Pretending To Be A Grown Up

So it turns out that studying can be really bad for you bank account. Day two of studying involved not one, not two but three skype dates two of which lead to me booking not one, not two but three plane tickets.  The first skype chat was with a good friend from the mountains who invited me to spend Christmas and New Year with her family in Sydney. The second skype was with a friend who has travelled a lot and agreed that £610 was an excellent price for a one way ticket to Australia. Therefore before my browser had even seen a TEFL page I had booked a plane ticket from Perth to Sydney on Christmas eve  and a ticket from London to Singapore on the 8^th of May then from Singapore to Perth on the 12^th of May.  As if that wasn’t enough I looked into dive courses in Cairns and tours back south and decided that since I was on a roll I might as well book my ticket from Sydney to Cairns whilst I was at it. So by the 3^rd of January I shall be in Cairns and with any luck I will be learning to dive by the 5^th. Of course being me I then had a fit of conscience about leaving my work but I realised that it was time to look after me. Yes I had planned to stay until mid January but when my friend invited me to have a family Christmas with her my mouth said yes before my brain had even processed the question. Having given both my UK and Australian cards a battering I decided I better get back to my studies before I managed to spend any more money. Of course I can use the excuse of it being an anniversary of sorts. It was my travelling cowpanion’s birthday and therefore officially two years since I had become a backpacker. Making firm plans for my next adventure seemed a good way to celebrate, well that and cake of course!

Sadly life got very boring after that. Though I now had two days off a week instead of going exploring I was spending them studying my TEFL course. I did make excellent headway with it. I had two weeks of work, study and swimming then something different. I had my first counselling session since I started travelling. My counsellor is great. She really gets me and I left looking forward to our next meeting and feeling much more positive about life in general. What followed that was more of the same. I worked studied and swam and Broome got hotter and more and more humid. I had my moments where all I wanted to do was buy a plane ticket or found myself looking at the lifts section of the notice board but my Christmas plans and new counsellor kept me where I was. Life was boring sure but I was making real progress with my course and the saving was going spectacularly well. It turns out that sometimes even backpackers have to make the grown-up choices in life, However, having some decidedly ungrow-up plans definitely made the grown-up time a lot easier to handle, now where was that dive website again......