The moment the plane landed in Wuhan, as I walked out of the airport with all my luggage and saw the smile of my parents, I knew it was really over. I started to think about, what the 131 days on the land of Australia brought me?

First of all, the experience is unforgettable. I was so lucky to have this chance to live in a totally unfamiliar environment to know about other cultures and to make friends with people all over the world. As a language major student, learning cultures is also very important for me to understand other languages and countries better. Knowing more about what other parts of the world were like and how people thought in different ways helped me to enlarge my vision and think more comprehensively. At the same time, I spread Chinese culture to foreign people by showing them some Chinese handicrafts, clothes and food or telling them some ancient stories or festival traditions in China. I have joined an English conversation group where local Australians talked with non-native speakers of English twice a week. In this way I  made some friends from Vietnam, Malaysia and Bosnia and gained a lot from chatting with them.

             Me with two Malaysian girls and two Vietnamese ones

Then is the education I received. Being in a different western educational system in the University of Wollongong, I was required to adopt a new way of studying, which helped me raise my adaptability to new environments. Besides the big lectures, we still had tutorials and peer study sessions every week. The students arranged their time very well, organizing a lot of activities after class. This also taught me about time-management. This semester would be very helpful in my preparation for further study abroad in the future.

A formal event at the end of the session

One thing more remarkable is learning to be alone and get along with myself. With plenty of free time, I had many chances to spend time on my own. I had to be independent in all ways—I did the shopping by myself, I cooked for myself and sometimes even for others, I went to the beach by myself, I went for a run by myself. And I have found out the importance of developing hobbies for a person by starting to do coloring in my spare time.

What impressed me most was the kindness of the people there. Almost all the people smiled to strangers on the road or on the bus. Some of them even talked to me. Once it was raining very heavily, and I was waiting for a bus to go to campus, a girl driving a car offered me and another girl a ride. People were always kind and ready to help others, which was a very good thing I saw in their community.

I have learned a lot from my stay in Australia, and I will keep learning down the road. It is a really beautiful place and I guess I will visit it again one day.

(Edited by Jiahao Xiang & Sijia Hu)