Sydney, Australia
Almost every day I wake up to sun streaming from my window and get ready for what is always a good day. I pack what I will need for the sun first: Zinc cream, sunscreen, and aloe gel. Then I grab my board shorts, laptop and boxing gloves and head outside. Simon and I and do fitness training in a park below the hostel, lush trees and thick grass surrounding us. We run down the coastal path every second day, sweating and panting as we pass cliffs and watch the breaking waves from above. After that we do press ups, pull-ups, crunches, then boxing and kali practice. After the workout we go to Simon’s house on the cliff tops by the ocean where we start the main part of our day: School work. I sit in front of a laptop filling out assignments for a few hours, working on essays to get back into school and recording significant learnings. Surprisingly a lot of our significant learning are gathered from time spent talking in the car as we travel round Sydney. After the work we total up receipts, I am given money and I head back to the hostel to do homework before finishing for the day.
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Bourtie House, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
I am rewriting the start of my story, during which I spend five months traveling in Australia and Southeast Asia. The goal of my expedition is to return to a school in the United States from which I was asked to leave for inappropriate behavior. To do this I have been traveling with my mentor and teacher, Simon, who has coached me though things I thought were impossible.
From watching pig racing in Australia to Thai boxing in Bangkok, to teaching orphans in Cambodia to rafting down rivers in Laos everything has been an opportunity to learn. I have not always taken advantage of the opportunities I am presented with, but am beginning to recognize and enjoy them. When I first started traveling I believed that the reasons I got expelled from school and didn’t have many friends were all external. From my writings you will see that I grown to see things differently.
Please read on and follow my journey.
Tom Remp.
