Melbourne - a new update!

Hi guys!

It´s already spring here in Melbourne and I finished all my assignments yesterday (finally!). I have been here in this lovely city for almost four months now, met lovely people and got in love with its culture, the variety of events, the beaches and gardens but not with its weather! We had sunny 30 degrees yesterday and I planned to go skating today - but weather changed (yeah Melbourne...) and it got quite cold again. However, right now I cannot imagine moving out of this city (even though the weather is bad) and searched for a job to stay for couple of months. The semester at Swinburne University is finally over and I hope I have passed all units. I expected a less stressful semester and everyone at this university understands what I mean: The huge amount of assignments led us all stay in library almost every weekday during the semester. (However, we had exciting weekends with lots of fun!)

University life

People asked me about my university life here. I will post more about the campus and university later. When I applied for this university, I expected something similar to my exchange program at Korea University: a campus life with cool events, with lots of surfing (I think everyone expects that from Oz). I´ve rarely been to one of those Swinburne events as they were always the same. The events in Melbourne were way more exciting in my mind. Hence, I had too many assignments for the units per week and spend too much time on campus which is why I never wanted to spend my evenings there. From all the units I attended, I think just one was worth it. The lecturer of the unit Social Entrepreneurship was very motivational and had couple of successful social enterprises. After our final presentations we had some tacos and beers with him - I´ve never had that in Germany before and I was not used to that but I really like this 'university' culture! One thing I´ve learned during this unit is to do something good! That´s why I support Greenpeace at the moment (more about that in the future posts).

St Kilda Beach House

During the last 4 months many things changed in our St Kilda Beach House (it´s not a beach house but we´ve named it like that). Right now I live together with Ash from London, Steffi, Richie and Raffa from Germany and Renan from Sao Paolo. Barbara, we miss you!! I really love these guys as our flat seems to be like soap - like brothers and sisters and our daddy. Loving the feeling of supporting each other, we all search for another flat where we can move in together because we all need to move out in one week! Time flies! I´ll miss you St Kilda but you´re too expensive to live.

Road trips & trips

We´ve done a couple of road trips the last months. The first one was to Golden beach, Wilsons Prom and Mornington Peninsula (Victoria). (Next post)
The next one was the hot springs in Mornington Peninsula (defo recommend to go there!!).
Wine tasting at Yarra Valley (was so tasty)
Grampians (One of the next posts)

Melbournian life

Kyra and Nils, friends from Berlin came to Melbourne for visit. We´ve done a couple of things in the city, had nice bike rides and enjoyed the food! I really love to hang out in the laneways for good Melbourne coffee and cheesecake or doughnuts from Doughnut time. The arts culture here gives the city its charme. Sometimes, the noise and hectic in the city is too much for me and I prefer to walk around the Botanical Gardens - with the singing of the birds. For chill out I prefer the beach with my penny board - there is a pretty nice road from St Kilda Beach over Elwood Beach to the Brighton Beach.

I really recommend this rooftop bar with electronic music:

Rooftop Cinema

252 Swanston St, Melbourne VIC 3000

Events

I´ve been to couple events at Dimension5 and Inspire9, co-working spaces for start-up companies. I met so many lovely people with lots of motivation! You should check out their meet-up events to keep up to date.

My old To Do list:

Surfing in Torquay (did it once and could stand up for more than 10 seconds)
Stand-up paddling in St Kilda/ Brighton Beach (did it at Noosa Heads)
visiting Shay Shay in Brisbane! So excited!! (CHECK!)
learn skateboarding with a penny board (thanks to Steffi!) (Needs improvement!!)