5:15, 9°C (48°F) with a twitch of wind, moonlit. I had my last swim in Australia this morning, in Noosa. The water was wonderfully warm to compliment the coldest weather I've seen for 6 months; the adrenaline rush from coming back out of the water was enough to let me walk home proudly barefoot.

I've been living in Noosa, about 2 hours north of Brisbane, for those past six months. It's a tourist/surf town with just enough surrounding population to make it a really pleasant and easy place to live. The many beaches are gorgeous, I ended up finding a room in a house five minutes from one. I took up surfing towards the end of my stay, and I tried to run the coastal walk through the national park, which passes by all the beaches, as often as I felt up to it. My best friend from Melbourne lived in Noosa and I met many others that I really enjoyed. I have led a charmed life there, going to the beach pretty much whenever I felt like it, getting the sun and beach weather without the scorching heat of much of Australian summer, and a long warm autumn. And now that is behind me.

After 14 hours of travel, I've arrived in my grandmother's house three hours outside of Sydney. I said goodbye to Noosa, and my excellent housemate Javier from Chile, and took a bus and a train to Brisbane. Flew from Brizzy to Sydney, hopped on another train and another bus, and finally walked half an hour to my grandmother's house. This full day of travel almost immediately put a large conceptual distance between my Noosa life and the one I'm about to start back in Minnesota. Still, as ever when I leave a home, my mind is both reconciled and amazed that I have left and won't be coming back. For the next few weeks I expect the fading echoes of my former routine to catch me unaware, hearing the sea at night or walking around in bare foot or texting a friend to go for a run. Eventually these little reminders add up to a full realization that those memories are for long-term storage; I'm not going back, and I can look fully forward.

I'm coming back to Minnesota. I'll be in town just before Macalester reunion, and after the debauchery I'll be figuring out what to do with myself for the summer. I'll deffo be looking for a job and people/groups to make music with. I hope to see a lot of people that I love and see the weird and wonderful ways that they've grown since I've seen them last. See you soon, folks.