Talking about how I met this man originally from Johannesburg now is an excellent segue into how I spent most of the weekend. Sunday evening marked the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement and the most important day of the Jewish year. It follows Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and encourages people to repent for the sins and begin the year with a fresh start. The holiday went until Monday night, which also happened to be Labour Day in Australia. Now, I’m not particularly religious but I do try to observe certain traditions and show respect for my background. I spent the holiday fasting, attending synagogue, and sleeping (sometimes all three at once!) in St. Ives, a predominantly South African community of Jews not far from the university. A good friend of mine from a class invited me to join her family for the holiday and it was absolutely fantastic. Despite having spent the previous two nights on a train and a plane, I tried to make the most out of this difficult holiday. I don’t usually enjoy services—when I’m standing I want to sit and when I’m sitting, I want to leave. I was anticipating customs I would be unfamiliar with, observing the holiday in Australia with a South African family, but I felt right at home. The level of religiosity in the synagogue was a bit higher than I’m used to. I sat in the crowded service separated from the women by a long, white curtain that ran the length of the room. There aren’t many Jews in Australia, only about 30,000, and I have a feeling a good number of them were packed in there with me at Kehillat Masada in St. Ives. Unfortunately, there have been issues at many synagogues in Sydney with the city’s large Muslim communities and security was tighter than I’d ever seen at home. It made me sad to think about the firebombs and other attacks on the synagogues here and I’m sure full-time security isn’t far off for many religious centers in the US. Only the melodies of the Kol Nidre, the prayer that marks the beginning of the holiday, and a few others were the same as I ones I learned growing up and the services were almost entirely in Hebrew. The only part that didn’t surprise me at all was when the rabbi delivered, in English albeit with a South African accent, a sermon that focused largely on congregants’ responsibility to donate money and attend the synagogue more than three times a year. Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed my Australian Yom Kippur. Fatigued from not sleeping or eating, I probably enjoyed services less this year than I usually do but the rabbis’ British and South African accents more than made up for it. I broke the fast with a delicious meal and a group of people I’m glad to call my new South African family in Australia.

It’s hard to understand how important tradition is until you’re thousands of miles away from it. I said to some friends when I came back from Thailand that I could’ve sworn I heard a shofar, the ram’s horn Jews use to announce the coming of the New Year, blowing in the distance during one of my nights in a hilltribe village. I even visited a Chabad House, a Jewish community center, in Chiang Mai and was amazed at how similar it felt to the one at Rutgers. Whatever the reason is, when you do the same thing at the same time every year with the same people it’s hard not to feel like something’s missing when you don’t have it anymore. Culture is so ingrained in all of us that, as exciting as it is to travel, it’s impossible not to feel at least some discomfort upon arriving in a new place for the first time.

The Chabad House on Khao San Road, Bangkok

I am very happy to be back in Sydney. My stomach hurt worse today than it did anytime in Thailand. Doesn’t say much about my cooking, does it? As much fun as I had exploring a completely foreign country, Australia is similar enough to the US that I’m comfortable here. I feel healthier here and generally have an easier time finding a public bathroom when I’m able to ask someone where it is. While I was in Thailand, I asked PC, my tour guide, why he lived there. He seemed determined and hard-working enough that if he chose to move to America, he would probably fare pretty well. Growing up in a largely immigrant family in New Jersey, I’ve spent most of my life believing that I’m lucky to be where I am. I grew up thinking it was normal for grandparents to speak English with foreign accents and that the only reason people in other countries worked their entire lives was to immigrate to the US. PC said he stayed in Thailand, a second world country, because of the expense of Western life but also for the culture. He believed that, as a Thai person, his place was in Thailand. He didn’t rule out leaving the country but he told me that life for him was easiest in Thailand. That stopped me in my tracks. Never did it occur to me that life could be easy for anyone in Thailand. It never occurred to me that a person from Thailand could hold such a similar view to life in their country as I do about life in America.

Classes started again today and it felt great to be back. That is, of course, until I found out I failed an essay I handed in before I left. 47th cultural lesson to be learned: (this is for all of the Americans out there who plan on studying abroad) Find out exactly how your professor expects sources to be cited before you submit your work. I learned the hard way that Australian universities (that’s Macquarie) are extremely more demanding about references than American universities are (and that’s Rutgers) and my tutor was kind enough to allow me to make the changes and resubmit the piece. Looking over her comments, I was shocked at the things she noted down. I never would have thought to cite half of the things I lost credit for and hopefully someone reading this will learn from my mistake.

Another reason it’s felt good to be back is because, well, I got a lot of attention today because I went to Thailand. (What do you think of my honesty?) People wanted to know what the people were like. They asked me about the cities and the food. They also wanted to know what it was like being there during a coup. Did you see the tanks rolling into Bangkok? Were you nervous? How did General Sonthi Boonyaratglin look riding into the palace on an elephant? Ok, I made that last one up but the stories, wow. I am going to have amazing stories to tell just from this trip, this semester, for the rest of my life. My list of reasons for wanting to see the world gets longer and longer the more I see of it.

