It was 5:30 a.m. and the big, burning eye of the sun oozed over the horizon line and melted outward, coloring Pender Bay’s turquoise water a deep orange. As I reached the top, the sun was high enough to give shape to an expanse of scrubby bush stretching as far as I could see down the Dampier Peninsula coastline.

To the left, I spied the tops of the four buildings that comprised the research base — their roofs poking above the bush like blades, sharp and shiny from the sun. My home, a tent about ten minutes walk from the base, was hidden by the trees, but I imagined the view from my sea-cliff door step.

Before this, my journeys around Australia had stayed within a thin, green line of eastern coast, which my program group and I had toured extensively — from the damp rainforests of Queensland down to Tasmania’s towering old growth gum trees.

I went out West to find a new adventure, working as a volunteer at a small, indigenous-run research base in the heart of the Kimberley — one of the last pristine environments in the world. The area has been occupied for thousands of years by Aborigines, but has yet to feel widespread destruction from modern developers, eager to suck money out of the ancient landscape. Until now.

With natural gas deposits discovered off the Kimberley coastline, companies have already begun pressuring the government to construct liquid natural gas (LNG) hubs and to access this untapped resource, no matter whom or what it disturbs.

The role of Two Moons is to gather baseline data on Kimberley’s marine life, particularly that of humpback whales, to counter the LNG invasion. With southern hemisphere humpbacks visiting Pender Bay, the base’s location, more than anywhere else in the world, Two Moons has a case for conservation. However, its small, family-run existence, with a “staff” of intermittent international volunteers, leaves the base in constant need of assistance.

My advisor at the base, Andrew, is an Aboriginal man born in the Kimberley, who started Two Moons as a way to maintain connections between his people and the land. I found a posting for Two Moons in a volunteer directory, called Andrew up, and asked if I could come help him. He told me that I not only could, but should come spend some time out there, encouraging my journey to his “country” to help Two Moons implement an education program aimed at opening doors in marine science for Aborigines displaced from the workforce. I tentatively asked about the living situation, trying to paint a picture of Two Moons in my mind. Sensing my trepidation, Andrew called for a woman named Sandra, whom I would soon learn was one of Two Moons’ longest running volunteers. Through a thick French accent, Sandra gave a pretty convincing pitch.

“You will love it here,” she told me, “we even have showers now!”

I could hear Andrew laughing in the background.

“Just come and see what you think.”

An anthropologist by trade, it was Sandra’s seventh visit to the research base to help Andrew’s whales. I asked about the environment and its dangers.

“Well,” Andrew said with a sigh, “they’re out here. But so are we. And we’ve been living out here for a long time. To us, this is paradise.”

I thanked them both and booked my flight to the “Kimbo.”

The research base is situated on a remote peninsula, almost entirely designated as Aboriginal Land. For rations and equipment parts, the members at the base commute two hours south to Broome, the closest city to Two Moons. Broome became my jumping off point too, as I touched down on the red dirt of Broome International, the smallest airport I’ve ever seen. The flight crew wheeled stairs to the side of our plane, and I stepped out into a blanket of heat. The ground was flat and red, dust swirling over the runway, and the cabana-style baggage claim building across the tarmac swayed behind a wave of heat.

Looking like a lost tourist with a backpack for a seat mate, I bumped down the road on a bus into downtown Broome and got off in Chinatown. I parked my backpack in the corner of a bait shop parking lot and sat, waiting for a man I’d never seen before. Nose buried in my book, I pretended to read while furiously trying to imagine what might be in store for me.

A lurch of a car and a cloud of dust woke me out of my daydream as a single dark brown foot came into view. A bush blocked the rest of the person’s body, but for some reason I knew it was Andrew. Standing awkwardly with my hand outstretched for a shake, I met his eyes and introduced myself. Andrew seemed surprised at the handshake, but said hello and introduced me to Sandra, who’d also come down for the ride.

