March.

So now i'm all settled into my new home and absolutely love my little flat. I can't believe i've already been here for a month and a half, it's just flying by.

So one of the first events I went to in March was a toga party, which was also kind of a paint party with UV paint. We donned our best bedsheets and gold glitter was absolutely everywhere.

TOGA!

As another event for our intentional orientation, Victoria University threw a boat party/cruise for us one evening. We all got dressed up and enjoyed the beautiful views onboard the Victoria Star whilst drinking a lot of alcohol and eating free pizza.

The Victoria Star

Around the end of my third week here myself and a few friends went to the Moomba Festival in Melbourne City. We spent the afternoon wandering round the different food stalls, game stalls and even went on a couple of the rides. As it started to get dark we went to find a spot by the river to sit and watch some of the waterskiing competitions that were taking place on the lake. Soon after, the firework display started.

Fireworks at Moomba

Every month I try make it easier on myself and keep a draft of my monthly post updated each time I do something, but I can sometimes be a bit useless at that. I'm now struggling to remember what i've done in the past week.

The Grand Prix! I've never really been a massive fan of this on the tv despite a lot of family members loving it, I just couldn't get into it. Like a lot of things though, it's so much different when you're there for real and I actually got a little excited. Unfortunately though that night I came down with laryngitis and was knocked out for a few days! After being prescribed antibiotics I started to feel loads better, but it meant i'd have to take it easy with alcohol for a few days!

#AUSGP!

Here we go again with another night out. This wasn't for anything special, I just really like this picture!

I am a giant.

I'm not really a massive sports person, but when Uni offers you free tickets to an AFL game, you don't refuse. Our friend Tarrena supports one of the teams playing; the Freemantle Dockers, and as me Priya and Louisa aren't from Australia, we weren't really fussed with who we supported, so we chose to support Tarrena's. We all bought scarves and started to get a little excited. In the end we really enjoyed ourselves and I started to really get into the game. Unfortunately though, the Western Bulldogs won 103-38. But it was still a great day out doing something I wouldn't usually do.

Go Freo!

Everyone knows, Jurassic Park is my all time favourite film. I just loved dinosaurs when I was younger. Coincidentally, there was a Jurassic Park exhibition in Melbourne and of course I went. It was themed as if you were actually going to the island and all the little kids were getting so excited it was adorable. There were animatronics of all the popular dinosaurs and they looked so real!

Ah!

As this post goes up i'll be spending my Spring Break in Sydney! Which will be in a new post very soon. I can't believe it's April already!!!
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Tips on beating jet lag.

Before coming to Australia I was really dreading the jet lag. I didn't really want to make a habit of napping through the day and missing out on what was going on. Through some divine miracle, I didn't really suffer any when I got here, so I thought i'd write up what I did to avoid it in case it helps anyone else!

The information in this post is based on my flight time, but how you deal with jet leg depends on the time of your flight/duration/time change between destinations. 

My flight details:

Manchester Airport Terminal 1

Flight departure 8:30pm

Dubai Airport

Flight Arrival: 7:45 (local time)
*2 hour wait*

Flight Departure: 10:15am
Time difference compared to back home: +4hrs

Melbourne Airport 

Flight Arrival: 6:35am (local time)

Time difference compared to back home: +11hrs 

1. Start as you mean to go on. Because the time difference between England & Australia was +11hrs, this meant that I was pretty much sleeping the complete opposite of what I do now. The night before I set off I tried to sleep as much as I could so I could then stay up all night on the plane the night after.
2. Adapt your sleeping early on the plane. To get a real good head start on beating the lag, I decided that on the plane I would sleep Australian time instead of British. This meant that straight away on my 7 hour flight to Dubai I had to do an all nighter. The excitement helped to keep me awake, and the TV kept me occupied for a good few hours. I tried to keep myself doing different things so I wouldn't get bored like watching a movie, then reading a chapter of my book, then watching an episode of one of my favourite TV series, then maybe write up a blog post or speak to people back home on Facebook (yes that's right, I had WiFi on the plane).
3. Walk around a lot. You should also do this to avoid deep vein thrombosis, but getting up every couple hours or so to stretch your legs, even if it isn't for the toilet, helps you stay up. 
4. Drink a lot of water. Keeping refreshed and hydrated is very important, and luckily the drinks on board my flight were free, so I just kept myself stocked up with water and it really helped to keep me awake.
5. Plane food sucks, but eat as much as you can. Keeping your energy up will help to keep you awake so try and eat as much of the nasty plane food as you can.
6. When it's time to sleep, sleep. This might have been a lot easier for me had there not been a screaming baby for 80% of my second flight.
7. Keep yourself busy. When I arrived, I had plenty to be sorting out and didn't really get chance to sit down and relax. I was up walking most of the day sorting out my phone contract, bank account and shopping for my room essentials. At around 4pm I went to sit on campus to use the WiFi and let everyone know at home that I made it here safe. After half an hour I could feel my eyes getting heavy so went for a walk around campus then back to my room to unpack. I finally let myself sleep around 7pm and slept right through until 8am.

Other people might have more tips/find that the complete opposite of some of these works for them! But after finding I didn't suffer with jet lag at all, I thought i'd share what worked for me. I'll be re-testing these on my way home in 3 and a half months.
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Great Ocean Road & Lorne orientation weekend.

So as an exclusive trip for study abroad/exchange students studying at Victoria University, we were whisked away the weekend before semester started to Lorne, which is a almost right at the bottom tip of Australia.

Day 1
Living near Uni definitely has its perks. We were picked up from campus at 9am and drove for about an hour to visit Bell's Beach where the final scene in Point Break is set (not actually filmed). After a Subway lunch we got back on the bus and headed to the next beach to start our surfing lesson!

