fate loves the fearless: Another Chapter is Coming to a Close

So this is it.

The last thursday of the semester. Tomorrow is the last day of my first year in university. How did time fly by so quickly?

It seems like just yesterday that I boarded a Boeing 737 en route to Adelaide and yet, here I am, on the brink of finishing up my first year.

Next comes exams, and soon, I'll be back in the comforts of Penang again--and this time for longer than just a 3 week stretch.

It's been a tough year.

If you've never left home, you'd understand, and yet if you've packed your life up and moved so many times you can't remember, then maybe you wouldn't. Penang has been my home for the past 18 years (I don't remember ever living in KL, since I was an infant, so I don't think that counts as home). It's hard to have to start over from scratch, a new environment, new school, new teachers, new subjects, a new room, but most of all and perhaps the scariest of them all: having to make new friends. To say that making friends was never my forte would probably be the understatement of well, my whole existence really. And so, with that said, I spent the majority of my first semester being cautious, trying to blend in to the background and just observe everyone else. Come on, you'd be lying if you said you've never done this before. Even at some social event of which, apart from the friend who brought you, was filled with hordes of people you had never laid eyes on before? Yep, thought so.

As the second semester rolled around and I was still recovering from my "jet lag" of a whole one and a half hours (wow, Sarah, major time difference there) I vowed that I would try harder this term. That I would put myself out there and, well, mingle around. And it turned out being one of the best decisions I've made here so far. I met new friends and got closer with the ones I already had. I lost some friends and I gained some. I felt betrayed by a few, but I've been working on forgiveness with that (it has never exactly been my area of expertise), I'll let you know how that all pans out.

I've found some amazing girls here

Victor Harbor trip that I won't forget

The year 2013 has been a year of lessons. It has been a year of letting go and a year of growing up, taking chances and never looking back.

"The best way to predict your future, is to create it."

-Abraham Lincoln

And so, I conclude this overly-long-winded-so-called-introduction-that-turned-out-to-be-too-deep.
I hope you'll come back soon.

Have some picture spam.