The last week of our first block of classes has arrived! What that means for me is that most of the week was spent preparing for my final exam for my Global Management class and my final paper for my Aussie Life and Culture class. The good thing is that after all of this, we went on a trip to Melbourne! This was a great way to unwind after a busy week. On the first day in Melbourne, we started the day with a walking tour where we learned a lot about the city. One thing that amazed me was that almost all the gold we saw on the buildings was real gold to symbolize their success in the Victoria Gold Rush. I was able to get a lot of great pictures from this walk.
That last picture is of a friend that we ran into while on the walking tour. After this we walked around Melbourne more and got to know the place. The city definitely has its differences from Sydney but in a good way. I noticed that the city felt busier and had a lot more diversity! I finally found a really good authentic taco truck which I have been struggling to find in Sydney. We also tried a local coffee shop after the tour because we heard about how well-known Melbourne is for its coffee, and my cup definitely lived up to the name.
The next day after checking out, a couple of my friends and I went to the Queen Victoria Market, and the weather was a lot better than the day before for our walk. The Queen Victoria Market was a lot bigger than I expected and had different shops for clothes, souvenirs, home décor, and even many different options of food from different ethnicities, and a large produce area. I was able to find my dad a souvenir here and even browsing through the shops I didn’t buy anything from was a fun experience.
The last thing we were able to do was visit the Chinese museum in the Chinatown of Melbourne. It was a great experience and I was able to learn a lot! I learned that the Victoria Gold Rush was a big part of the Chinese history. I also saw many different Chinese traditional clothing, herbalist tools, and the masks for their traditional new years events.