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3 October

Things are happening faster than I can write about them! For starters, I’ve been back in Sydney for two days now and they have been two very busy days. Well, busy in that I’ve had things to do but I haven’t exactly done a whole lot. You’ll know what I mean a little later.

The tour in Thailand ended early Saturday morning after an overnight train ride from Chiang Mai. I had a little mishap that I wasn’t going to mention but now that it’s behind me, it seems OK to share it. I mentioned in a blog a couple of days ago that I was disoriented (or, as it’s known in Australia, disorientated) from the heat and the constant moving around. To make a long story short, I left my camera at the front desk of my hotel in Chiang Rai and was understandably confused at my hotel in Chiang Mai when the camera wasn’t there. Since we headed through the same path going both north and south, I had left a few things in a few different places and confused two Thai cities with very similar names. It was completely my fault, since I asked the front desk to lock up the camera separately and then I forgot to ask for it back. My first reaction was to feel angry at myself, then ill, and then to grab my tour guide and beg him to get it back for me. Ok, well, maybe grab is a strong word but I panicked. The video camera made it across Thailand for two weeks with me, survived four days of mud, leeches, and outhouses hiking across the north, and then the day before I left... you get the idea. I tried convincing myself it could have been a lot worse. I could have been without it the whole trip and I was lucky to at least have known where I left it. At first, I figured I would have the hotel in Chiang Rai send it to me here in Sydney but then I would have had to fly back without it. In addition, I would have missed out on a day of potentially excellent footage in Bangkok. Thankfully, PC, my guide, was able to arrange to have the camera meet me in Bangkok and I picked it up on my way to the airport. If I get a little sentimental about Episode 5 then, I hope you’ll understand.

The biggest news in Thailand while I was there, aside from the coup, was the opening of the world’s largest airport in Bangkok. Called Suvarnabhumi International, this place was an attraction in itself. I have no idea what the dimensions of it are but it was absolutely massive. More Thai theme park than airport, I felt as if I walked for days to get to my gate. I watched travelers take pictures with employees dressed in traditional Thai outfits. There were puppet shows, priceless works of art, and endless rows of expensive shopping. When I ran into a few friends from Macquarie in the terminal, we had vast options of places to wait together since the object of Suvarnabhumi, it seemed, was to keep you in the airport for longer than the time you might spend on the airplane itself. I enjoyed (I use the term “enjoyed” loosely here, people.) a good portion of the day waiting in the terminal since I had heard horror stories of delays at check-in and immigration. The line at passport control, however, was a blessing in disguise since it was there that I remembered I left my tripod at check-in. Waiting for what seemed like forever and a day at security, I wondered how people travel with children. I have a hard enough time just getting myself through the airport.

It was a good thing I was there early too, since I was able to further experience all the luxuries of flying out of an airport the size of a small country just three days after it opened. Burger King had run out of most of the items on its menu and the bookstores had prices to rival those of snacks at an American movie theatre. English-speaking employees were hard to come by as were ATMs, which was especially frustrating since few shops in Thailand accept credit cards. When I did find an ATM, I noticed the Australian gentleman at the machine before I did left his receipt in the dispenser. When I politely pointed this out to him, he gave me an unmistakable look that I’ve seen on tired, impatient travelers before. Next time I notice a receipt leftover in an ATM at the airport, it’s going on the floor.

The great thing about airports is that you have the opportunity to meet people coming and going. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the excitement of an international terminal and I felt it even more strongly in Bangkok, even if I was anxious to fly out of it. Next time you fly overseas, leave the house a little early and, if you find someone who isn’t talking to themselves, strike up a conversation with them. You’ll be amazed at what you can learn. By the time I collected enough change and fluency in Thai to order chicken strips at the Burger King, I met a very nice Indian couple on their way home from New Zealand. It’s amazing at how mutual exhaustion and airport horror stories can bring people together. We had a great conversation and I learned what it’s like for an expatriated Indian couple living on New Zealand’s North Island. I also learned from people with first-hand experience about the visa restrictions western countries place on travelers from countries that we, um, started paying a lot of attention to after 9/11. The time passed quickly and, by the time we finished, it was time to head to the gate.

Standing in line there, (are you noticing a pattern here?) I met an extremely sociable South African fellow from Bondi Beach in Australia. It was a passing comparison he made of the new airport to Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv that caught my attention and we spoke for about an hour or so. My semester abroad has been an unbelievable lesson in the art of networking. I’ve met heaps of interesting people from around the globe. I’ve compared accents, languages, religions, and even gained a couple of business cards. Should I ever need a job in Double Bay, NSW, I’ve got more than a few great contacts. Leaving the airport, I got to do something I haven’t done since flying to Israel about six years ago. I rode a bus on the runway to a set of stairs at the foot of the 747 that would take me back to Australia. Tack on two hours of delay and lines at baggage and customs at Sydney Airport and you can see how my love for airports was running fairly thin by the time I finally walked in my door Sunday morning.

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