{"id":744,"date":"2019-02-15T09:51:02","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T09:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/?p=744"},"modified":"2019-02-15T09:51:02","modified_gmt":"2019-02-15T09:51:02","slug":"gday-mate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/2019\/02\/15\/gday-mate\/","title":{"rendered":"G’Day Mate!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hey guys!
\nGet yourself comfortable and start reading because I am finally ready to share bits of my crazy\u00a0adventures with you.<\/p>\n

First of all, I must say that everything still seems a bit unreal. I\u2019ve wanted to go on exchange to\u00a0Australia for as long as I can remember and time has literally flown by in the past few months. I\u00a0have always been a spontaneous gal, so I have been buzzing to get to Melbourne and start my\u00a0Aussie adventure, however, leaving London and my boyfriend was definitely hard and very sad.\u00a0Packing up my life in a 30kg flamingo luggage was definitely a challenge, but after watching\u00a0\u201cTidying up with Marie Kondo<\/a>\u201d I felt ready to get rid of all the stuff that didn\u2019t spark joy (oh well,\u00a0most of them). Also, the weather in Melbourne is a bit funny: one second you\u2019re literally melting,\u00a0and the next one you\u2019re hiding under your duvet \u2013 or as they call it here: doona -.<\/p>\n

My arrival was a bit tumultuous: although the first flight (London to Abu Dhabi) was smooth and\u00a0relatively comfy, my second one (Abu Dhabi to Melbourne) was an absolute nightmare and I got\u00a0stopped at quarantine because of my hair powder *rolling my eyes*.\u00a0I arrived at the student accommodation and right after checking in I literally crashed out and woke\u00a0up the next day. Nice. Once I came back to life, I started to get to know 2 of my 5 flatmates, from\u00a0NSW and Sri Lanka and we are now impatiently waiting for the others to arrive. I have already met around 50 people from literally all over the World in my accommodation and everyone is so lovely and really fun. So far we have been going out for BBQs, drinks, shopping,\u00a0sightseeing, movies under the stars and have a lot planned for the upcoming week, including one\u00a0of the biggest music festivals in Australia. We are having a crazy time because everyone is still on\u00a0holiday and we are just making the most of our time and everything that Melbourne has to offer.\u00a0The city is beautiful and there is TOO MUCH TO DO<\/strong> and TOO MUCH TO EAT<\/strong>, and the best thing is\u00a0that the majority of these events are FREEEEEEE<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

RMIT<\/a> is organizing a lot of events to welcome back the students and I am so excited to take part. I have literally signed up to everything and I can\u2019t wait for the Orientation Weekend at the end of February. There’s also this big RMIT music festival taking place in a couple of days on campus where they’ll have food, freebies, exhibitions and ice-breaking games and I am obviously going! Apparently, there are going to be hundreds and hundreds of exchange students and I am looking forward to making new friends. Hopefully, someone will be taking my same modules. *fingers crossed*\u00a0<\/em> I haven\u2019t gotten my timetable yet, whilst some of my new friends who study art-related courses have started today. I am buzzing to actually begin because the modules that I have signed up for seem so fun and interesting. I am especially looking forward to the \u2018Case Management Practice\u2019 module where I will be learning how to deal with evidence in a criminal case, interviewing suspects and so on. How cool is that?!<\/strong> I am very curious to see how different everything is here compared to the UK and whether I like it better or not. I have also signed up for this program called “Mates at RMIT” which aims to match you with a student mentor to help and guide at the beginning of the year. I haven’t been assigned anyone yet but I am definitely looking forward to meeting them. I am still waiting for my student ID as well, and as soon as I get it I will be exploring the campus and obviously post some pictures for you guys to have a sneak peek. I have seen it from the outside and it looks huge with a lot of separate buildings. I hope I won\u2019t get lost in between my classes, to be honest. It resembles the Regents Campus but on a bigger scale. The best part is that it\u2019s only a 10 minutes\u2019 walk from my house and right next to a big mall, so I won\u2019t have to wake up very early for classes which is always a great bonus, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

My bucket list is gigantic and is constantly growing!\u00a0There simply isn\u2019t enough time in a day but I am sure I\u2019ll manage to accomplish most of it!\u00a0I have defeated the jet lag which is brilliant news, and already got sunburnt which is not so\u00a0brilliant, but so far I\u2019M LOVING IT and I am telling you: Melbourne is the place to be!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey guys! Get yourself comfortable and start reading because I am finally ready to share bits of my crazy\u00a0adventures with you. First of all, I must say that everything still seems a bit unreal. I\u2019ve wanted to go on exchange…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[18,19,20,21,22],"class_list":["post-744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia-and-new-zealand","category-exchange","tag-globalwestminster","tag-gointl","tag-justgo","tag-rmitglobal","tag-westminsterabroad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/westminsterabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}