Tag Archives: Exchange

A weekend in Melbourne.

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Hi!
Today is a public holiday, Labour day, which means no uni. This also means a four day long weekend, since I don’t have any classes on tuesdays! I went all in on this weekend and started with going to the French Film Festival on friday. I saw “2 automnes 3 hivers”, which has been described as a “quirky, funny, indie romantic comedy” (or something like that…) which I can agree on. Anyway, the movie was perfect for a friday afternoon after eight hours of studying each day for that week.

On saturday one of my old housemates and I went to see some bands play at 291 in Brunswick and then we went to an after party (is that even a word/concept in english? I’m referring to a traditional “efterfest” anyway) in a warehouse. I’ve met a lot of people here who are currently living in, or have been living in, warehouse, which I find a bit odd. It really looks like what you imagine it to look like when you hear it – a gigantic open space just as a traditional warehouse except for all of the furniture and “rooms” (basically just curtains posing as walls). It must be some kind of law that enables this, I’m not sure but I don’t think it would be possible or even legal to live in a warehouse in Sweden.

On sunday I woke up to a 30 degree heat, so me and my four old housemates decided to go for a swim. We squeezed into a car and drove about an hour, finally arriving at Half Moon Bay. The beach was really beautiful, as you can tell from the pictures below! After that we went to dinner at Moroccan Soup Bar, which I highly recommend. The restaurant doesn’t have a menu, so you have to say what you’re in the mood for or just ask for a little bit of everything, which we did. They only serve vegetarian food and their focus is, which you already might have figured out, middle eastern food. For starters you get one plate with all kinds of different stuff and bread, to share with your dinner company. Before dinner we also got a glass of mint tea served and unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the amazing food, but some of the things we got were potatoes, rice, hummus, pickled vegetables, olives, couscous, eggplant, yoghurt, bread, an amazing chickpea thing (hard to describe it, but it was a bit crunchy,salty and nutty at the same time, it’s worth going there just for this!). The good thing is that everything comes in different bowls and you can take a bit of everything you like, so there isn’t any “portions” and you won’t feel bad if you don’t finish everything on the plate, since it’s you who chose what’s going to end up on your plate. I really can’t make the food justice by trying to describe it, so you just have to try it out yourself if you ever go to Melbourne, it was delicious! Our last stop on saturday was a bar on High St, which previously had been an old church. The interior was really cosy with colored lights, plants and paintings everywhere.

Today, my monday off uni due to the public holiday, I went for coffee on one of the many cafes on High St, which is a 5 minute bike ride from my house in Preston. The street is one of my favorites so far in Melbourne, since a lot of cafes and second hand stores are located in this area, which is perfect (or really bad…) for me and my ability to find a dress in every store I enter.

For some reason I can’t get the pictures right, so you just have to tilt your head. I guess you get the point anyway…

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First week of uni (and some more) done!

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Hi!
My first week of uni has gone by, and three days of the second week, and it feels as if it went by quickly at the same time as the days felt really long last week. In Sweden we usually study one subject full time for about a month and then have an exam – in Australia you study four different subjects at the same and have smaller exams regularly and then usually a bigger exam towards the end (something like our “salstenta”) or a bigger essay.
Another big difference is that you don’t have any time of school to write your exams – they have to be done at the same time as you go to lectures and tutorials, which might be a bit stressful. So far I am looking forward to all of my exams but perhaps I will regret that when the exam days come…

Besides being busy with school I have finally found a new place to stay, since I could only stay at my last place temporarily. During orientation week the ACU staff said that exchange students usually feel a bit down for a week or two, due to the new environment and all of the things you have to organize with school, housing and other things, but that it pass after a while. These two, three weeks have been a bit hard for me since I knew that I had to find a new place to stay but kept on getting “no” for an answer from all of the rooms I looked at. Almost everybody I met wanted the person moving in to stay at least six months, which wasn’t working for me since the semester is about four months. Anyway, I finally found a great house (and great house mates!) about three days before I had to move out of my old one. Now I really can enjoy my semester in Melbourne and do things without feeling guilty since I’m not sitting in front of the computer scrolling through all of the Gumtree ads…

A few of the things I’ve been doing since my room hunting was over; checking out all of the vintage stores (there’s too many dresses perfect for me! And too little baggage space left…), writing letters to Sweden and going to the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, which was really interesting (several european artists had made video installations with different concepts).

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An australian cliché #1

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When doing an exchange in Australia, or just visiting the country for any other reason, it’s impossible to avoid hearing about the spiders in this country as soon as you mention that you are going here. The spiders really are _everywhere_, however I have had the fortune of not running into the hairy, big ones, so far *knock on wood*. The biggest ones I’ve seen are of the type in the picture above – it might look small but it’s pretty big and it’s more of a small animal than an insect. This one is living outside of my room and I make sure to keep my door closed as much as possible when I see that it’s crawled out of it’s “home” above the window.

However, you could say that the exposure techniques Australia uses regarding their spiders are pretty hardcore and full on… I must admit that it’s working, my fear of spiders is almost gone even if I still have a bit to work on when it comes to these big spiders as in the picture above.

Finally – Melbourne, Australia!

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Hi!
For those of you who might not have read my presentation at the main site (https://blogg.mah.se/studyabroad/who-is-blogging/, you will also find the blogs of other MU-students here), I am a 25 year old student at the bachelor programme of social work at Malmö University. I will start my exchange semester at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne next week and this is my second exchange – last semester I did my internship as a social worker in Genova, Italy, which was a great experience! My current exchange will be a “regular” theoretical semester, beginning in february and ending in june.

I arrived in Melbourne a few days ago and I have already fallen in love with the city! People are friendly and social, the architecture is great (cute looking townhouses everywhere, it’s rare to see tall buildings except for in the Central Business District, CBD), the sushi is cheap and of course, the climate makes it easy not to miss the swedish winter (today it is 38 degrees…). It’s a bit strange to think about the fact that I applied for this exchange semester in march 2013 and now I’m actually here! After I sent my application and found out I was nominated for going on an exchange, several things had to be done. First of all, I had to take the TOEFL, which stands for Test of English as a Foreign Language. The test measures your english level through four sections (reading, writing, listening, reading). The university I wanted to do my exchange at was Australian Catholic University and they had a score limit – therefore it is not possible to “fail” the TOEFL because the test itself doesn’t have a score which means that you haven’t failed. The limit is made by the university.

After doing my TOEFL and getting the scores in accordance with ACUs limit I had to put together an application for my host university, Australian Catholic University, as well. After doing this and accepting my place at ACU I had all of the practical issues left – applying for a student VISA including requesting documents from several swedish authorities that needed to be attached to my VISA application, applying for CSN, renting out my apartment in Malmö while I’m being away, booking the flight, finding accommodation in Melbourne and so on… In the end it all worked out well, even if I was really stressed out several times during this process.

Anyway, the 20 hour flight went well (I flew with Qatar airways which I really can recommend for future MU exchange students going to Melbourne, they had great food during the whole flight) and now I am in Melbourne! I live in a sharehouse in Thornbury with three guys, who are all very friendly and social. They have shown me a great market with organically and locally produced vegetables, a bar on a roof top and a cosy breakfast place in Fitzroy. I found my sharehouse through the website Air BNB where people post ads renting out their own apartments/houses, usually for short term. I am staying in this sharehouse for one month and then I need to find something more permanent, which will be my next mission!

 

 

View from the roof top bar.

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A part of my street in Thornbury.

 

 

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CBD.

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