Day 1

After 36 hours of traveling, I have finally made it to Perth!  I am here with two of my roommates, Alanna and Erica, and we are all so excited to finally be here, after so many months of planning!

The process of reaching this city was a trying one, but I know it will definitely be worth it. We flew from New York to LA, LA to Sydney, and then from Sydney to Perth, which amounted to a total of 26 hours of flying. If we include the time we lost from layovers and various flight delays, we spent a full 36 hours traveling here! Needless to say, I don’t want to get back onto a plane anytime soon :)

We all are living in St. Thomas More, or “Tommy” as it is more affectionately referred to over here. It is a residential college across the street from UWA’s campus. It is also the smallest college in the area, housing about 200 students, and consists of about 50% international students and 50% Australians. I love the college so far—I have my own room (apparently having a roommate isn’t too common here) and a balcony that overlooks the Swan River—it is absolutely gorgeous! 

St. Thomas More Residential College ("Tommy")

My Room!

My closet--its HUGE...yesssss :)

The view of Swan River from my balcony

Now that I have spent a full day over here, I figured it was appropriate to write my first post! After waking up at 5 am Saturday morning (July 20^th) Erica and I weren’t able to fall asleep and were completely restless. The Jet lag is killer. So what did Erica make me do? Go on a run with her through Perth. What better way is there to get to know the city? As soon as the sun began to rise around 7am, we threw on our running shoes, found a path that wound around Swan River, and ran along side it, watching the sun come up. The city was totally breathtaking, especially considering that this was the first time we were seeing it in real life, not from pictures on the internet.

Pictures from the morning run

Perth city skyline

After our run, we came back to Tommy to meet up with Alanna and get lunch at the dining hall on our campus. Here’s the thing—there are 3 scheduled meal times that only last for an hour or so during the day. If you miss the meal time, no food for you! Since we are used to round-the-clock service at BC, we were totally shocked when we went to the dining hall and found it locked. We were starving, so we decided to walk to the business district of Perth, or “downtown”. It was about a 45 minute walk, but it was such a beautiful day that it was wonderful being outside with the fresh air and sunshine. We walked along the path next to Swan River, which led us straight to the city. We did have to ask for directions once, and ironically the person that we ended up asking was wearing a Red Sox hat! I thought that was a good sign :)

Once we got into the city, we walked around, enjoyed lunch at an outdoor café, and continued to explore our new surroundings. Perth is a gorgeous city and very welcoming. Everyone we spoke to was outgoing and excited that we are here. There were a bunch of street performers that we watched, as well as many (expensive) stores that we perused during our day downtown. On our walk back to Tommy, we sat on a bench by the river for a bit and watched dolphins and all sorts of wildlife that I have never seen before in the river—it really is so cool and truly enlightening to see how much else is out there. I feel like in just one day I’ve had so much exposure to things I have never experienced in my life, and its so exciting!

Street Performer juggling knives while standing on 2 volunteers...Essentially my worst nightmare

Perth!

All in all, that was the gist of my first full day here in Perth. Tomorrow, all of our orientation activities begin, which will definitely be fun and helpful! I am so excited to see what this week and the next few months bring! I have met so many kind and wonderful people already, and I cant wait to see all that my future here holds!

Love you all, I’ll try to keep the blog posts coming to keep ya’ll in the loop!

Cheers! (What all the hip Australians say),

Rebecca