The 4 days in Adelaide

I’m a week late with the telling of the events, but I can’t miss to tell you about my 4 days in Adelaide the last week.

As someone doesn’t know, i explain that i’m here in Australia for an exchange project between European and Australian universities about the Global Citizenship. The first part of the project provided that all the European students met at Adelaide for a 3 days program of lectures, workshops and cultural visits.

Well, we left in a cloudy morning from Sydney, with a 20° C temperature, and after 2 hours of flying we just got to a sunny, hot Adelaide : 38°C!! Ah, from Sydney to Adelaide, placed in the Southern Australia, there’s 30 mins of time-zone difference!

We were taken at our accommodation: a sort of bungalow in a camping! We just expected something better, as the last year, for the same project, the other student stayed in a four-stars hotel! Anyway, the good thing was that the camping was only 50 meters from the beach! So in a while we left our belongings in our rooms and we run to the beach! And in 5 minutes we were taking our first bath in the Australian waters! You can guess about the sea-water, transparent of course!...and no jellyfishes and no sharks luckily!! Instead what’s dangerous is the sunshine: it’s very “strong”, i had to “throw” my sun protective cream n. 10 and use a cream +30. In Australia they’re very careful about the sunburns, they always say you how dangerous it could be, mainly because the ozone hole is just over Australia!
By the way, it was my first time swimming in February, while in Italy (like someone told me) the temperature was about 5°C!
And after some time we saw some guys playing with a ball and... do you know what happen when 3 italian men see a ball?? In a moment it started a soccer match on the beach: Italy vs Australia. We are the world champions and (obviously) we won!!! Io in Italia a giocare a calcio se nn sono una pippa poco ci manca, in mezzo agli australiani ero un fuoriclasse!! Queste sì che so’ soddisfazioni!!!

Later we met the other European students: we were 7 from Roma, 7 from Utrecht (Holland), 7 from Malmoe (Sweden) and 2 Australians. The first night we went together for a (typical?) fish&chips... simple terrible!!! i’d have prefered a pizza, but i have to adapt to the living abroad, so...

The days passed quickly, some lectures, some workshops and some visits to museums and cultural centres. the most interesting was the one to an Aborigin culture centre, where an Aborigin guide talked us about their culture and played the dijeridoo. Really funny!
All these days with a temperature around 35-37°.

The final day we had to do a presentation about the work done and at the end we had a formal dinner for the closing of the program. People, we had champagne with oysters and very good food! For the first time, i ate the kangaroo meat! I know some of you are shivering at the idea of eating kangaroos, but here it’s not strange. And the kangaroo meat is quite tender and not fat at all!
Food apart, we spent some great time together, learning more about the multicultural australian society and socializing among us!
Ehi men, you can understand me, it was quite hard not “to fall in love” with some of those girls I met there!!! you see the group final photo to understand what i mean!!!

The beginning...

As many people asked to me, i “gave birth” to this blog to inform all of you about my life in Australia.
It will be mostly in English, this is “my” language now and moreover in this way all of you can understand.


I got to Australia 12 days ago and i’d have so many things to tell already...I’ll try to make a resume...

Lets start from the beginning. You know, the flying time to Australia was very long (about 20 hours!) but good. I flyed by Singapore Airlines, that’s a very good airline, the flight attendants are so cute and helpful!
From the air, the most spectacular view was the Australian desert, huge, with red sand and rocks, ...and i was even able to take a pic of the famous Ayers Rock!! The quality is not excellent, but from the air you can’t expect much...

Once landed, you can guess, we are looking forward for getting to new “house”, but... a line for the cheching passports and another one for the “quarantine” was waiting for us! They check your baggage to see if you have food, plants, anything that can “spoil” the Australian “ecosystem”. Actually I got the impression that’s only a form of trade protectionism!

We found a person from the Macquarie Univ. (my australian university) picking us up and leaving to our apartment. In the way to “home”, we got the first impression about how huge this city is.
So, after 12 hours of flying from Rome to Singapore, 3 hours of waiting in Singapore, 8 hours of flying from Singapore to Sydney, 1 hour and half in the airport for the checks and 1 hours by car we got to our new apartment!!

It’s in a very nice residential area, with villas, little buildings, with a lot of green areas, we can clearly smell the eucalyptus trees, to hear the chirping of the birds... it’s a quite romantic atmosphere, don’t you think? More we have the chance to use a tennis court or a little swimming pool for free just downstairs.
The apartment is even quite large, and we’re only 2 people. So isn’t it wonderful?

Actually there are some incoveniences. We’re 20 minutes walk from the campus, where we’ll have the lectures, where there are some little shops and the library where i can use internet! Yeah, that’s a quite big problem: internet is less widespread than in Italy, to get wi-fi connection in the apartment is very expensive or they ask you to get a 2 year long subscription...
At the end i suppose i’ll use internet only at the university...it’s a pity even because it’s quite difficult to stay in touch by skype... we also have to consider here we are10 hours later than in Italy, so it isn’t easy to be on-line at the same time!

The first day after our arrival we had our first visit of the campus. We’re not used to live in a campus in Italy, so it’s something new for us. It’s a very large area, with hundreds of buildings, sport fields, gym, pool, meadows, ecc... all very nice, but if not a car, a bike would be very useful to go around! We often think about buying it and we’re waiting for a good occasion.

In the meantime, my legs and my feet started working so hard! Well, you could say: “Why don’t use the public transports?”. Sure, we do, but the bus that passes near to us isn’t very frequent, often it’s once in a hour... And during the week there are no night buses!! The first night we went to Sydney we had to catch a taxi to come back home! The Australians told us there are night buses only in the weekend, they explained that they (the Australian students) also work during the week, so they don’t have the chance to go out at night.
Anyway, to go to the city is not less than 40 mins, more than 1 hour during the rush-hours. With a lot of curses, we realized that a lot of time in Australia will be spent in a bus, or waiting for a bus, or just walking!!! I just MISS MY CAR!!!!!

In the weekend we had our first visit of Sydney during the day. It was such an emotion to cross the Harbour Bridge, to see the Opera House and the Darling Harbour of Sydney not anymore in a pic, but “live”! Ehi people, I did it, I’m really being in Australia!!
I’ve to say thank you to God and some other people for having got that... and maybe also thank you to myself: if i got this grant, that’s also thanks to the weekends and the nights spent studying ...