We loaded the car with my belongings and set off to prepare for our drive north, buying the next two week’s worth of rations, and paying our respects to Andrew’s sister. Right away, I could sense the strong sense of family, even between Andrew and Sandra who were unrelated. We met Andrew’s sister at her home and connected with Dorothee, another volunteer from France, before loading the car again and finally departing for Two Moons.

With Andrew’s red Hilux pickup fully loaded with food, fuel, and duffels of clothes, we waved farewell and hit the road. Before pulling out of the driveway, though, Andrew picked two Frangipani flowers off a tree and handed them to me, informing the car that, “wearing a flower like this in your ear means your single.”

I wore it anyway and rolled my window down as we got on the highway. Sandra, a pro at stick-shifting through the red sand, sat in the driver’s seat and I rode shotgun. In the back, Andrew — clearly not a fan of Sandra’s music choice — sat with his headphones on, blasting American blues. Up front, I smiled in the rear view and listened to Sandra belt out Portuguese along with Manu Chao. Maybe this was paradise.

Halfway to the base, the sun went down and darkness engulfed our little red pickup. The landscape changed from orange to pink to purple, before everything but the sky went black. We stopped the car to admire the stars. The Milky Way looked as though someone had dipped a paintbrush and waved a white line across the sky. Absolute silence, apart from a click from Sandra’s lighter as she hand-rolled and then smoked a cigarette. I thought about how far away I stood from home.

Back in the car, we drove on until the sand got deep enough that Andrew had to take over. Still riding shotgun, I flew back as Andrew gunned the pickup through the sand and swerved to avoid a black snake in the road. It looked two to three meters long. My first animal sighting. Andrew then launched into a story about saltwater crocodiles that frequented the coastline near the base. He cautioned us against becoming victims, and I took my cue to speak up.

“Um, Andrew? How exactly do you avoid being a victim?”

He was quiet. I instantly regretted revealing my fears. Apparently, fifteen-foot saltwater crocs in our backyard were normal.

“How do you avoid being a victim? You don’t let ‘em think you are. Even if you know you can’t take on a croc, you gotta let ‘em think you can.”

I decided not to ask any more questions, but Andrew continued.

“Or, there is something else you can do.”

Dorothee in the backseat, another newbie to the base, took her headphones out and leaned forward.

“Our people have a tradition when we get to a new place. We introduce ourselves to the land we’re on. You don’t have to say it out loud or anything. You can say it inside your head, but introduce yourself and acknowledge the place you are in. The animals, the people that came before you, the living and the dead. We find that most people,” Andrew chuckled a little, “have better luck if they do.”

As if he’d timed it, our headlights illuminated a painted steel drum with “Two Moons” written on the side. We had arrived.

About two days later, I went for my first swim in the Indian Ocean. With the go-ahead from Andrew when I asked about crocs, I felt safe floating in the shallows. All alone, I remembered what Andrew had said in the car that first night. Swallowing my ego, I introduced myself to the land out loud. Floating in the water, I said my name and thanked the land for welcoming me and told it why I was there. I assured it I was not there to harm, but to learn, and hoped to take a lesson or two away with me. I asked for protection and insight, then dunked my head down and swam back to shore.

I worked for Two Moons for two and half weeks, wrote a brochure, designed a sign board, built a model of a baby whale, taught four primary school classes, had meetings with local rangers, fished for my own dinner, harvested wood, weeded a watermelon patch, baked bread, and interviewed every volunteer at the base spanning four different countries and five languages. I learned from Andrew and the other volunteers, experiencing what it feels like to be American and a minority (what a concept), and successfully lived out of a tent at a solar-powered community. But nothing during my two and a half weeks taught me more than Andrew’s simple message in the pickup.

I encountered pythons, dingos, Huntsman spiders the size of a dinner plate, frogs, mosquitoes and flies day and night, but nothing ever harmed me.

And as I climbed the water tower to say goodbye, I looked out over the Kimbo to where I’d first said hello. Smiling as the sun rose higher, I waved and climbed back down.

