The Beginning Continued

S right away recommended the school he was at. He thought it would be fairly easy for me to get in to and found all the info I needed right away. He was so open and friendly and so stoked to help me. I couldn’t believe how quickly we got the process started. I think that was like the end of July or the beginning of August and I thought maybe I could be there for the start of the fall semester, but duh it would really be like the spring semester there and school only started in July or February so I had missed out. S and I started talking every day, either on the phone, by email, or by text. He was pretty stressed out as it was his last semester at school, but he made the time for me and we quickly became close again. We liked each other but once again, we were still living our real lives as well, and it was weird cause I really really liked him, was hopeful for when we met, but didn’t really have expectations that it would be some huge love story and happily ever after and all that, and we still told each other about people we wanted to kiss or who we were dating at the time and stuff, which was kind of torture, but kind of good, too. Was that like the longest run on sentence in history? My parents would see me talking to S every night that we could online and S would webcam. It came to be a running joke in my family that a) Is that guy naked on that thing? And b) Lil D, you are talking to a 40 year old pervert on there!
My friend from high school, we’ll call her Bun, decided she needed a change of pace, too, so she decided to come along and at first, stupidly, I was a little bummed because I wanted to prove to the world how independent I was, but ultimately, Thank God Bun came because she made the adjustment of living in a new country that much easier and we had so much fun together while she was living here.
So fast forward to February….I had taken one last trip to see my sister Nae at her school, Dad had dropped me and Mom at the airport since she had to fly out for a work thing, Mom and I had a very tearful goodbye in John Wayne airport (yes, our airport is named after a tv cowboy and I knew his grandson, who was a very good bodyboarder and who got the worst sunburn on his butt in costa rica that I have ever seen!) and everyone must have thought we were crazy for all the crying we were doing, as flights from John Wayne don’t go international, thinking that we were crying this hard for me moving to Arizona or something. I got on the plane to San Francisco and cried, before meeting Bun up there. We got on, took waaaaay too many xanax and passed out for about 10 of the 14 hours of the trip. We were still so high from the stuff that when we hit really bad turbulence coming in to Sydney we were both hysterically laughing, whereas normally we would’ve been crying since we both hate flying!
It was hot when we got off the plane and we had to try and figure out the train system and how we were going to get up the coast to where our school was. In hindsight, we totally should’ve taken a few days in Sydney before going to our little hole of a town. So we figure out the trains, it was a hassle with all of our luggage, as I am not a light packer. I couldn’t figure out the payphones so I couldn’t call S when we landed. I just prayed that he didn’t decide to get on our train, as he had earlier suggested, as we passed through his town because I looked like crap and that was not the first impression I wanted to make. I was surprised when I didn’t see a boat load (or any to be exact) of koalas in the trees or kangaroos hopping along next to the train.
We got to the town we would be living in and it looked like a dump. We got to our hotel and it also was a dump. I remember I called my Mom crying, letting her know I was safe but wanted to come home. Bun and I went out trying to find food and also the beach, we ended up with expensive Pizza Hut and walking the opposite way from the ocean. S called and wanted to come over. I said “No”. He said, “let’s hang out tonight” and I said, “I dunno”. Later, Bun said “let’s get you drunk and let’s meet this guy”. So we called S and hopeful guy that he is, he had come up to wait for our call. He was on his way over and I started taking shots of vodka, good first impression I was going to make, right?