First weeks of Melbourne

Dear All!

Two weeks...and already I am in love with this city!
Apart from the rapidly changing weather (from cold and rainy to hot and sunny - and that in a few hours) there is nothing I can complain about and even that is not so bad, because at least, when the weather is cold, you know it will not last long :)
The parks here are amazing and so are all the cultural activities! Everyday there is so much to do that you don't even know where to begin!

Last weekend was the St Kilda festival, on the St Kilda beach and it was great! The day started grey but I came home sunburned. There was good music, beach volleyball, food, and lots and lots of people!

This week we had our international students orientation. It was tiering but also great! The Uni is quite far out of town and it takes me almost an hour to get there...but still I am really very happy that I am living in the city because the campus is not the most cosy place :) The orientation week was made up of doing the stuff that needed to be done in the morning, sleep or go to the beach in the afternoon and dinner and party at night. That, together with a lot of sun and new impressions is a pretty tiering combination :)
But is was great!

To see the processes in such a big group of international students is also very interesting! My guess is that we are bout 300-400 international students. 150 of those are Malaysian because Monash has a campus in Malaysia, so for them it is very easy to come here. There are also many Americans but I was actually surprised by how much Swedes, Danish and Dutch people there are :) Those nationalities turn out to be a good combination :) We've especially spend a lot of time with the Danish and some Finish people. But there are also nice Mexicans, some Germans, French and Italian...Somehow (maybe because they all live on campus...)it is harder to mix with the Americans and the Asians, but maybe they say the same about us, referring to us as the Europeans of course...it is funny how suddenly I turned out to be European instead of Dutch :)
One guy from Malaysia, after I told him where I was from, said: Oh Holland, that's a nice city, I've been there some years ago...I cannot blame him...seen from here, Holland is one big city :) Another Taiwanese girl told me: Ah...your prince (it's actually the Danish prince) is married to an Australian women. When I told here that that was not our prince, but the Danish prince her reaction was something like: yeah, but that's Europe as well, so he is also your prince :) She also wanted me to tell her about Europe: how did it look like, what was typically European. I told here there were a lot of differences, that there were a lot of European countries I've never been to and that there are a lot of people there with whom I cannot communicate (if they don't speak English). I think that was all a bit to abstract, Europe was one, in her eyes, and I was from Europe, so I should be able to tell her everything about it :D
The funny thing is that I think the same about Northern Americans and especially Asians...I mean, of course I am maybe more conscientious about the fact that they, like us, have huge differences between countries and states but I still refer to them as 'the Americans' and 'the Asians' and I cannot tell the Asians apart :)

Yesterday was our last day of orientation and it was lots of fun!
We had to form groups of 10 with at least 3 nationalities (we were group Stool because we were Danish, Finish, Belgian, and Dutch and the word for chair, in all our languages is pronounced in more or less the same way: stool - in english spelling...). We than got 13 cards with a mystery to solve that would lead us to a certain place on campus. The first one to finish would win a weekend away on the Great Ocean Road inclusive surfing lessons :) So we had decided to win...unhappily for us others had decided that as well and so we got the second price: a ticket to Phillip Island, which is also nice...I don't think I have ever run so much and so fanatically in my life :)
At night we had dinner in a Hotel and than an after party in a club luckily very, very close to my home. Today I can barely walk, but it was worth it!
This weekend there is a great sustainability festival in the city and the sun is inviting us to go to the beach so the weekend is going to be too short!

Here are some pictures from Melbourne!
Cheers!
Sara


My room



My bathroom



My kitchen



My view



My Street



Toorak Road



Some weird Australian thing...you see it everywhere



Rapskalion, already my favorite band in Melbourne



Park



Botanical Gardens



Connecting to the World overseas



Mini penguin in semi-dark, but I was not aloud to use flash...



St Kilda peer



St Kilda festival



St Kilda festival Fitzroy Street



Beach



Brighton Beach and Melbourne skyline



City center



Second time Rapskalion



Afterparty (with Sissel from Denmark)