Melbourne Welcome Program

It's been quite a busy week.

As part of the Arcadia University program I'm currently in, I was to go off on an international students orientation and stay "on college" (Australian for "living on campus") at Trinity College. It was officially called "Melbourne Welcome" and it lasted from Monday to Friday.

Day One (Monday): Packed a bag for Trinity College and arrived via tram around 9:30 a.m. Students from not only my program but all different programs from all around the world were checked into rooms and split up into orientation groups. My group consisted of Americans, a girl from London, a girl from France, and a boy from Holland. Our orientation leader was named Kaneeka, an enthusiastic Melbourne student who grew up in Dubai for thirteen years, then moved to Australia and has lived there since. After splitting up into groups, we went off on a scavenger hunt around the city. We took pictures with police officers, asked people to marry us, sang One Direction in the mall, did a dance to "What Does the Fox Say?" in Federation Square, and many more painstakingly horrifying tasks in an attempt to make us jet-lagged and nervous international kids feel more at home (Although I still think this is a dumb way to go about making kids feel comfortable, I did make friends in my group by bonding over how ridiculous the scavenger hunt was). I survived the miles of walking and hours of embarrassing and uncomfortable tasks enough to make it to campus for dinner.

Later that night, my friend and I went back to St. Kilda in order to pick up some stuff I left at my house. What was supposed to be a roughly 30 minute tram ride became a three hour nightmare. I know I have the same sense of direction as a potato, but the degree to which my friend and I got lost was astronomical. At one point, while wandering through some random suburbs, we asked a woman walking by "How far are we from St. Kilda?" To which she responded with wide eyes, "St. Kilda?! Way off!" When we did finally reach my house at St. Kilda, we went to a bar immediately and ordered drinks and nachos in order to tentatively erase the horror of the earlier events.

We took a cab back to campus. 

Day Two (Tuesday): We headed to Healesville Sanctuary, an animal sanctuary about an hour and a half outside Melbourne. They rescue wild Australian animals such as koalas, emus, kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, and so on, in order to rehabilitate them or simply let them live out their lives in safety. It was an amazing place with wonderful creatures. My favorite by far were the koalas. They are the most perfect animals (except for the abundance of chlamydia that's ravaging their population, apparently...) who are adorable, fuzzy, and sleep between 18 and 22 hours a day (dream life, amirite?). My orientation group and I walked around and saw all the wonderful animals only to realize we had three hours to kill...and it was about 30 degrees out. So we crashed in the gift shop for an hour and a half, then after getting kicked out, killed another hour in their café...then we finally drove back to campus.

(Link to the Sanctuary: http://www.zoo.org.au/healesville)

What's great about Australia is the drinking age is 18, like any normal and sane place. So as part of our orientation, our leaders took us on a pub crawl around the city. Although it was sort of cold, it was my favorite part of orientation. We went to three bars, ending with a really neat place called "Word," which was more like a club (and I've never been to a real club, and single handedly made up this category). My new-found orientation friends and I drank, talked, bonded, and danced. It was really laid back and didn't have that desperate "look-how-cool-I-am-while-I-drink-illegeally-and-excessively" a lot of under-21 American functions have. In other words, it was fun.

Day Three (Wednesday): Wednesday was pretty rough because we all went on a pub crawl on Tuesday night, then had to be up and ready to go by 8:00 a.m. But by some divine intervention, we all managed to do so. We headed off for a tour of Aboriginal history and a trip to the sky deck of the Eureka tower which is "the highest public vantage point in the Southern Hemisphere," (Wikipedia.com). Unfortunately, communication between our orientation leaders and the Aboriginal history guides was skewed, and we ended up not taking the tour (let's just ignore the fact that post-pub crawl sleep could've been had...). After moseying around in the city for a bit, we went to the Eureka tower. It was amazing and I really underestimated how big Melbourne is. I then went to the mall for a bit with some friends and skipped the Footy Clinic (an activity wherein us students learned how to play AFL) to go home in order to get some much needed rest, for orientation was literally sucking the life out of me. 

Eureka Tower; Photo Cred: Amelia Benstead

After dinner, everyone went off to the night market at the famous Queen Victoria Market. It was the coolest place! It had all kinds of food from bread bowls, to crepes, to duck-topped waffles (I finally decided on a freshly-made Belgium waffle with banana, almonds, ice cream, and Belgium chocolate- pictured below). There were also local artists selling their work, clocks made out of street signs and tea pots, and so many more interesting things. Another great thing was they had giant fire pits for people to stand around, something that would probably be illegal in the states in case someone threw themselves in it and then sued the market owners.

(Link to the Market: http://www.qvm.com.au/)

Sign outside the Market; Photo Cred: Amelia Benstead

Photo Cred: Amelia Benstead

Day Four (Thursday): This time we went to the Queen Victoria Market during the day, which was quite different. Just as awesome though; there were an abundance of local artists, cheap clothes and souvenirs, fresh produce, and a food court with all different kids of restaurants. I got a cheap $5 dollar shirt (that probably won't make it through one round through the wash) for the "Down Under" party we had later that evening.

At around 6:00 p.m., we had a formal dinner in the dining hall. Everyone dressed to impress (expect for me, who was sporting a wrinkled dress that I've had since freshman year of high school) and sat down at our formally-set dinner tables (I was glad I wasn't the only one who didn't know which silverware was for what...in all seriousness, why would anyone need more than one fork for a meal? Dumb). They served us steak and chicken wellington and announced the winners of the scavenger hunt from Monday's event (our team was dead last, I'm pretty sure).

Many pictures were taken of the orientation groups in their fancy-wear, and then people scurried off to dress in complete opposite taste. At 8:00 p.m., we started a long hike to a bar the orientation leaders had booked for our Down Under Party. It was meant to mark the end of the Melbourne Welcome program, so the thing to do was dress in ridiculous Australian garb and get piss drunk. It was a bit sloppy, but I had a lot of fun hanging out with friends and dancing my booty off (quite poorly) to some Beyoncé.

I was really thankful for all the student orientation leaders because the Melbourne Welcome program was a largely student run and was completely voluntary.

Now I'm back at my house in St. Kilda and plan to get things in order such as a job, getting a bike, and opening a bank account. Adult things I don't want to do.

View from the Eureka Tower; Photo Cred: Amelia Benstead