The Big Little First Step

Kia ora from the other side of the Tasman!

It’s been just over a month since I landed in Sydney, and during this time I’ve emerged a victor from the mess that is the Sydney rental crisis, turned my usual stay-at-home-Sundays into 10km-walk-Sundays, and made an adventure out of exploring a new city, from botanic gardens to harbours through to local supermarkets and cake shops… though I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that ‘my campus’ strongly resembles Hogwarts.

Yes, I must admit it’s difficult to tell people that you’re going on an exchange to Australia with the same sort of grandeur as announcing you’re heading to Europe or Asia, for example. But standing on your own two feet someplace new – no matter where on this planet – and looking up and realising that, will open you up and change you in a way you could never imagine. The best possible way! As my friend Celia says, “the Tasman Sea is not a small creek.”

For those who are looking to head abroad with a more academic focus, an exchange outside of UoA is the perfect opportunity to enrol in courses that pave out understanding of your major in niche directions or avenues. One of the courses I am currently enrolled in is the Psychology of Music, a topic that is not taught at the School of Psychology in Auckland… unless you’ve committed to it as part of an honours research project.

Before landing in Sydney, I put aside 5 days for travel in Melbourne (here’s a small video if you’re curious). Besides being a fantastic buffer before slamming right into the muggy 30+ °C weather, it was a solid jumping pad which gave me time to find a mobile provider, practise navigating unfamiliar streets, and figure out (and be sincerely impressed by!) a public transport system that isn’t AThop.

Currently I’m renting as part of a sharehouse in the Sydney inner west suburbs, a half-hour bus commute away from campus. Unpopular opinion but I’d highly recommend living off-campus! It gives you a physical break from the gritty-city environment, a mental break from the university study gridlock, as well as a more genuine taste of what it is really like to live in your host city. You end up discovering all sorts of hidden gems and parks and quiet places. Also it’s a wonderful feeling to be walking to ‘your street’ from the train in the afternoon, smelling someone’s delicious dinner wafting over the fence, spotting cockatoos (be warned, they sound nowhere near as majestic as they look) and planes landing, and think to yourself that somehow, in this little pocket of the world, “this is my home.”