Being in Australia has given me the opportunity to have a daily routine (of sorts) that I can confidently say is incredibly different from my daily routine back in the states. In regard to shopping for groceries, to be completely honest, it was one of my least favorite things to do. The reason I found grocery shopping such a hassle was because every single time that we were out of groceries and needed to go get them, we had to take public transport to the store and back. At first, this seemed like the biggest hassle in the world- to the point where I would wait until I had basically not even a crumb of food in my cabinet before I forced myself to finally go grocery shopping again. I think the part I found to be the biggest hassle was returning from the grocery shop and having to walk with heavy bags of food from the bus stop back to our campus and then up three flights of stairs before finally reaching our kitchen. That said, as this routine became more consistent and more, for lack of a better word, routine, it simultaneously became less and less of a hassle. In fact, I now enjoy (to a certain extent) grocery shopping and am actually excited to return back to the states and be responsible for cooking my own meals and shopping for my own food (kind of…). Also, as the semester went on, I realized many of the people that I was friends with had cars and they eventually started taking me grocery shopping with them which made the whole ordeal 50% less of a hassle (the other 50% was because I was always indecisive about which food to get which made grocery shopping take 35 times longer than it should).
I found myself spending a lot of my time at the beach (either by myself or with friends) often watching people surf, attempting to surf myself, or reading a book and trying to get some sun. I found I felt a lot happier the days I spent larger amounts of time outside, so as the weather got nicer after “spring break” it was much easier to enjoy being outside since it was so much warmer. I would say the beach probably ended up being my favorite place to hang out not only because it was always so jaw droppingly beautiful but also because everyone else at the beach always seemed to be in a good mood compared to people in the city or at school. I think most of all, going home I will miss the people I was surrounded by in Australia who were always in good moods and always optimistic and not judgmental, and I will also really miss the beach being so close.