Education Abroad Student Blog

Well everyone, welcome to the first of many editions of Kyle Johnson's blog. I hope you find it to be interesting and engaging, not to mention helpful. I'm from California Polytechnic State University, USA and so far I have been 'down under' for a week and everything has been so much fun - but let's start at the beginning.

When I first touched down in Melbourne, I had no problem getting to campus. The driver that Swinburne provides was standing in plain view, ready and waiting for me. After we waited about ten minutes for the arrival of the other two students he had to pick up, we took off for Hawthorn. It only took about 30 minutes to get to Swinburne and that included dropping off one of the other students. I definitely recommend the service, especially since it was free.

Getting used to the area and settling in wasn't too hard and before I knew it, it was Monday: Orientation Day. Orientation is actually kind of fun. You get to meet all the other foreign students, learn some new Aussie terms, figure out where to go if you have problems and eat free lunch. It's a good time, which is good since it was mandatory.

We got Tuesday off, but Wednesday and Thursday there was more orientation stuff planned.
On Friday we went to Healesville Sanctuary (a sweet zoo) and a local winery. Besides the fact that we had to be awake at around 7am, the trip was awesome. All the animals at the zoo were pretty cool, except the koalas since they don't ever do anything, and the Bird of Prey show was amazing. I won't ruin it or anything, but I will say you will regret it if you don't go to that show.

The winery was fun too, although I wish we got more wine. The wine master guy let us taste 4 of his wines, two of which were pretty good, and then we had to leave because we were behind on schedule. I really do not know how long either bus ride was since I was asleep the whole time, but I doubt it was that long. The entire trip was worth it for sure.

And that leaves the highlight of the week: footy. My friends and I went to a footy match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sunday, which was not a trip set up by Swinburne but was amazing. I can't describe the game as there is nothing it is really very similar to, but it is awesome. We saw the Hawthorn Hawks destroy the Essendon Bombers by around 60 points and there was not a boring minute. We're going to footy as much as possible.