After making it through orientation the week before, I was eager to embark on the first of many field trips throughout Australia, getting acquainted with the land I was supposed to be studying.

There was one problem though: the mini-portrait I’d gathered of Australia so far included the city of Brisbane and my program’s orientation site — a glamorous eco-community with sustainable million-dollar second homes, organic meals, and an infinity pool. Not exactly indicative of one of the world’s most unique and extreme environments, or the rainforest sleepover ahead.

Since Dharmananda was a legitimate Buddhist retreat center, there were several overarching rules that its patrons obliged visitors to follow and we were told to do the same by our leader, Peter:

1. No killing (including mosquitoes)
2. No eating meat
3. No dishonesty
4. No promiscuity

It all sounded easy enough.

The point of our visit was to attend an eco-philosophy workshop led by Dr. Elizabeth Bragg, also known as Eshanna – a name that seemed appropriate for the FernGully-esque setting. So, we headed to the Nightcap Range by bus, with only half of us heeding Peter’s last minute warning to “not wear flip flops.” What could be so bad about the rainforest floor?

Once we’d climbed through the Australian hinterland and up into the range itself, the bus pulled over. Peter broke the news that access to the retreat center required a twenty-minute trek through the rainforest along a muddy, leaf-covered road. I flung on my pack and headed out. The surrounding vegetation was vibrant, and waxy leaves glistened with dripping water. Onward we walked, hauling our gear, and marveling at the absolute quiet of the rainforest. Sure, there was the occasional bird trill, but overall, a vast, consuming silence caused our usually raucous group to shut up and listen as we made our way up to Dharmananda. Whether due to our awe-inspired silence, the beauty of the scenery, or the simple newness of the landscape, none of us (especially the flip-flop clad ones) happened to look down at our feet until we reached the top, sat on a few stumps, and began listening to Eshanna describe the Nightcap Range’s natural history.

About two minutes into her talk, my eyes wandered down to Eshanna’s open-toed sandals. Pausing in horror, I noticed tiny leeches stuck between each of her toes, blood and all. Did she know what was happening? Around me, people not only noticed Eshanna’s bloody feet, but also started to realize that there could be leeches everywhere, even on their own shoes. Eshanna’s once attentive audience was now focused on a thorough search of shoes, socks, and toes for lurking leeches, missing the tail end of her info session.

Afterward, now that I’d begun to understand the threat at hand, every rainforest walk to and from buildings prompted a desperate search for leeches. The worst part was that the threat was almost invisible. No matter how attentive you were to your foot placement on the forest path, the leeches always found a way in. Stowaway leeches were always waiting to burrow through your sock for a tasty meal. Within hours, a shoe-centered panic began to spread throughout the group, especially once everyone experienced their first de-leeching.

Much like a normal worm, the leech body is stretchy, so pulling them felt almost as gross as having them on you in the first place. The use of de-leeching instruments, like a nearby stick, demanded a bit of finesse and was only somewhat successful. One strategy emerged as the best: grabbing the leech with your own fingers, but instead of pulling, sliding your finger underneath its mouth to break the seal, and then flinging it away. This was not a fun thing to do and frequently ended in leeches grabbing on to the offending finger and holding on for dear life, as the person flung their hand around furiously, trying to escape.

About my third or fourth time removing a leech from the mesh webbing of my shoes, I noticed Eshanna’s helper having similar removal issues next to me. We made eye contact and, as if to console any worries I had about violating Buddhist rule number one — no killing — she said, “It’s okay to kill these little bastards.”

If there was one silver lining to the leech battle that first day, it was my growing awareness of their capabilities. I felt like I knew, more or less, what a regular leech could do and how to protect myself. Choosing where to bunk down that night, I felt no hesitation plopping down on the floor of a cabin with no door. Leeches could smell you, but couldn’t possibly make it all the way up the cabin stairs, across the floor, and over to my sleeping bag. Right?

Nope.

