My very first post!

Hello to my wonderful friends and family!! I've been doing a lot of thinking of how I could keep in touch with everyone from Washington state, to Florida, to good old Tucson and I believe a blog will be the best :)

So if you didn't know I have a lot of adventures planned... Australia, New Zealand, Germany, England, Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Spain, Turkey & Egypt!

First, next week I'll hop on a plane to Melbourne, Australia. I'll have a day/night there by myself and then the next morning my classmates all arrive! I'll be studying at La Trobe University, Mildura campus. Mildura is out located in the outback which is perfect for my 3 week photography program. My program starts with one day of sightseeing in Melbourne and then its off an a 8 hour bus/train journey to campus. We start with classes learning about photography, hopefully not too long on the basics. From there we pack our backpacks and leave for a 5 day backpacking trip. I will have my 4x5 crown graphic, my digital SLR and prob a 35mm as well. After this exciting trip we get back and its off to the darkroom (both digital and traditional) to develop and print. The prints will be used in order to assess a grade, but more importantly we'll also get to show our work in a local art gallery! We will create the art, hang and run the show. The work will be on display for over a month which is extremely exciting, I'll officially have an international resume!

After the class is over, we return to Melbourne and my best friend, miss Tiffany, is flying to meet me! We have some awesome plans made and hopefully between two 21 year old girls we can hold our own traveling all over Australia and New Zealand. The cities we are visiting are Melbourne, Adelaide, Cairns & Sydney in Australia and Auckland in New Zealand. So far we have plans to snorkel and dive in the Great Barrier Reef, go canyoning down waterfalls, river raft in the rain forest, and base jump off the Auckland Sky Town (lord help me!)... These are just a few of our big adventure plans but we really want a chance to take in the culture and meet some amazing people. I'm so grateful to have such a great friend to share these experiences with.

In conclusion to this post, I just want to thank everyone who has supported me in any sort of way. My mom is without a doubt the most supportive person I have in my life, I couldn't ask for a better mother or best friend. A young girl coming from little Covington with no international travel experience, I am so thankful that my mom brought me up the way she did because 21 years later I have the ambition to make my dreams come true while understanding how much it took to get me to where I am now, so thank you mom. To all my other family and friends, whether you said Kayla go do it, or people like Amanda telling me where to go, or Jenn giving me important nicknacks, I thank you. I'd also like to thank STA travel and the Foundation for Asia Pacific Education for their generous scholarship and in return I will be blogging for them as well. I've also agreed to blog for Diversity Abroad.

That's all for now everyone, I will be blogging soon with more details! Follow me, keep in touch and I'll do the same!