As I continue to tell friends and family of my upcoming move, I'm getting a myriad of reactions and questions. Everyone has been more kind and supportive than I deserve and that includes all the wonderful comments in my last post. I thought I'd answer questions that I've gotten all in one shot...in case you yourself were wondering

1. Are you kidding me!?!?!

No, I assure you that I am not kidding you. Although, sometimes I feel like I'm kidding myself when I realize how far I'm going and what kind of career I've decided to take on. Will I be any good? What if I do all this, start working and realize my true calling was to be a name-giver to cosmetics and ice cream!? (Which, by the way, is an actual job that people have - saw it on Oprah. And she doesn't lie.)


2. What did your parents say?

Well, they sort of just stared at me than say anything when I told them. As if creating a mental map of the world and digesting the fact that Australia hasn't somehow floated up around to the Atlantic coast. I think they may have had a better reaction had I said Austria. But, then they stopped turning blue, began to breathe and actually listened to my reasoning. They knew I wasn't happy and I had already talked to them about wanting to do international law and that I couldn't transfer back home.

My mom knows a number of people, including South Asian/Muslim girls, travelling to Australia, the UK and other places for their education so she began to take solace in that. But then immediately started staring off into space, thinking out loud about how I'd be so much farther away from her and wouldn't be able to see her for months at a time. My wonderful parents have always been supportive of my education. When I first applied to law school they said that I could go wherever I got in (of course, they assumed I'd be in North America). I know many friends whose parents have barely let them travel to an adjacent city for post-graduate schooling or work.

3. Where in Australia?

I thought about whether I want to post the answer to this or not. And in the end, I though not. I cyberspace is an odd place where you can find out most anything. My school may become easy to locate once I name the area/city so it just hits a little too close to home. I'll put pictures up once I'm there so some of you may even be able to figure out where I am from that.



4. Do you know anyone there?

As far as good signs go, would you believe that I found an old friend from undergrad that is at my school right now?!

God bless Facebook! And the way it happened was completely random (another sign?). I was searching for "groups" on FB for my new university when I found one for law students there. So I click on it, hoping to send a message to someone in that group to see if they will be kind enough to answer someone questions for me. So I scroll down and I see a girl who mentions somthing about a "Canadian Law Students Association" there and so she seemed like the perfect person to ask questions since she must have gone through the same immigration/travel process that I was about to embark on. So I click on her name and am brought to her profile page. Side note: pretty much everyone on FB has set their 'privacy' settings such that if you're not added as a friend of theirs, you cannot see their profile, but can still send a message - this girl had not set her privacy settings this way so I could see her whole profile. There's also a 'mini-feed' on your profile that shows a person what you've been up to on FB - who you've added as a friend, who's page you've left a message on, ie pretty much keeps track of all your activity (a wonderful stalker feature). And lo and behold her mini-feed was accessible and it showed that someone had recently "tagged" her in a picture (meaning that someone had uploaded some pictures on their profile and labeled with with their name). They also add a small thumbnail picture of the picture that has been tagged and this, plus the name of the tagger (the girl was the tagee) caught my eye and I froze.

The name and person was someone I had taken a number of courses with in univeristy during undergrad (we were in the same major) and had talked to a lot out of school, on MSN, etc - a friend/acquantaince whatever. We went our separate ways after graduationg a couple years ago and pretty much never talked afterwards - I had lost my contacts for MSN and so didn't even have him on that anymore for a long time. So I clicked on his name and saw that although I couldn't access his profile, his network (another crazy FB invention - it shows what school/company/city you have affiliated yourself with) was set to the school I am going to! I couldn't believe it. We had both talked about applying to law school way back in our 3rd year but after graduation, we didn't really keep tabs on anything. But there he was, 1 year into the same law program I'm heading into. I still can't believe the coincidence...luck? Kismet? Still don't know... I wasted now time in firing off a message to him, hopefully somewhat coherent, and thankfully he e-mailed back saying it was nice to hear from me and that he would definitely help out with any questions I had. How cool is that!?

Prior to undergrad-friend, I had only one other contact in Australia though she doesn't live anywhere near where I will be let alone go to my school. My friend and I met about 10 years ago when I moved to Malaysia and was attending a private international school. She'd just come from Australia and we became fast friends. Though I moved away a year or so after, we managed to keep in touch and ironically enough, in the past year, she's been planning to move to Canada.

5. Living on or off campus?

On. Lived off-campus in Michigan and it didn't give me a chance to meet people and there were a lot of other issues.

6. How long will you be there?

At least 2 years to start, maybe adding another one year for my Master's.

7. Seriously, you're not kidding?

*sigh* no dear friend, I am going. Knowing my somewhat quiet temperament, most people assume I'm a homebody. Truth is, I love travelling and new places. I find it's really cool how some people have lived in one place since they were born, but I've never known that consistency. I've moved about 9 (soon to be 10) times in my life changing homes, neighbourhoods and schools so it's really a part of my life now.

8. "Will you bring me back a koala?" - Shazia

Since I don't think they're that easy to smuggle in past customs, right now that'll be a "no". But as I said before, I will dress up my little sister as one and you can have her.

9. Are you happy?

Yes. I can honestly say that though the distance from friends and family will hurt, I am happy.