A Long Way From Home

• Elizabeth Millar, Grade 12
• Poetry
• 2012

A LONG WAY FROM HOME
Words Libby Millar
The moment that I saw the last of the Australian land, and the hard, scarce, browned foreign landscape below, of what appeared to be some kind of volcano… I knew; I was a long way from home.
SEPTEMBER 2011, SINGAPORE. I was seventeen. The city looked large. But for me – tired eyed, a little nervous, not knowing for sure what I was doing, on a train headed for my departure terminal – I was drawn toward discovery. I had spent the night on a 2x3 (cm) lounge chair with my bag wrapped tightly around my right leg because the hotel was fully booked out. Fearing that I would miss my flight by sleeping through my alarm or paying for a room and not sleeping, I thought that I would save my money and not blow my meagre budget by not pre-booking; it was worth a shot. I didn’t take into consideration the possibility of there being no vacancies, but I hadn’t spent the extra money, and the fact that I had mixed my activated and spare inactivated visa cards up, the activated one being in my luggage, it wasn’t as though I had much spare cash anyway.
SEPTEMBER 2011, MACTAN ISLAND. In the tropical air I peered anxiously at my surroundings. It was noisy through the hallways that I followed the crowd through. A lady named Dina would be waiting for me, but she wasn’t allowed inside the actual airport because of strict security reasons… so I couldn’t figure in my head exactly how and where I would be meeting her. The crowd in front made their way down a flight of steep stairs ahead, I could feel my nervousness in my legs as they stepped. An opening appeared and the crowd scattered into different directions. A man found me and asked if my name was Libby. He showed me where Dina was waiting, and with the man and Dina I made my way to a car waiting. My body was buzzing in this new air, my heart was pumping and I was definitely alive.
There are many things which I had never in my life seen before or even had any preconceived ideas inside my head about. First arriving and jumping in a car with a bunch of randoms, one who’s name I knew was Dina, driving through the streets, everything completely new and different from anything I’d ever known growing up in Gawler.
With fresh sight I laid eyes for the first time on the city of Cebu. The people lining the street looked so occupied by their lives, some looked very busy, others just sitting out the front of one of the abundant hole in the wall places that seem to grab hold of the streets sides, and hang on for their dear lives. Jeepneys crawled the unruly streets, the rain poured down through the humid air; and I was fascinated with this unknown place.