My Journey to the Land of OZ

I’ve been swept up in a twister and dropped in the land of Oz. 

The journey was a gusty, three-day frenzy (or maybe it was four. I seem to have lost a day along the way), and now I’m here in a colorful world where candies are lollies and cookies are bikkies. Night is day, north is south, and it’s quite alright to turn left on a red light... 

It really is not all that different here in Australia—or “Oz” as it is sometimes shortly called—but it’s clear to me that this isn’t California, anymore.  

Before my journey to Oz, I spent the summer working an office job from 9-5. I slowly chipped away at a number of monotonous little projects. I sorted brochures, updates website content, answered phone calls, and spent hours staring at a computer screen doing extremely important and challenging tasks—like when I heroically changed the color of a text box from a warm beige (R:255 G:250 B:227) to a slightly warmer, warm beige (R:255 G:252 B:235) on 55 separate publisher files, for example. 

Each day in the office, I listened to the seven world-clocks ticking, not-simultaneously, as they hung above the front desk where that temperamental, university-issued PC and I sat and did our work. These clocks never actually told me the time in cities like Beijing, London, Santiago or Sydney, as I suppose they were intended to do (the combination of too many daylight-savings changes and not enough battery changes over the years ensured that every clock is off by an hour or three). Still, they reminded me that time was going on somewhere else. And that I could be somewhere else. 

Those clocks reminded me that somewhere, outside that office and over the border of the United States, airplanes fly. 

I guess I did know that I would be leaving for Australia soon, but I didn’t believe it. Three days before my departure, my apartment in Davis, California still looked like I would be living in it for the next year—decorated, tidy, and filled with my things. My suitcase, on the other hand, was empty, dusty, and hidden away in my closet. 

That’s when the tornado hit.  

The world span fast over the next three days, but I remember some blurry bits—everything I own thrown in trash bags and boxes then stuffed in my Jeep, a drive across the state until 4am, a last-minute frantic search for my passport, duct tape over a rip in my suitcase, a minor wait-my-airline-booking-confirmation-doesn’t-exist crisis, a few rushed and distracted goodbyes, a unexpected pair of scissors quickly removed from my carry on bag, and a very long line at airport security.  

Then, as suddenly as it came, the spinning insanity of those last three days settled to a temporary moment of calm. I sat in the terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, with that impenetrable wall of TSA agents, X-ray machines and plastic bins between me and the world I left behind. Finally, alone and at peace, I had made it to the eye of the storm. Nothing but the occasional sound of boarding announcement or “attention-passenger-so -and-so” broke the soothing white-noise of suitcase wheels rolling on tile floors and distant engines humming on the flight line... 

I love the liminality of travel. I love that momentary space of calm, timelessness between point A and point B. Soon the other side of the twister’s wall would hit me, but right then I had a 15 or 16-hour moment of peace to sit, rest and think—and, if I wanted, to cuddle up with a thin blanket, a styrofoam cup of luke-warm tea, and a good in-flight shopping magazine.  

Eventually, after a little turbulence and a surprisingly pleasant amount of sleep, I began my descent from the sky on Qantas airlines flight 12.  

Amidst another, twirly frenzy of customs declarations, passport stamps and luggage collection, I recognized a few other students from my program that had also just arrived. We became pals and together rolled our suitcases out the doors of the airport and into the Sydney sunshine to find a taxi.  

I had arrived in Oz. 

The first thing I noticed was the air. It felt so cool and clean compared to the stuffy artificial atmosphere of the plane—and especially compared to the smog of Los Angeles that I had left behind. 

The next thing I noticed was the English. Living abroad, to me, has always been synonymous with being baffled. I’m used to stammering out bits of the local language, looking around for symbols that I can understand, and being generally a bit lost. In Australia though, I can read the signs. I can understand what people around me are saying. I can ask for directions. And not only that, everyone seems so friendly. 

My first impressions of Oz came in flashes through the windows of the taxi. We passed the AMP building, the Opera House, the Harbor Bridge, and the sparkling blue harbor. 

Upon reaching the CAPA office in North Sydney I was greeted warmly by Lindsay, a member of the staff, who may as well have been wearing a sparkling pink gown and a glowing tiara as she so kindly offered me a place to finally set down my bags, a code for free wifi, directions to the bathroom, and a phone to make a long-distance call home. 

Lindsay cautiously presented me with a magical yellow MyMulti Pass that would be my most important possession in Oz. After describing to me its powers, she wove her magic wand and made a free and much-needed cup of black coffee—known in Australia as a long-black—appear in front of me as I sat and rested at the cafe next door. 

From then on I was solidly convinced of her goodness. 

I’ve now been in Australia for a few days, and despite the obvious differences of accent, vocabulary and hemisphere, this place feels a lot like home. It is unfamiliar to me only in it’s many familiarities, disorienting only in that I sometimes forget that the largest ocean on the planet separates me from where I started. 

This world looks and feels different—the sun is sharper, the moon is upside-down, and autumn has become spring—but the people and their lives seem, at least from the snapshot impression that has developed over the past four days, to be strikingly reminiscent of the people with whom I live and work in California every day. 

My homesay family, Jerry and Sandy, remind me a bit of my own parents. And today at work in my new Australian office, I sorted brochures, updated website content, answered emails, and spent hours staring at a computer screen doing a lot of the same extremely important and challenging tasks that I did every day this summer at my office in Davis... 

But now I actually am somewhere else, like I dreamed about just a week ago. 

I’ve been swept of by a twister and dropped in Oz, and, unexpectedly, I’ve found that although there is no place like home—but this place is pretty close.