Grateful Aussie in the US
A few words about this post (16th June, 2021):
I originally wrote it back in mid-April. When I was doing my next blog post ‘Mamas Gone Wild’ at the end of April, I accidentally copied over this one, and lost the bulk of what I had written. Since then, we’ve been in another whirlwind - that of moving back to Australia, and I just haven’t had time to re-write it. Now, 2 months on, I have rewritten it whilst I’m in hotel quarantine in Australia. No doubt it will be slightly different to what I wrote 2 months ago, but I think it covers the main thrust of the original post.
Last Thursday morning, I woke up at 1am, and struggled to get back to sleep. A tapestry of emotions were running through me. There was the spinning wheel of ‘jobs that need to get done’ before we head back to Australia, the worry I was feeling for my Mum who is now living on her own after the loss of her beloved, and the ‘what if our COVID tests are positive and we can’t fly’ thoughts - along with the other multiple anxieties about the process of getting home. But maybe my sleep deprivation wasn’t due to those things, and was just a reaction to the 1st dose of COVID vaccine that I had received 5 hours earlier, the Pfizer one at that. It felt like a shot of adrenaline, or a super-power that had been released into my blood-stream. Incredibly-grateful was the strongest emotion I was feeling, but this was coupled with guilt, and the thought ‘why am I so lucky to receive this when so many others - particularly Australian’s - aren’t'?
I’ve heard the following phrase in reference to Australia this past week: “There’s nowhere else on earth you would rather be”, spoken by the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. I completely understand this sentiment, particularly given that hundreds of people are still dying from COVID daily in the US, despite the superb vaccine roll-out. But, umm…… I’ve gotta say, I love Australia, and I can’t wait to get home to see loved ones, but I can’t help but feel that actually, Memphis, Tennessee has been a pretty good place to be through this pandemic - for our family at least. I’m aware that this can change at any moment, but right now, I’m so very thankful for everything the US has offered us. Following is a photo story explaining why.
They vaccinated me!
When I wrote this back in mid-April, the US had vaccinated 112 million people, or 33.7% of the population. Today (June 16), that figure is 145 million fully vaccinated, or 44.2% of the population. Since vaccinations have been readily available in the US for a few months now, most of the country is completely opening up over the summer. Australia’s vaccine rollout hasn’t been quite as successful, with a raft of problems hitting the country, which I won’t go into here. Today, only 2.7% of Australians are fully vaccinated. After living through COVID in the US in 2020/21, it’s fair to say I was feeling extremely grateful to the country for vaccinating me, an Australian living in the US, and I was super impressed with this drive-through vaccination hub that had been set up in the car park of the local football stadium. It was run by the armed forces and it was a seamless, quick and easy process.
We’ve been able to travel!
If you follow my blog or instagram account @christinadayphotography, you will know that my family have been extremely fortunate to be able to travel throughout the US over the past year. Each state in the US is a bit like its own country, with different rules - so we were lucky in Tennessee that we weren’t as locked down as other states that were harder hit by the virus, for example California and New York. Some states are stricter than others on arrivals. When we travelled throughout the north east over Christmas, there were some states that required us to either provide documentation that we hadn’t been in contact with COVID, provide a negative COVID test, or adhere to rules of self-isolation. Whilst we personally never flaunted the rules, they’re not heavily policed, so adherence would be much greater to garner.
This is completely different to Australia, where the country has been inundated with policed state border closures due to COVID leaks in other parts of the country. Many people have been stuck at home, unable to visit other states where they may have had important family gatherings occurring. This of course has kept Australia mostly free of COVID, and there has been minimal death from the virus compared to other countries.
So just where have we travelled lately?
Tuscon, Arizona
We had one family in Memphis that formed our ‘quaran-team’ and helped keep us sane throughout 2020/start of 2021. We have children of a similar age, they were also new to Memphis, and we lived around the corner from each other; so it was only fitting that we were to become firm friends. With domestic travel now almost back to full capacity, we decided to go away together for Easter to Tuscon, our first flight in a year. It’s another spectacular part of the country, especially the cacti!
And a trip to Tombstone had me wanting to play dress-ups.