A little before midnight that night, I awoke from a dream to a slimy feeling on my right forearm. Still in a sleepy daze, though, I ignored it, nonchalantly pulling the leech off and setting it down somewhere near my sleeping bag. Mistake number one. When I awoke again, my mind had had a chance to catch up. With another leech now on the opposite arm, I ripped it off in one adrenaline-powered motion, hurling the thing away from the group of girls I was sleeping near. Heart pounding, I fumbled around for my headlamp. I scanned with my LED-light to find where the leech had landed. And, as if the Jaws soundtrack was playing along, my light beam suddenly spotted climactically on the perpetrator. As I looked closer, the position of the leech was almost more terrifying than its previous attack on my forearms: there it was, fully engorged and sticking out from the wall like a demonic spike.

Trying to summon the remaining adrenaline in my veins, I went for it using a stick, scraped it off the wall of the cabin, and tossed the fat leech back into the forest where it belonged. Only after getting back to my sleeping bag, a wave of nausea starting to hit, did I noticed how much I was bleeding.

A far cry from the leech I had imagined pre-Australia, mostly from a particularly legendary scene in the film Stand By Me, tiger leeches in this rainforest look more like mean inch-worms. Both ends are mouths, which makes sucking on a host pretty easy for them. When they find a nice human to munch on, the cut they make is actually incredibly small. The reason you bleed so much is due to an anti-coagulant around the edge of the cut, making it harder for your body to seal it up and scab over. Having had not one but two leeches around each arm, the blood coming out of me was enough to cause the girls who’d awoken during the ruckus to let out a yelp and put hands to their mouths. Training their flashlight on me, their worst fears had been confirmed and soon, everyone was checking their sleeping bags and clothes. Going back to sleep that night was next to impossible, and come morning time, a debriefing occurred at the breakfast table.

Feeling sick, but proud I’d survived the night, I told my story to the group. To my surprise, however, there were others whose night almost topped mine. It seemed that a better name for the tiger leech might have been “flying leech,” as a guy in my program had awoken the night before with one on his stomach high in the loft of our kitchen building. The only way to get up there was with a ladder.

In the end, while leeches continued to plague our attempts at achieving Zen at Dharmananda, we managed to make it out only somewhat scathed. While packing up on the last day, I even attempted to make peace by constructing tiny hoops out of dead leaves for a leech to jump through as I waved a tantalizing finger in front of the hole.

When all was said and done, we hauled our gear back down the hill — this time not a flip flop in sight. We patiently waited as rain began to pour and loaded the bus and Peter’s pick-up. And, as we finally found our seats on the bus to civilization, a feeling of relief seemed to settle too. We took a group picture as a memento of our bravery.

Dharmananda, though, hadn’t quite had enough of us. Ten minutes into the descent, the first of many shrieks erupted inside the bus as leeches popped up everywhere — on a shoe, down in a sock, or inching their way along the top of a bus seat. A wave of desperate window-slides and hand-flicks ensued.

The leeches had come along for the ride, and Dharmananda had given us one of Australia’s enduring lessons: nature always wins.

Sweaty from long underwear intended to keep the ant bites at bay, I rolled over just as my tent-mate Kendall began to open her eyes. “I’m glad today’s the last day,” I said, smashing an ant.

“Me too,” she yawned.

Two days into our sixth camping trip of the semester, you’d think we’d be used to this by now. Granted, almost everyone had steadily built a tolerance for scarce showers, big bugs, and composting toilets (all except Jenni, from Miami), but something about this particular morning was beginning to wear on even the biggest bush-lovers, including me.

Three days ago, my class and I had left Byron Bay — the surfing paradise we’ve called “home” since February — for the sands of Cooloola National Park in southern Queensland. The added bonus of visiting Cooloola (besides a much-needed reprieve from rainforest leeches) was the guidance of a man named John Sinclair.

Growing up with the park as a playground, John naturally found himself defending the area when sand miners threatened to destroy the unique environment of Cooloola and nearby Fraser Island. John’s environmental stance soon created enemies, and eventually jeopardized his education career and fueled hostility in his own hometown of Maryborough. Local business owners blamed John for sabotaging the economic boost that sand-miners and their families would surely bring, and in 1976, a sign popped up at a Maryborough service station reading, “Sinclair Banned Here.”

