88 Days and a Hundred Conversations*

Lying in bed with the windows open, I listened to the Galahs bicker outside. Staring at the ceiling, it struck me how far I really am from the world I once knew. My only connection to home — to family, friends, and the life I left behind — is a glowing screen. Out here, the distance between me and the next familiar soul feels immense. Not just far, but the kind of far measured in endless horizons and 150 miles of nothingness.

Yet that distance is precisely what brought me here. The reason I find myself putzing around a campervan park at the trisection of three lonely Australian states isn’t simply for the money. Hell, if it were money alone, I could have stayed in New York, working a lousy desk job that offered no solace — only a hollow pat on the back and a mediocre existence. Out here, stripped of the familiar and the comfortable, there is space to hear something else: the stories that have always driven people beyond the edge of what they know. Wandering these old, storied grounds, it’s impossible not to feel that the human spirit has been sharing tales since the dawn of time — through dreams, through conversation, through the art of vocal escapism around the very fires that once kept life in existence.

Our campfire drama this week is tied to the upper echelons of management who decided to pin us against each other for a lousy duty management position, hoping to incite a competitive frenzy — all while knowing they’d already quietly hired the “new guy” to replace us from the start. That is the caliber of people running this joint (BVTP). It’s managed by a few “golden bachelors” who have never seen a tan line on their wedding ring fingers a day in their lives. The men’s room is missing light bulbs, the handicap sink is leaking, we’ve got geckos in the motel beds, and a dozen other things shammed together.

By now, James is long gone — nothing more than a memory. I’ve given up on the whole “hugs, I’ll see you again one day” routine because, at this point, it feels too far removed from reality. Looks like I’m meant to keep cleaning toilets and mirrors for the next 3 months. 14 more days until I reach my 88 days.Maybe I should stick to teaching afterall.

Amidst the span of those almost 88 days I’ve cultivated my own digital campfire to keep the story telling light lit. It’s a sanctuary: once the tutoring canvas flickers to life and a conversation begins, the mundane frustrations of leaking sinks and petty office politics fade into the background.

My English students act as the unintended archivists of my life; they often remember the details I’ve long since forgotten. While I rarely speak of this work, it remains the most stable anchor in my professional life and the source of my most consistent connections in this last year. abroad.

To date, I have dedicated 530 hours — or roughly 22.5 days of my life — to teaching English. As I approach my one-year mark in just under two weeks, that total will settle at 550 hours.

Even at “home,” Im beckoned to keep teaching.

“But Nicole, I don’t understand this word — vasectomy. What is it?”

Mia paused her phone. On the screen was a YouTube Short featuring Season 4 of 90 Day Fiancé with “Big Ed.” It was the scene where he met his first fiancée and was breaking the news about his “big lie”: he didn’t want any more kids.

“You know, it’s when a man gets an operation so he can’t have kids,” I said, pointing to my lower half.

Still not registering what it meant, I asked for her phone to use an English-to-Cantonese translation app — something we use every day. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be clapping out every syllable to help her pronounce “vasectomy.”

The night before I had to explain what an STD check was. “Hey Chat, can you please translate the meaning of gonorrhea into Cantonese and explain how to get tested for it? I think she also asked me to tell her when I was last tested — let her know it was in December.” In Cantonese, a female voice spat out a response in a language I could hardly fathom.

As the conversation shifted into the nuances of dating, Mia sat perched on the couch with her phone balanced between her knees. Curiosity filled her voice as she pleaded, “Nicole, what do you mean men take women out on dates at night? Why not at lunchtime? Or for tea? This is such a crazy culture shock. Men in my country don’t ask women to do nighttime activities.”

“I’m an asshole I can’t get into this right now with you,” I burst out laughing.

“Oh, fuck off, Nicole,” Mia laughed.

We had just taught her that phrase and felt very proud of it.

“Nicole, what does ‘asshole’ mean again?”

Speaking of my love for my students, moments like these are the reason I keep showing up. Somewhere between grammar corrections, cultural misunderstandings, and teaching questionable vocabulary, the lessons become something else entirely. The students stop feeling like names on a schedule and start feeling like old friends scattered across the globe.

Marco is a perfect example. My OG student, I rang him up on a whim, right between the pub and doing my hair. On the other side of the screen, he was making a sandwich below deck on a 50-meter yacht in Sydney Harbour.

“Aye, you do realize your wifi is shit, right? Cheap fuck,” I laughed.

He was earning far too much money to be living the way he was. I thought back to the time I had stored all his belongings in my place — a relic from the days when we spent every weekend together, before our falling out. Marco was my original student. We had met online through my teaching platform right around the time I decided to bounce through Europe instead of staying put.He essentially held my hand when I landed in Syd , death gripping through the entire transition.

I would trek 45 minutes on weeknights to sit in his small Potts Point studio, panicking about everything I was going through while he complained about the various crises he was navigating; I don’t even think he understood half of what I was saying. He would simply nod and say, “Yes, but Nicki, this is life,” all while handing me wine and turning on my favorite Royal Otis music video.

