Sonoma State Star

Issue date: 2/1/06 Section: Student Life

For the twenty-one years that I have been alive I have never thought that I lived anywhere near a sheltered life. I grew up with not even remotely strict parents who have trusted me to make my own decisions for as long as I can remember. After spending three weeks in Sydney, Australia for winter session I realized just how incredibly sheltered I truly was. I was not only sheltered in terms of being 21 and still living at home, but also sheltered in the sense that I never really understood or could truly appreciate the United States and our culture here until I left it for a while.

I still live at home. I am a Rohnert Park native and decided to go to Sonoma State because I liked the campus and living at home while going to college gave me the opportunity to save up some money, rather than going into debt. I am pretty happy where I am at, and have never had an issue with living at home. I was a little sad I missed out on the dorm experience, but never really saw it as that big of a deal.

When I signed up to go to Australia I experienced many firsts: My first commercial airplane ride (talk about a long first airplane ride- the flight was fourteen hours), my first time being overseas, my first time living with roommates, and my first time really actually living on my own. I know I was only gone for three weeks, but the experiences I had were very eye-opening.

I took an intercultural communication class while I was abroad with about 30 other students, through a Santa Barbara City College study abroad program. For two weeks we had class Monday through Friday from 8am to 3pm and had the rest of the days and weekends to explore the country and do as we please. Taking a class, especially a class that teaches about communication between different cultures, was very helpful while living in another country. While learning about the concepts of intercultural communication eased my stay in a foreign country, I still experienced a fair amount of culture shock.

From the minute I walked out of the airport in Australia I experienced intense culture shock. It was 115 degrees with extremely high levels of humidity, and to make it worse we lived on the top floor of an un-air-conditioned apartment with no elevator. Bringing up our luggage and moving in was exceptionally unpleasant under those conditions. The time change was also hard to adjust to, as Australia is 19 hours ahead of the United States.

I completely lucked out with my roommate situation and got matched up with three wonderful roommates who I became very close with very quickly. We all went shopping the first day we arrived in Australia, which is when I experienced another degree of culture shock. Everything is Australia was super expensive, even when taking the exchange rate into account. I started to stress about how I was going to budget the little money that I had for three weeks.

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