Summer break

by Ffion Davies, University of Queensland, Australia

It’s summer break here at the moment. I’ve just come back from 3 weeks of travelling around New Zealand with my friends. It was so lovely after the stress of end of semester!! We started in the North Island and spent about a week there. We went to the Hobbiton film set, Waiotapu hot pools, did white water rafting and explored Auckland and Wellington. We then spent 2 weeks in the South Island where we hired a campervan to get around. This part of the trip included going to Mount Cook, the Franz Josef glacier, Lake Tekapo, Queenstown and so much more. New Zealand is such a beautiful country and so underrated in my opinion! It reminded me of home a little, with lots of mountains and green fields with sheep and cows grazing grass. The temperature was also similar to home, most days reaching 15 degrees. Coming back to Australia with minimum temperatures of 30 degrees everyday was definitely a shock to the system!

My parents arrive in a few days and we are road tripping to Sydney, spending Christmas Day on Bondi Beach and New Year’s Eve in Sydney too. Then flying to Perth to meet family we’ve never met before!! I’m very excited for this. I’m then travelling a bit of the west coast with a friend for a few days before returning to Brisbane. Something I’m finding difficult now is saying goodbye to my friends that are leaving because they were only here for a semester. I’ve really made some amazing friends and I never thought I’d make such strong bonds with people here. Even though it’s been sad saying goodbye, I still have friends here that are here for a year and will have plenty of opportunities to meet new exchange students that arrive in February. Also, with social media it’s so easy to keep in touch with my friends that have left which is so nice and hopefully we can visit each other one day.