Hello everyone! My name is Erica Hamman and I am currently a junior spending the semester studying abroad at Deakin University at the Melbourne campus in Australia. I will be using this weekly article as a way to encourage students to study abroad and broadcast my experiences while I am traveling.

So far, I have been on campus for a week and it has been a whirlwind. I can only equate it to being like freshman year all over again with meeting new people and forming instant friendships. I am living in a shared apartment on campus with five other students. Two of them are international students from Denmark and Singapore, while the the other two are residents of Australia.

After a couple of days of getting settled and conquering jet lag, all of the international students went on a free beach orientation trip to Lorne for three days. While we were there, we could participate in a variety of activities including surf lessons, bushwalking through the wilderness, hiking and biking. We also lived with students from other countries and got first hand experience with their different cultures.

Today (or yesterday, for everyone back in the U.S.) is orientation, and I am planning on taking classes ranging from dance improvisation and body awareness to reading children’s texts. I am quite excited for what is to come and hope you can take something personal from my experiences while abroad and will want to make memories like these sometime in your future!