Chapter Two – Sunny Days

After high school, I jetted off from Sydney, Australia to Arizona, U.S.A. as a foreign exchange student. Being an exchange student was some I dreamed about for years. The first time it became something I considered was at a careers fair held for tenth and twelfth graders every year at the Kingswood campus of the University of Western Sydney (now name Western Sydney University.) As a tenth grader, I ran around collecting every single thing the different colleges and universities present had to hand out. Among the booths were several exchange student foundations. I paused to collect their hand outs and thought the concept was interesting, but it wasn’t until I got home and went through all my junk that I really paused to consider the prospect.I looked through all the pamphlets, seeing the places students would live, countries available, testimonials, and I fell in love with the idea. I kept it as a dream for a while, but during my eleventh grade, I made the decision to make it happen after I had graduated. I tossed around a few countries as options, but since I’d never been any good at learning languages, I narrowed my choice down to the United States. The whole idea of going to a school like what I saw in movies was thrilling, and the U.S. was like this alternate world to me as a little Aussie girl.Sydney, to this day, is my favorite place on earth. Although I was born in the Australian capital of Canberra, I was raised out in the western suburbs of Sydney and the Blue Mountains. I couldn’t have had a more ideal setting to be raised. The suburb of Blaxland nestled on the ridges that weave a route across the ranges was my world. I loved it. I close my eyes and I can still hear the trains passing through, their wheels screeching as they brake, and echoing across the gully. I can still feel the biting cold of a midwinter’s day in July and smell the distant aroma of a bushfire carried on the humid heat of Christmas day. The kookaburras and cockatoos woke me with their laughter and screeches. I remember walking to the station to ride the train to school during March, and an autumn fog often lingered. I had sunburn for my sixteenth in November as the spring had gone into full swing. In many ways, I took the beauty of my world for granted. Now I live in the Sonoran Desert, I miss the trees, and the shifting seasons that move opposite to the northern hemisphere. I miss the unusual birds and wildlife, and I miss the feel of the air. I never thought I would lose it. I always thought I would live there.However, I dreamed of traveling the world. I dreamed of exploring new places, immersing myself in new cultures, learning about different people. So, I signed up to be an exchange student.My parents told me I needed to work for it. I needed to pay my way the best I could. I found a small job that worked into my busy Higher School Certificate schedule, and saved every cent I earned, and handed it over to my dad on a regular basis.I was assigned a family almost straight away. I think it took a month, and I was admitted in February 2004. I wouldn’t leave until January 2005 after I had graduated. I began emailing with my host family, and grew excited, and nervous, to meet them. They are a solid family in the church, and at the time my dad was bishop, and so was my soon-to-be host father. The parallels were uncanny at times.At the end of the year, the principal announced at our graduation ceremony that two other students were going on exchange, but not me. It hurt my feelings, especially because I had been so open about it for months. However, the principal made it clear that going to the U.S. made me controversial and the issue was better off ignored. Like most of the last few years of my school career, I was better off swept under a rug. The school never dealt with my bullying, they tried to pretend it wasn’t there. So, me going to the U.S. could easily be brushed into the same category.But I was so happy to be free of that place! To be done with the high school and the torture! Oh, I would be able to be me, just me, and with so many members of the church in Arizona, I wouldn’t be persecuted for my religion anymore. I would be able to find real friends. In fact, I prayed hard for real friends every day, so I could know what it felt like to have them. It’s pretty sad to think that at eighteen, I wasn’t sure what a real best friend felt like.Don’t get me wrong. I had friends. There were several people at school I enjoyed. A few of the boys remained my friends, and I have a few girls whom I still touch bases with today. Mostly, my close friends were from church. I had a solid group my age around me in the stake, but I loved the youth in my ward! I was Laurel’s president, and I took that role very seriously. I worked to make sure every girl was included and felt part of our Young Women’s group. I wasn’t perfect at it, and sometimes I lacked patience, but in general, we had solid unity, even with the Young Men.Our leaders were incredible at that time too. They fit so perfectly, and I knew my young women’s leaders, especially the president, loved us. She had so much patience with my goofy, outrageous moments! And for some reason, she regularly asked me to babysit her kids. Oddly enough she trusted me, even though she watched me do the craziest things.One of the crazy things I remember was during a ward skit night. Each auxiliary was required to perform a skit. My ward was a blast during these events. We did them regularly growing up, and I loved ever second of them. My final year in young women’s we did a Josie and the Pussy Cats lip-sync. We dressed up, did crazy hair, and hand made our guitars, paint jobs and all. Because I was a bit of a showoff on stage—and still can be—I was front and center leading the girls. We had so much fun performing, and at the end, I literally jumped from the stage for a smasher ending. The primary kids up front scattered and everyone had a good laugh. Afterward, all the girls and I huddled together buzzing on a high.There were so many occasions like this where we just had fun. My closest friend in the ward was a year younger than me. By that point, I was one of two people my age left in the ward, and he went up at the beginning of the year, while my birthday is at the end. I had a solid ten months as the oldest youth, and most of that time there were no priests either, just teachers and deacons. So, this friend became very close to me, and I her. We talked about all sorts of things and hung out outside of youth and church too.My sister and I were also very close. When she first came up to high school, everyone thought it was so strange that we got along so well. But I would choose to spend time with her, catch the train with her, and so forth, even though she was three grades below me. To this day as we live on opposite sides of the globe, I miss those times when we could be so close. We bug each other for sure, but I often wish I could just sit and goof off like we used to, like the night it was just us home and we watched the second Harry Potter and we kept our feet up on the couch because we convinced ourselves a giant snake was in our walls.The problem was, most of the time I still felt a bit like I was outside looking in. I was so happy, but everyone seemed to have that one person they were close to. My friend and my sister gravitated to each other, and so the rest of the girls, and even the boys, had that one person. But I was always just… me.In the stake I also had a large group of friends. Although small in number, my age group had some amazing and strong youth. Stake dances we would talk and play, and dance and sing. There was always laughter. We invited one another to our birthday parties and egged each other on in our antics at stake activities. Where I lacked at school, my friends at church made up for there. I remember sitting at a baptism and thinking precisely that; that at church I was really happy.But I still didn’t have that one friend. I had plenty of people who leaned on me and relied on me to be their rock. I had people who knew I would always be there for them as a sounding board. But I also sensed people looked to me like… I can’t quite explain it. Like maybe I had my act too well together and they felt like I cast too much of a light on their shortcomings. That was never my intention because believe me, I was horribly flawed, but I could see it in some of their eyes. I might have been this happy, crazy, fun, and loving person, but inside, I was still in pain from what happened at school and my own self-doubts ran deep. Like many teens I had body image issues, and I struggled with my weight, an ailment that would persist for many years and for reasons I did not yet know. And of course, I always had this fear of what people were actually saying about me behind my back. At school I had learned that people could be nice to my face, but then happily stab me in the back.My final year of school I lived a double life. My school life, and my church life. One which I hated and longed for it to end, the other which brought me so much happiness and I never wanted it to end.But they both ended when I turned eighteen. Less than two months after that, I would jet off to another country on my own for the first time. I would have the chance to be just me in ways I couldn’t comprehend. But I was terrified. I had built wonderful relationships with my family and the youth around me. Yet, I craved for something else. I wanted that one true friend.Little did I know how quickly that prayer would be answered.