Week 1: weekdays and solo time

In NYC, I would say the majority of my life is lived on weekdays. Between full work days, dinners after work, late evenings out or walks around the city, I rarely arrive back at my apartment before 9 p.m. Having only two weeks in Sydney, I'm forced to squeeze every minute out of the weekdays, but wanted to do it in a way that was genuine to the Sydney culture.

The YouXplore program was pretty vague in the standards set for how the city time goes. It promotes the idea of "being hosted in another country," but did not realistically share an expectation of what that means for independent vs. together time. After four days of back to back time with my host and his friends, I was ready for a break as I'm sure anyone would be. As a frequent host myself, I've had my own moments of craving undisturbed time and space.

As I was eating lunch on the wharf during work, it hit me. I haven't had this much alone time since I studied abroad in Argentina in 2011. Chicago and New York are two wonderful cities full of people I know and visitors in and out. But Sydney is not New York with colleagues and transplants wanting to go to bars every night, strangers socializing on the subway or at restaurants at any time and familiar faces all around. I was not only alone physically, but for the most part, virtually too with brief phone and Internet time.

A walk during lunch to Mrs. Macquarie's chair, one of the city's best views of both the Harbour Bridge & Sydney Opera House

In addition, I was so spoiled by being hosted at the beginning of the trip that I had to remind myself how fully capable I am of navigating a city and planning weekday activities myself, but not overdoing it either. I had to slap myself and say, "You are 26 years old, get it together and figure out what else you want to see while you're here." And I started to walk around and explore alone.

View of the Sydney skyline from the Botanical Gardens

Friends texted me things like:
How's Australia? Are you making friends? Do you want to move there yet?! 
And the true answer was great, no and no. And I knew I had grown up because I realized that this was okay. Two weeks isn't very long. Walking is an activity. Not every event has to be lavish, wild or full of free cocktails. People and friends-wise, if someone showed up in my office on a two week stunt in America, I can't say the first thing I would want to do was spend every waking moment getting drinks or meals with that person. So I have been filling my time with individual activities, and it has been refreshing.

I went to museums like the Australian Museum & Museum of Contemporary Art. Going out for breakfast is pretty big here, so I started the mornings with nice sit-down meals. I walked to the Botanic Garden, Darling Harbor and Rocks neighborhoods by myself without music or reading material. The following weekend and week would be filled with more group activities and friends here, so having this time has been nice to reset, recharge and get into a groove.

I won't bore you with food photos, since my father and biggest blog fan does not understand the appeal, but will share a photo of one of my brekkies (Australian slang for breakfast)- Australia's most photographed cake. Strawberry watermelon cake from Black Star Pastry. Other Australian food classics I checked out include Messina and Mary's Burgers in Newtown, and places like Sydney Dance Cafe and Renaissance Patisserie in The Rocks neighborhood by work.