By Amelie Duroux, University of Melbourne, Australia What I hadn’t expected when I moved to Melbourne for my exchange was how much I’d miss the activities I would do every week in Manchester. When you suddenly leave that life behind, there’s nothing making you continue these activities, but I hadn’t realised how much they had contributed to my identity and given me structure in my weekly routine. Luckily for me, I found ways to keep most of these hobbies going, and also start some new ones. For example, in Manchester I went bouldering with my friend every Monday. I was worried that I wouldn’t find anyone who liked climbing in…

By Amelie Duroux, University of Melbourne, Australia It can be so tricky to know the best place to live at university, especially when you are moving across the world to study abroad. I personally had no idea which accommodation to choose when I was preparing to move over to Melbourne, and ended up choosing the accommodation that the majority of the other University of Manchester students chose. The student living culture at the University of Melbourne is so different to the UK universities, because the majority of Australian students do not move away from home – they continue living at home and commute into university, sometimes with journeys which are…

By Amelie Duroux, University of Melbourne, Australia One of the most exciting things about moving to Melbourne has been realising you can never get a bad coffee. Good baristas and coffee culture is so distinguished here that every cup you have is of such high quality. Part of the reason I wanted to come to Melbourne was for the brunch culture – I had worked for a couple of years in an Antipodean brunch café in London, which made me want to experience Australian coffee and brunch, and I had said this in my application for my exchange year abroad. Melbourne have claimed to have invented the flat white, which…