Home will never be the same.

I traveled to Australia with ISV in 2011, and ever since my return my life has not been the same. In fact, the first thing I did when I got home was get on the computer and sign up to become an ISV student representative at my school.

The first two weeks of the trip I spent volunteering in the outback on a wildlife preservation ground called Calperum station. During these two weeks, you stay with about 8 people in one location, working during the day with a couple breaks in between. Volunteering for an experience like this is the best thing you can do for yourself. Our group became so close in those two weeks. In our down time we made countless videos (one of which we pretended to be in a horror movie), taught our group leader Parkour and even created a make-shift training room, gave each other nicknames, threw a thank you/going away party for one of the local workers at the preservation who became a memorable part of the team, planked on clifftops, had our own 4th of July celebration by the campfire, and sort of adopted a pet goat we found. Imagine waking up to an Australian outback sunrise, with kangaroos hopping around literally just feet away from you. I know, none of this sounds like work; this was just our down time. But we made even our work fun as well. We became so close and it felt great to know we were creating a positive impact on the environment we'd be unfortunately leaving behind us. Let me just say, all of us knew that these two weeks we were working and we had two more weeks of play ahead of us, yet we still had an extremely hard time leaving our volunteer site. The bus driver who came to pick us up at the end of it must have thought we were insane.

However, the following two weeks came at a whole different pace! We suddenly found ourselves with 50 other people we had briefly met in an airport fourteen days prior, in a hostel in Sydney, with a very fast-paced itinerary ahead of us. And every moment of it was both incredible and unforgettable. After getting to know 8 people very well, it was fun to branch out and see what other groups were like. Not to mention our free day in Sydney (during which I climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge), surfing in AWESOME hippie-town Byron Bay, ocean rafting, white water rafting down the Tully River, scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, and bungee jumping in Cairns just to name a few. ;) These two weeks were full of adventure and risk-taking, overnight bus rides and city-exploring.

I went into this project knowing that the month would go by incredibly fast, so I decided to make every moment count. By the end, leaving felt surreal. I can talk about my experiences forever, but the best way I can describe it to you is that it was the best thing I ever did for myself. If you travel with ISV, and if you travel to Australia, I promise you that home will never be the same. And trust me, when you see what the world has to offer out there, you won't want it to be. You'll want your home to be the horizon.