By Megan Hitchcock (University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia).

This past week I have left Perth (yet again!) and taken myself to Melbourne and Canberra, managing to catch up with lots of the Manchester crew!

First stop was Melbourne, which was the last city I really wanted to tick off my bucket list for this year, and it definitely didn’t disappoint! I stayed with fellow psychologist at Manchester, Anna, and she was a great tour guide! I spent my few days seeing lots of the sights Melbourne has to offer and exploring all the little quirky shops and graffiti covered alleyways. I’ve even bumped into an old London friend. A definite highlight was seeing the penguins at St Kilda and spotting graffiti art by the well known artist ‘Rone’! Anna lives with two other Manchester study-abroaders so it was fun to get to know them, and this gave me lots more to look forward to on my return to Manchester in September. Another important factor of my trip to Melbourne was to catch up with another old Manchester exchanger, Ash, a girl who was on exchange from Melbourne in my first year. It was so lovely catching up with her and it really did show us that even after two and a half years of not seeing each other, nothing had changed at all and it felt just like it was yesterday that we were in halls together!

The second half of my trip was to go to Canberra where I was lucky enough to go to a college ball over there. Even though it had nothing on my Trinity Ball last semester (sorry guys!), it was a very fun night! Any excuse to put on a dress and heels 🙂 There I bumped into fellow blogger, Will, who apparently through no fault of his own ended up in a suit like this! (Questionable I know…) After a few days there chilling in Canberra, I came back to Perth. It was a teary plane ride back, realising that this was the last time I would be flying back to Perth, as the next time I leave Perth, it’s for good! 🙁

Among other things, being back in Perth meant our last formal dinner at college. Formal dinners are a pretty big deal here, and I must have been to about ten across the year and this was the last one! The college had asked two of the year-long exchangers to make a speech about their experience at Trinity, which were very touching. They echoed what we were all thinking, which was that our year abroad would be nowhere near the experience it’s been without Trinity. This was followed by a slideshow, put together by one of the girls, of our exchange experience across the year. It was that moment, when all of us exchangers were standing in the middle of the room, watching the pictures and remembering every single moment, that the sentimental girl I am came out in me and I got very teary! The tears were greeted by the boys telling me to ‘man up’ and enjoy the night, so I soon cheered up, but it really did remind me how much I will miss this place.

My last bit of fun before exams was going to my first AFL game yesterday (Aussie rules football) watching the West Coast Eagles v North Melbourne, which was an experience! After having just applied for whatever seats we could, we were very happy when we realised we were three rows from the pitch behind the goal! It was much more civilised than any football games I’ve been to at home, but also much more complicated! It has some very weird rules! However it was a great experience and definitely another important thing to tick off my bucket list 🙂

Now with only three weeks left and exams looming I’m getting into study mode so I’m off to read through some notes but I’ll blog again soon 🙂