Disneyworld, Orlando Florida
Spring Break was upon us, and the countdown to going home had started; so we were committed to continuing to explore as much of the US as we could. There was much debate about WHERE we would go for Spring Break though. Should we try the mountains of Colorado, or perhaps the beauty of the Ozarks? In the end though, the easiest and surprisingly cheapest was to drive down to Florida to visit Disneyworld. Whilst it wasn’t my first priority, the kids were super excited about it and it’s certainly a uniquely American experience. COVID rules meant there were restrictions on how many visitors could attend the four different worlds each day (this is seriously a fantastic thing), and the two that were most like Disneyland in LA (which we had visited previously) were already booked out; so we visited the other two, and loved them!
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
The stand out here was the ‘Avatar Flight of Passage’ ride where you “climb atop a winged mountain banshee for a breathtaking 3D flight over Pandora’s otherworldly landscape”. The ride, along with the setting around it, really was magnificent.
The settings throughout the rest of the park are also quite amazing.
EPCOT - Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow
EPCOT was the reason Walt Disney came to Florida. Whilst he wanted to build a larger Disneyland with no space restraints, he also wanted to try to use some of the technology his team had developed, to build a ‘city of tomorrow’. “EPCOT was to be a utopian autocratic company town completely controlled by Walt Disney himself and featuring commercial, residential, industrial and recreational centers, connected by a mass multimodal transportation system.” His dream never came to full fruition, which you can read about in this article, but it is still a wonderful place to visit, with the original idea of the park still prevalent.
Our favourite ride was the Chevrolet Test Track where we buckled up in a 6-passenger “SIM Car” for an exhilarating spin on the test track. We revved through rough terrain and obstacles along the winding circuit. We accelerated through straightways, maneuvered switchbacks through inclement weather, hugged curves banked at 50-degree angles and scaled hills up to 3 stories high. And we reached speeds of up to 65 miles per hour. It certainly was a thrill!
There also happened to be a garden display of Disney - and other characters - on at the time we were there. It was quite spectacular and so creative.
We were also able to enjoy some of the natural offerings of Florida. Our accommodation looked out onto a lake which was inhabited by a few friendly alligators. And the sunsets and birdlife were beautiful.
Selma, Alabama
On the way to Florida, we visited the historic Selma, famous for the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the ‘March to Freedom’ led by Martin Luther-King in March, 1965. You can read more about this this important time in US history in this article.
“Almost by design, the Edmund Pettus Bridge provided one of the most indelible images of the terror of the Jim Crow South. Rev Martin Luther King Jr was no stranger to Alabama - having waged civil rights campaigns in Montgomery in 1955 and Birmingham in 1963 - chose Selma as the stage for the fight over voting rights because it was representative of many cities of the Deep South, where African-Americans were a majority of the population, but a minority of registered voters.” From the article ‘Who was Edmund Pettus’, Smithsonian Magazine.
The gorgeous view from the bridge
The town itself is quite beautiful - in a historic, abandoned type of way. I enjoyed a quick stroll around taking in its mysteries.
We have been able to experience life in another culture - and the highs and lows that come with it
At the time of writing this original post back in April, as the cover photo suggests, I was an emotional rollercoaster. We’d secured seats for a flight home, but we were still in two-minds if it was the right decision. Finally, we had ALL members of the family settled into American life, yet we also felt a very strong pull to go home to my Mum and other loved ones, that we were conflicted. It was clear that life in the US was going to open up over the summer after a very successful vaccine rollout, and it was also clear that in Australia, it wouldn’t open up anytime soon, and state border closures (especially in my home state of Victoria) would become a regular occurrence. I was feeling so grateful for all of the experiences we’d been able to have in the US, and the personal growth as a result of this, but I was also very aware that our US experience was a bit like an alternate-reality. I wondered, were all of the emotions I’d been feeling real, or were they just experienced from an elevated state of consciousness?
I was asking myself lots of questions like ‘have we experienced enough’, ‘have I given back enough’, ‘what would I do when I got back home’, ‘how would I settle in back home after all my new experiences’? But eventually, you have to own your decisions, and be confident that you’ve made the right one - or at least hope that you have, and have faith in the future. I was then in the mindset of squeezing every possible thing into the time we had left - we were throwing it all in there for the greatest possible outcome.
It was a giant leap of faith moving a family of six to the US, but it worked! We have all grown exponentially and I guess you could say it has been life-changing. I only hope our journey back home is just as fruitful, taking all we have learnt with us, to build a better and stronger life back in Australia.
Until that happens, I will continue to be so very grateful to the US for the experience-of-a-lifetime. I’ve fallen in love with Memphis, and despite it’s many flaws (what country doesn’t them), the US.
Thank you USA!