Kellie is yet another one of the seemingly countless incredible people I met during my trip to Australia with International Student Volunteers. Having spent essentially everyday with Kellie for about a month, I got to know the rock necklace making, Humboldt University attending, hippie California girl pretty well. When I look back on my time with Kellie, I always picture two things. The first is her doing her trademark dance move, one which consisted of her taking both hands, fingers spread, and having them back in forth parallel to each side of her head...I think everyone in the group ended up doing it at one point or another, it was that freakin' awesome. And the second would be her introducing the word "hella" to my vocabulary. It didn't matter how cool you thought something was, it wasn't validated as truly awesome until Kellie used the "hella" to describe it. Ex. "That burger was hella good!"
My favorite memory of Kellie is actually one of the few times when she wasn't being her normal self, it was one of those rare moments when you get to see a person evolve, reach potential's they may not have even know they had, right before your eyes. Kellie is the kind of girl who could roll with virtually anything in any situation, except when it came to heights. On one of the stops in the middle of our travels up the Australian coast, the activity that ISV had planned for us was to rappel across a series of different cliffs ranging from a few feet to a few hundred feet. I remember seeing Kellie at the top of one of the ledges looking so terrified that she had tears in her eyes...it broke my heart. Nobody expected her to go down the side of that cliff, so when she decided that she wanted to push herself and go for it, despite how much her mind was telling her not to, we all felt a sense of pride. That day I watched that girl overcome her fear of heights as she worked up the courage to rappel down a 200ft + cliff, and if I remember correctly, walk back up to the top and go down again. It really was a beautiful sight to see.
Aside from the rare Facebook wall post, I haven't really talked to Kellie since we returned from our trip, and that's kind of sad, because I miss her. I hope she's doing well and that she's continuing to push herself because after what I witnessed in the short time I knew her, there are infinite places where she could go in life.
To a hella cool lady,
Andrew