Bell's Beach! 

Surfing is so much harder than it looks. Just trying to get out into the sea with your surfboard is a workout and a half. When the instructors gave me a push off I managed to get up onto the board on my knees (I managed to stand up once and fell off instantly). It was so much fun and i'd love to give it a go again.

In our wetsuits ready to surf!

Next stop was our accommodation; a cute hostel that was styled a bit like a treehouse. It even had a hammock. Needless to say I fell in love with this hammock. We then had a couple of hours to bagsy a bed and get ready for the evening meal and night out. After the food we went back to the hostel to pre drink and then we all wandered down together to the club. Obviously after a few drinks everyone became very sociable so it was great to get to talk to so many different nationalities and get to know other people going to our University.

Day 2
After a quick breakfast, we all got ready for the day and headed to a field where we learned to play Aussie Rules Football. Me and some of the other girls hadn't had a brilliant night's sleep so we were pretty exhausted, and after trying out a few different warm up drills with the footballs we decided to sit out and watch whilst the others played a friendly game.
After a pretty disappointing fish and chips for lunch, myself and another friend went back to the hostel for a nap (I had my beloved hammock) and almost ended up missing the afternoon hike through the Great Otway National Park & the Surf Coast Walk! Luckily we made it just in time. After seeing some incredible views and a Koala's butt...

...we made it back to the hostel and had a well earned rest before going back out again for dinner. This time we decided not to go out afterwards, we were all far too exhausted for another one! Most of the girls in my dorm stayed at the hostel and chilled out with snacks and card games.

Day 3
After packing up and getting on the bus, we went for a drive along the Great Ocean Road and the views were beautiful.

The beautiful views on the Great Ocean Road.

After a while we stopped for lunch and we had the opportunity to go in a helicopter for $95 to see the 12 Apostles. Going in a 'choppa' is on my bucket list so of course I decided to do it.

On the choppa!

It was then back on the bus and we made our way to Loch Ard Gorge. I went for a paddle in the sea just when a wave crashed in and wet my bum, oops. We got a big group picture then headed back up to the bus to go see London Bridge.

London Bridge.

Finally it was time to get on the bus one last time and make our way back home. It was such a good weekend where I met so many lovely people. At first the majority of us got onto the bus complete strangers but when we got back on the bus to come home, we had so many new friends from all over the world.
The next exchange students trip is a cruise party next week!
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February.

I'm not gonna lie, this has probably been the most eventful and emotional month of my life. And for once i'm not being dramatic.

I now live in Australia.

I know, i'm still waiting for it to sink in too. I still kind of feel like i'm on an extended holiday.

But i'm getting ahead of myself, this didn't happen until the 17th, so let me take you back to the beginning.

So to commemorate my leaving the country and so I could see as many people as possible, I threw a fancy dress party at my house, with the theme being anything beginning with A (for Annabel and Australia). We had an Arab, Aurora, the Avengers, 2 Addams Families, 4 Amy Winehouse's, Adele, 4 Angels, 2 Alice Coopers, Ash Ketchum, an Alligator, Andy from Toy Story, Ally McCoist, an Aviator, ABBA, Andie Pandie, Arrow, an Apology and my Grandma dressed up as me. I had an absolutely brilliant (and emotional) night, it was the perfect way to say 'see you later' so all of my closest family and friends. I then had 3 of my best friends, Mary, Melissa and Josh to stay over afterwards which was great as we haven't been together (all 4 of us) in such a long time. We stayed up until 5am catching up.

Just a few of the fantastic costumes everyone pulled together!

If you haven't been to see Deadpool yet, stop what you are doing right now and go see it (finish reading this first obviously). I went with my school pals to go see it 2 days before I left for Aus. We basically just reminisced about all the bad decisions I made and stupid stuff I did in high school which is always a good way to have a laugh. It was nice to have a separate goodbye from the madness that was saturday. But the film was hilarious, and I can't wait so see it again (unfortunately it will have to wait until i'm back in England).

So, on the 19th of February, the day had arrived for me to leave everyone and everything I knew, and move to not only a different city or country, a different continent all together. It was bye bye hats and scarves and hello to shrimps on the barbie. Saying goodbye to my family for 5 months was without a doubt the hardest thing i've ever had to do. I've now got to wait a long time before I can have a bear hug with my dad, the weird fist bump thing Baymax does with my sister or just sit and chat for hours about everything with my Mum like we do most evenings.  I've already written about the plane journey, which you can read here. And my not so great first day here. And my slightly better second day here. I think i'd just been so excited about the whole thing that before I came I didn't consider the bad parts. 

During my first week there were a few things I needed to sort out in my flat such as bedding, towels, WIFI, my phone contract, food, washing supplies, toiletries etc. Along with this I also went to the White Night festival in Melbourne with 2 girls I met here that also go to Leeds Beckett back home. We sort of felt like we missed the main event as we didn't understand all the hype behind it. There was a fire eater/sword swallower, projections on buildings and different works of art out on the streets. It was interesting but for what we heard was Melbourne's most popular event, we just didn't get it. We also visited St. Kilda beach the day after. I slapped on the factor 50, however the parts that I forgot to apply cream to burnt like a crisp. At least I know the sun cream works. We also went on our first night out in Melbourne.

St. Kilda beach at 27°

As an orientation trip specifically for the study abroad and exchange students at Victoria University, we went to Lorne, which is a little more south of Melbourne. It was such an amazing weekend and a brilliant start (after my slightly shittier first day) to my adventure in Australia. I'll write about it in more detail in the next week.

My time here is already going so fast. Before I know it i'll be back in England in the pouring rain!
To go from never living out of my family home to moving to the other side of the world was pretty risky leap, but i'm so glad i've done it.
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