AUSTRALIA - ADELAIDE

A semester abroad is full of unfamiliar things. Everything is new and might seem frightening or impossible to overcome at first. At the beginning of my studies I would have never thought that I would be going abroad. I always thought that such a semester abroad was nothing for me, too many changes and too many things I could not prepare to in a short period of time. But the closer I got to this opportunity the more I liked the idea of the unfamiliar and not knowing everything. And what’s even more important not having the need to know what comes next. Therefore I was interested in an exchange semester and began searching for a place that wasn’t too close to home or another place that I already knew. After knowing it was Australia that I would be spending an entire half year I was excited to go there and wasn’t too worried about the things that I hadn’t entirely figured out at that moment. For example, the place where me and my two friends wanted to stay wasn’t chosen and other then the name of the university we didn’t know what would await us there for the next semester. Many things were unknown to us and although we were three people and could rely on each other in an emergency, I still wasn’t always sure what to do about not knowing where to stay or what do in a new situation. Up to this point I always knew what I had to do and where to go and in those rare circumstances where I was clueless I could ask my family or others for help. In Australia it was the first time that I couldn’t’ really ask anyone for help for a long time. The first few days in Australia we spent a lot of time searching for a place to live for the next few months. But we had find out that it wasn’t as easy to find something as we thought it would be. Therefore we decided to stop searching for something and rather enjoy out time in Adelaide. Since we still needed a place to live we decided to live in an Airbnb. This was also a big challenge because we hade to change apartment every one to two weeks and couldn’t really build a home for that time. But at the end we had so much fun at all those places and moving from one to another. Looking back it didn’t bother me at all that I hadn’t a place to call ‘home’ in Australia. The whole accommodation hunting and living was an adventure alone and I enjoyed it. Another big part from Australia that became familiar to me was a good friend from ours, Charlotte. At the beginning we barely noticed her and talked from time to time with each other. From then on I started to really like her. Since many of the local students don’t like to do as much on a weekend we had a hard time to find a friend who wanted to do something with us. With Charlotte we found that friend. She started to tell us more about Adelaide and what we can do in the city or around it on the weekends. She offered to show us around and spend some time with us. From then on we saw each other besides in Uni almost every week and did something together. She showed us her favorite places and took us on trips. At the end of the semester, I had gained a really good friend and it felt as if I had known her a long time. All the people and places that seemed strange or unfamiliar at the beginning became important to me at the end and I didn’t want to leave them. The familiarity of them was similar to the feeling I have of the things I know of at home.