white women in order to “make her white,” an all too-common practice.

I love the culture. I love the people. I love the weather. I even love the fact that they’re still drinking instant coffee because it’s so hard to import things like coffee beans. It was gross, but you adjust.

I’d love to hear sometime what you loved about the UK, about Scotland. What other things did you wish you had done while you were visiting Scotland? What was your favorite meal? Your favorite experience and/or interaction? And we’ll have to discuss the possibility of sharing tiny houses in northern MI, Montana, and Hawaii. Should we include another destination [really, I think that’s all we need]? I love strange, nearly unattainable dreams like tiny house vacation spots. Do you think people think we’re crazy?

Sorry for the Australia lesson.

Your rambling friend,

Amy