In the end, though, John’s sacrifice paid off, saving an irreplaceable ecosystem at a time when no one else dared confront those seeking to capitalize on Cooloola’s natural resources. Now, after writing a few books and earning the prestigious title “Mr. Fraser Island,” John runs his own eco-tours around Australia, aptly titled “John Sinclair’s Go Bush Safaris.” Anticipating our journey to Cooloola, we were all looking forward to absorbing some of John’s wisdom, and hopefully a little enthusiasm for the country he loves.

The second bonus of the trip was that Dave, our infamous chain-smoking bus driver from Brisbane, was coming along for the ride as well. Since our first meeting at the airport, Dave’s presence in our lives has been a bit patchy, so every appearance is a serious treat. From stopping the bus for cig-and-Sudoku breaks, to acting as our liaison into the world of boxed wine, Dave has become an irreplaceable part of our Australian experience and a guaranteed bringer of field-trip entertainment. I saw Dave sitting by himself on our first day in Cooloola, cross-legged in a camping chair with cigarette in hand, and I called over to him, “Looks like you’re living the dream over there, Dave!”

He looked at me and smiled. “If I’m dreaming, than this must be a nightmare.”

Finally rousing myself from our tent, I stepped out on to a rectangular welcome mat with “Juncus” written in big letters across the front (John names each of the Go Bush tents after a local species of plant).

Feeling a few raindrops, I quickly grabbed all the clothes hanging on nearby tarp-lines and threw them in the tent. Something in the back of my mind told me that I should move my laptop from Juncus to the bus before we left on our day hike, but thought, “Oh well. The group was already waiting, anyway.”

Once seated on the bus, it was clear I wasn’t the only one feeling less than stoked about the day. As we bumped up the road towards the park entrance, people slouched with sleep or gazed out at the rain. An hour later, our “morning tea” break brought us to a town called Rainbow Beach, where it was clear no rainbows would be seen that day. The sky sat heavy, leaking water bit by bit, ready to burst any minute. We watched big stormy swells push surfers along the water until Peter called us over for a meeting.

“We’re going back to camp,” he said, “so we can get out of there before the rain makes the road impassable for the bus. Rains aren’t supposed to let up anytime soon and I don’t want to take any risks. We’ll pack up the tents, then spend the night in Brisbane.”

People around me tried to hold in their excitement, faking disappointment that the trip had come to a premature end. But this rain storm was an answer to our prayers. Just as I’d wished from my ant-infested bed that morning, we were heading back to civilization. Jenni from Miami — a self-proclaimed nature-hater and probably the most relieved to spend the night in a city — noticed the word “Jesus” spray-painted on a beam of our gazebo and cried for joy: “God loves me, people! We’re saved!”

The ride back to camp was loud, as excited voices filled the bus while John muttered about how this much rain would be no fun to walk in. Staring out the window, I thought about the finality of this trip, how it was the last phase of the program between me and an independent project on the other side of the country.

A quick lurch of the bus and I was back in reality, suddenly noticing that we were stopped in the middle of nowhere. As my eyes tried to focus through window condensation, I made out Peter’s tall figure wading through a miniature lake covering the road. His blue rain slicker stood out against the brown water and I watched as each long stride caused his “mozzie-legs” to sink a little deeper. Not a good sign for our little blue bus.

As Peter sloshed back, we could tell something was wrong. Before we knew what was happening, he’d quickly enlisted the help of John and another student named Alex, before giving swift orders to Dave.

“Take this,” Peter said, handing over John’s cell phone, “and get the kids to Kin-Kin as fast as you can.” And with that, he pulled on his bright blue hood and headed out down the road. Apparently, the plan was for him, John, and Alex to walk the ten to fifteen kilometers to camp, pack up all our belongings, and get out of there in John’s Go Bush 4WD. As Little Blue pulled away, I watched the three silhouettes grow smaller and smaller through the back window, my eyes drifting down to the big “Emergency” sticker on the window ledge.

