Aussie Twin!

So I may have mentioned it a couple posts back, but I met this really cool group of people one night that I went out by total coincidence. One of the girls that I met was extremely nice and I ended up spending the entire night with her. Well ever since that night, we have become really close friends. We have been hanging out a lot and while getting to know her, I quickly realized how much we had in common! It was crazy how alike we were, because almost every time we would tell each other something about ourselves the other would just say, "no way! me too!"  Her name is Tara and she is from Australia. She grew up in Gympie, which is a small town just an hour or so from the Sunshine Coast.  Lately we have basically been spending all of our free time together, especially the weekends when we have plenty of time for adventures!

It has been amazing how close we have gotten in the past couple weeks! She is so nice and she has been so excited to take me to all these places I have never been to just so that my experience in Australia is amazing. We have been making lists of places I want to go and things I want to do before I go home, and she has volunteered to be the one to do them with. So she has basically been planning my weekends for me.  She also has talked about wanting to come to America! So I told her it would be totally cool for her to come and stay with me! She wants to come in January 2012. She can't stop talking about how excited she is to go to America for New Year's, to see snow, and to do just as many fun things. So it is sort of a trade off, she will be my tour guide here while I am hers in Wisconsin. It will be so great!

This past weekend was the first of our many busy weekends ahead...we drove to a small tourist town called Monteville on Friday to go shopping and spend the day there. It was so cute and I bought some nice gifts/souvenirs. On Saturday, today, we went to the Australia Zoo! It was so much fun and I got to see so many cool animals. I got to pet a baby kangaroo and koala! :) There are pics on Facebook!  Tomorrow we are going to her parents' house to spend the day and have dinner (tea). I will get to spend time with her family, which I have briefly met and they seem to be really cool! I am really excited because I miss my family and it is nice to be in a family setting...it makes me feel more at home here.

I am so thankful that I met Tara! I know I will have a blast while I'm here, and now that I have someone to have amazing adventures with, it will be really hard for me to go back home! :( But I can't wait to bring her home to meet my family. They already adore me haha so they will have no choice but to love her just as much!

Bottom line is that you never know who you are going to meet, an adventure like I am having could have turned out to go any which way. I thank God every day for how well it has been going and I don't regret anything I have done thus far! Going to another country can be an awesome experience, and going on your own can be challenging, especially when you don't know anyone....but if you keep a positive attitude and try to make the best of it, it can turn out to be unforgettable! It is definitely crazy to think about that you could have a twin all the way across the world....so study abroad...you may have one in another country as well! :)