This begins the first to many of my blog posts about my time here in Australia! But before that, let me mention how late this blog post is due to my laziness, lack of time, lack of internet, but mostly laziness. Anyways, here goes!

I landed in Melbourne, Australia at around 9am on a Saturday morning after a long 13 hour flight to Guangzhou, followed by a 3 hour layover in Guangzhou, and then another 9 hour flight to Melbourne. You could say I was extremely fatigued, which I was when I found myself dozing off in the Guangzhou airport. T’was not fun, but I did meet some awesome people on these super tiring flights. I have had a history of being seated beside old people on airplanes and having no one to talk to (but myself) on the long flights but thank the heaven that this time, it was completely different. On my 13 hour flight, I met someone who was coming from Toronto and was on his way to China. He was around the same age as me which was nice because we had something to talk about and when we parted ways in China, we both had a sad realization that we probably won’t see each other ever again. On my flight to Melbourne, I met this girl who has worked in Melbourne for 3 years now and has traveled to many different places and decided to settle in Australia for the time being. She was super sweet and easy to talk to and she even gave me her number afterwards in case I get bored and needed someone to hang out with! These stories were short and sweet but what was extremely disgusting and unhygienic was the person behind me on one of the flights had the audacity to rest his hairy sock-less foot on my arm rest. Here’s an image for y’all. I laughed quite hard with the guy beside me, he even suggested I tickle his foot …

Besides the unruly behaviour, the scenery outside the window was breath-taking. I was able to witness several shots of the sky beyond the clouds that were truly mesmerizing. Here are some shots for you to witness as well!

I cannot describe how beautiful this shot was, not too mention the colours combined so perfectly together like it was supposed to be synchrony. This looked so unreal that I felt like I was in a different world or at least heaven. Here’s a shot of the australian sunrise as the plane was just descending.

After getting off the plane, the first thing I noticed was the windy weather. I got a ride to my residence for the semester which looked equally as beautiful with its old architecture, heated pool, gym access, study room, game room, and more! Here’s a sneak peak! It is actually winter in Australia at the moment but the temperature is around 15-16 celsius during the day but can go down to 2-5 degrees in the morning and during the night so it’s actually pretty chilly. Thank god I packed 3 suitcases of clothes for all purposes!

And here’s my room in all of its tiny, comfortable glory.

Of course, such a 23 hour flight could not hold me down. As soon as I got here, I needed to run errands to truly settle in. I decided to explore and walk to the nearest mall to grab a sim card for my phone. On my walk down to the mall, I noticed the overwhelming amount of asians and asian tourists roaming the streets. It was actually a little bit worse than Vancouver. I felt a bit weird but I think it’s because I was expecting more non-asians to be living in the city. Boy, was I wrong.

So the mall I stumbled upon was Melbourne Central (MC for short) and it’s HUGE. There were definitely more than 3 floors and super long as well with a basement attached to a train station. There were also 2 floors of food court… and you better believe it, eating out is extremely expensive. A normal plate of food court food would amount to around $12. Ridiculous, I opted for a simple wrap meal that came out to be $5 (the cheapest on the menu).

So australians mainly use 3 methods of transportation: bus, trains, and trams. Trams are the most accessible for in the city, the same for trains but buses are used in more obscure places. The trams are confusing and only goes certain directions since they are basically stuck to the ground so don’t get on the wrong direction. I have yet to use the bus nor the train so I’ll let you know how that goes. Trams are essentially everywhere in the city so it’s more of a main method of transportation for travelling to different places but still able to view the city. After I got my sim card from Optus (one of the main phone companies), I went home and slept because frankly, I was just so tired. Here are some photos of the roundabout right outside my residence!

Well, here’s day 1 for you at the moment as it is almost 3am here and I want to sleep. I will add in more later on but hear this, when I was traversing the mall by myself and getting super lost and confused, I felt slightly homesick because I didn’t have any friends and I was pretty much completely on my own. I guess only time will be of help for that!