In a few short minutes, Dave had gone from bus driver to mother duck, hurtling down the road with sixteen confused ducklings in tow. As we bounced toward higher ground, our group became less and less sure about what to expect. First Brisbane, now Kin-Kin minus two leaders, one student, and all of our stuff? Maybe God wasn’t on our side, after all.

We finally managed to get on a paved road, but noticed that the scene had changed drastically since morning. With rain still coming down in buckets, the cow fields and ditches that flanked the street were filling fast with brown water that eventually spilled out over the road. Every so often, Dave would have to stop and send a few willing scouts out into the downpour to gauge if the water was shallow enough to drive through. Our rule of thumb: water over ankles, no go. If the water was too high, Dave would give a yell and four or five of us would jump out (rain coats, at this point, were irrelevant), man either side of the trailer hitch, and then lift and detach the trailer from the bus so Dave could back up without drifting into a flooded ditch.

Once, after performing the trailer maneuver and heading back the way we had come, we noticed something strange about the road ahead. Straining our eyes to see through a foggy windshield, we were interrupted by a loud “horse-shit!” from Dave in the driver’s seat. “Is that a tree?” someone voiced from the front of the bus. Sure enough, in the ten minutes it took to turn around, a large tree had blown over, completely blocking the road and trapping Little Blue in flood country. I took my cue and turned on my camera – this was too good. I pushed play and began my first flood-u-mentary.

“This is SIT (School for International Training) Australia during a flood,” I shouted over the rain, followed closely by a quick correction from Kendall: “Uh, cyclone!”. In Australia, cyclone and hurricane are synonymous and using proper local jargon was clearly important even in crisis time. Panning around the bus, Mia from New Orleans gave her two cents from the backseat, “It’s like Katrina part two.” A last shot of the video zoomed in on Jenni solemnly tracing SOS on every fogged up window in the bus. If we survived, I was putting this on YouTube.

Lucky for us, a big man with a big winch on his pick-up arrived, presently removing the giant tree from our path. Onward and upward, Dave propelled us to higher ground while other students raised their cell phones in search of service. When we finally reached a safe elevation, Dave’s next mission was to try and get a hold of someone that was really in charge. Now that Kin-Kin had been washed from the agenda, we were sitting ducks.

As Dave wandered outside in the rain, randomly coming back in, saying “Dammit!” under his breath, and going back out, our admiration for the bus-driver swelled. He was just Peter’s long-time surfing buddy who drove the program’s bus for fun, and fighting floods and downed trees with sixteen students on board wasn’t exactly part of the job description. As we watched him fumble with his phone one more time, Laura turned to the whole bus and said, pityingly, “If Dave needs to smoke on the bus, let him smoke on the bus.”

Meanwhile, somewhere in Cooloola National Park, our leaders and fellow student walked (maybe waded) toward a flood bigger than anyone suspected. Unable to reach Peter, we all wondered what was happening, but we remained fairly sure that the water couldn’t possibly rise high enough to wash away our camp. The back-up town for Kin-Kin turned out to be a place called Gympie – a perfect word to sum up the pathetic rain-drenched band of students soon emerging from Little Blue with nothing more than day-hike gear. Dave had found accommodation at the Gympie Caravan Park, so we spent the night eating Dominos and watching the local news, hoping for updates. Still uninformed, it was hard to fall asleep that night.

Not two seconds after turning on ABC News the next morning, the screen read “Noosa Floods,” and a live feed showed rescue boats evacuating a slew of fourteen-year-old boys that had been camped twenty meters over from us. A smiling blonde reporter motioned to the current water level of 1.6 meters, currently displayed by a terrifying brown deluge about two-thirds of the way up a nearby street sign.