But now, on the other side of the line, he sort of laughed; after all these months, even years, his visa wasn’t going to be renewed. He was leaving Australia indefinitely. I winced. The thought of my first friend here in Aus heading off made me wonder if it was a sign that I should be packing up, too. Honestly, Marco doesn’t really need me to teach him English anymore; he needed me to be his therapist. But I love the guy. Whenever I’d hit a crisis with life— I’d ring him up, unless, of course, his machismo got the best of him.

One of the last times we went out, I woke up with a brand-new toothbrush that had “Nicki” written on the side in Sharpie and a massive headache. “Hey stupid, you didn’t even make it to the afters.” his text read.

“You know I hate waking up in Kings Cross, right? There’s no good brekkie there anyways.” The time before that was St. Paddy’s Day, when the poor bastard waited for me for three hours to make it to the CBD, while I was taking my sweet time at the beach — not realizing he couldn’t get back on board.

Back when I was living in Spain and had just decided to make the leap to Australia, I shot my shot to him. “Hey, if I end up there, can you show me around?” I asked. Over the last twelve months, Marco has witnessed more versions of me than most people have — the dreamer, the traveler, the exhausted backpacker, and everything in between. Now, as I prepare for my own return to Spain, our paths seem to be converging once again. He’s carving out a future on yachts in the Mediterranean, while I’m finding my way back to the place where this chapter began.

“I still have the necklace you bought me for my birthday,” I said into the phone.

“Vaffanculo, Nicki, that makes me smile,” he laughed. “Remember that? It’s the same one that got me in trouble when I was dating the Turkish girl . She wondered why I had your clothes, your toothbrush, and your birthday gift sitting on my table.”

“Well, you’re the stupid one who left it there!” I snickered. “I went scuba diving and told you to put my things away.You didn’t, so that’s your problem.Your place saved me from that brutal 2 hour commute south.”

“Hey, so,” I continued, shifting gears. “When are you actually going to Spain? I know the visa didn’t go through and your appointment is in Syd for Aug. What’s the plan? You can’t leave me here in Aus like this.”

“I dunno, Nicki, it’s hard. I’m working now in hiding from immigration, but when I’m in Barcelona, I’ll fly up to see you. We can get dinner, just like old times.”

“You know, Marco, I’m still hung up on Spain. I think I’m destined to move there for a while and teach, but you know I can’t get a visa. Im not an EU citizen. I could be completely wrong too about this.”

“Yes, you can get the visa- theres always a solution, Nicki. Come on. We go to dinner, I get down on one knee — boom. Twelve months later, you’ve got your EU citizenship.”

At that point, I was standing in the kitchen, knuckle-deep in a jar of pickles. Shaking my head, I laughed as I fished another one out.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “I know you want to work on that yacht in Miami, but would you really go through all that?”

I paused, giving him a teasing look through the screen.

Without missing a beat, he replied, “Our son would have beautiful eyes, though.”

Yeah, he probably would. I’ll give you that. But I’m not moving across three countries and collecting a second divorce just for the fun of it. The first one was bad enough.

“Fine, Nicki, think about it,” he said, his voice softening. “I’ll see you eventually. I’m going back to work. Gnoooodnightttt.”

About ten minutes after we hung up, I looked at my phone and saw a photo from the yacht: a woman posing beside a massive Will You Marry Me? sign.

The timing was almost too perfect. We laughed about the irony through voice notes, but ultimately, I told him to kill it.

Marco and I are both circling back to Spain — the place where it all started, and perhaps where the next chapter is waiting. We laughed about the fake marriage proposal, but there’s a deeper truth to it. We’ve been through the moves, the visa stress, and the chaos of being expats, and through it all, there’s been nothing but love.

Stories like this are few and far between. These students have seen countless backdrops of mine change; they have seen me bare-faced, depressed, hungover, and without an ounce of energy in my spirit, and they have given me grace. They manage to say the exact thing I need to hear without realizing it. I have held space for stories that shake the soul — a student describing their survival of a bombing in Ukraine, or the unbearable grief of losing a child. We discuss the dreams they carry, the quiet gratitude for finding new ground to stand on, and the exhausting struggle to navigate the bureaucracies of their new homes.

Like them, I too am a student, learning to become a global citizen while doing all the things it takes to survive and then some. It’s a small, quiet miracle that I get paid to listen — and in the process, I am the one who truly learns. Everyone asks if I am homesick, but I’m not. I’m just homesick for a world that isn’t real anymore. Sometimes you don’t get what you ask for — you get what you need, and you get what you deserve.

If it weren’t for these moments of great trial and tribulation, shared between good friends and newfound student acquisitions , would I really have the hunger or the urge to keep trudging along? We are all just searching for the place where we belong, and sometimes, you have to be lost in the moment just to be found by the right conversation.

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