No Reason to Stay Is a Good Reason To Go...: Welcome to Maitland. Home of the Mustangs.

Seven months ago I planned a four-month trip abroad to Australia. My flight back home to the states returned sixteen days ago, without me on it.

After our holiday to New Zealand, the boys flew back home to America and I moved to Newcastle. Well, Maitland actually. I figured that if I have a visa that allows me to stay in Australia for one year, and getting a second visa is pretty difficult from what I hear, I might as well max out the entire year that my visa allows. And besides, who the heck would want to leave Australia to go back to the states and get a real job!? Not me. I want to be young and wild and free as long as possible.

So, yeah, I was fortunate enough to have another friend from college living here who offered me a place to stay. It’d probably been four or five years years since Mitch and I had last talked, and now I'm living with him for the next six months…funny how things work out.

(The picture on the left is from my either my freshman or sophomore year when we were at UCA together, the one on the right is from two days ago...five-ish years later.)

Mitch is four years older than I am, and played basketball for UCA. We were friends for two years before he graduated and moved to Florida. After being in Florida for ten months he moved to Australia to pursue a professional basketball career, and he’s been here ever since.

We live in a shed behind one of the families that he knows here in Maitland. This place is sweet. It doesn't look like much, but it's nice and secluded and has the best views. He was nice enough to give me the big bedroom downstairs, with a queen size bed, and then him and Phil sleep upstairs.

He not only hooked me up with a place to live, but also a job. I FINALLY have an income again. I work for a friend of Mitch's with a program called SNAP. I'm part of a team that works with individuals and groups to help participants build more satisfying and productive lives. We want them to reach their full potential and we do this by offering our help in their everyday lives: setting up daily routines to follow, getting them to and from places, hanging out, and mentoring/leading by example. It's a pretty sweet gig.

We also got a puppy, named Snoop. Mitch is trying to convince me to stay here forever, and he thinks that if I get attached to Snoop I'll never leave. It won't work, I have a five year plan...