Looking at the thousands of photos and videos that I took in Melbourne, it brought me back all the laughter and happy tears that we had. This study tour in Australia was so meaningful to me that nothing in my life could ever replace it.

After eight hours of flight, we finally made it to Melbourne. I was first surprised by being surrounded by English speaking people and having to interact with everyone in English! When we met our campus driver, who was Asian, I thought that he would communicate with us through Chinese or other Asian languages, but he chose to speak to us in English, which made me believe that I was really in Australia.

The campus driver picked up our luggage and it was time for us to start our new journey. The car began to move and greeting us along the way was a vast piece of grassland, lots of trees and a huge highway. This was different from what I used to see in Macau and I began to have a little culture shock. What made it even worst was that I would be meeting my homestay family soon. When I was still in Macau, I contacted my homestay parent through email and found that they were really nice and welcoming and I thought that I should be fine when I met them. But I was still feeling nervous to see them for the first time. By the time I reached the house, my heart was pumping fast, my mind was blank, and I was standing there still and feeling awkward. But my homestay parent gave me a big hug immediately to comfort me and cooked me some Asian food, which made me feel much better and believe that it would not be too bad to live with them and try to adapt to my new environment.

Three weeks in Melbourne was not too long or too short, because I had been experiencing so many things throughout the whole journey. Like on campus, I was assigned to be in the same class with some Japanese students. Different from what I imagined, they were so approachable and they tried their best to understand us. Therefore, we became good friends as we had fun and shared so much time with each other. On the other hand, my friends and I also tried to explore different places in our leisure time. We went to the Melbourne Zoo to see koalas and feed kangaroos, St. Kilda to ride bicycles along the coast line and saw the little penguins coming home, and to the world known Great Ocean Road and admired the beauty of nature. All the things I did in Australia made me appreciate this country and I began to like it more.

There were many more interesting things I came across in Melbourne and I have warm memories of all of them. For people who are attracted to go to Melbourne, they should go and experience it for themselves, and they will be able to know how much fun I had.