I thought of my laptop and backpack being ripped down stream, along with our poor tent Juncus. I thought of Peter, John, and Alex, and wondered where they could be. I started to miss those bloody ants.

After a weary group breakfast outside of trailer number 10, Dave arrived and delivered the news. The guys had miraculously managed to save everything, but nothing had made it out dry. They had opted to stay with our stuff rather than evacuate, and all three had spent the night in the highest structure on the flood bank: a handicapped composting toilet stall.

When we finally reunited with them at a designated petrol station down the road, the sight of the car made everything feel real. Noses pressed against bus windows, we finally spotted John’s once-white 4WD sitting in the parking lot. Crammed with backpacks and random wads of wet clothes, it had clearly been packed as quickly as possible. Spotting Alex across the parking lot, people ran to embrace him and say thanks.

Eyes barely open, he nodded respectfully after each hug and said, “You might want to unload the jeep. I’m gonna go lay down now.”

Alex’s recount of the flood on the bus ride back told of waist-high water and snakes swimming by while trying to grab as much as possible from each tent. With fourteen girls in our group, many of whom had belongings splayed out all over the place, there wasn’t much Alex didn’t see.

“There are no secrets on this trip anymore,” he said with a chuckle.

Finally arriving in Byron, our last task was to sort through the pile of clothes that had failed to make it into a backpack. Taking over the foyer of our apartment complex with a sort of post-flood bazaar, we sorted through everything – yelps of joy ringing out whenever a missing article reunited with its owner.

An exhausted Peter and Dave said their farewells and the rest of us slowly filtered away toward laundromats or the apartments for a hot shower. A couple girls took a weary Alex out for a much-deserved beer.

As I lugged my waterlogged pack to room seven, I overheard someone say. “And the trip was going so smoothly.”

I guess in Australia, when it rains, it floods.

Sticking to my seat aboard a worn-in manual transmission bus soon to be known as “Little Blue,” I was mid-eavesdrop on a conversation between Peter, my academic director, and our bus-driver, Dave. Apparently, something was wrong with our parking spot.

Along with sixteen other students, I had just been greeted by Peter and Dave at Brisbane Airport and welcomed to Australia, officially beginning my semester abroad. After fourteen hours in the air with no sleeping aid and a squad of overly chipper Aussie stewards, I was eager to get away from anything remotely plane-like and embark on a real adventure.

The people around me seemed the feel the same way. Barely two minutes after offloading our hefty bags into the bus’s trailer, cameras were already out and clicking, as if to make up for the Thursday that, according to Qantas, had evaporated somewhere over the Pacific. But Dave and Peter continued to sit there, confused not only by the parking lot’s lack of exits but our legal right to have parked there in the first place. Listening intently from my seat in the front row, I sensed a split-second moment of concern between them before Dave shrugged, threw Little Blue into reverse, and plowed the bus out the one-way entrance, our cumbersome luggage trailer bouncing behind. Turning to Dave with a smile as he swerved toward the nearest roundabout, Peter (our guide for the next four months) chuckled.

“You know,” he said, “we might get a huge fine for that or something.”

Peering from behind a pair of oversized shades (little did we know, they would soon become his trademark), Dave’s nonchalant answer said it all: “Yeah, I guess we might.”

The moment passed without much notice. Except to those seated up front, the confusion (and hilariousness) of our leaders’ parking lot problem-solving floated away on the Australian breeze.

For me, though, Australia’s first lesson was clear: just relax.

Suddenly, everything I saw out my window relayed a message of calm. Street signs, in particular, matched my interpretation of the parking lot scene. In black all-caps, a billboard for the city of Brisbane simply said, unworry, and what I recognized as American yield signs instead instructed drivers to just give way. Was Australia trying to tell me something? Appropriately, some easy-going melodies followed, as Peter switched on an all-Australian mix CD to start acclimating our ears before settling back against the cracked vinyl of his captain’s chair, Hawaiian shirt flapping lightly in the breeze. I felt the backpack-pains in my shoulders release a little and we puttered away.

I think I’m going to like it here.