Surviving Sticker Shock In Southern Australia

Australian cell phone forty dollars, mailing postcards home to the states twelve dollars, lunch on campus ten dollars, having the experience of a lifetime priceless…sort of. 

Before I came to Australia, the students who had studied there the year before had a panel where they talked to next group about places to go and things to see.  The group of eight told us everything on their personal Australia must-do lists from which bars were the best and the spring break trip called One Fish Two Fish (more on this later!) to shopping for souvenirs at Queen Victoria market and going to the beach in St. Kilda.  It sounded like it would be the adventure of a lifetime (and so far it has been) but the thing they kept coming back to was how expensive everything was compared to prices in the United States.  When they talked about how much money they spent I was convinced I could spend less that but after only a week here I can already see that the number they gave us has the potential to become reality for me. 

One night just after midnight some of the other students on our trip and I climbed into the back of a green and yellow 13 Cab after hitting up Melbourne’s only Ice Bar (which is part of the university’s orientation by the way).  The night in the city had been the best by far but the night bus doesn’t run on weekdays so now we had hunt down a cab to take us on the forty minute drive back to our residence halls.  We’d been trying to chase down a cab for what felt like a long time before we finally succeeded in hailing this one.

“That’ll be about seventy dollars.”  The cab driver said.  That’s right, it would cost us seventy dollars to get back to campus after our night out.  This was my first time taking a cab in Melbourne and I definitely hadn’t expected that price.  

We hadn’t even left the city yet (you have to prepay here) and all I could think was oh my god.  Seriously?  That was so much money and it was only one way.  Being a college student in Baltimore (not mention living in a small town back home) had not prepared me for cab fares that high.  I mean in Baltimore you can get to the airport across the city for thirty dollars max and you’d be hard pressed to find any cabs at all wandering the streets of Wrentham (my hometown) where the biggest tourist attraction is an outlet mall.  So even though the bigger cabs, called maxi taxis, are harder to find I was thankful there were enough of us leaving the city to put eight people in each cab and the fare would be divided among us.  

It ended up costing us just over eight dollars each which still seemed a little on the expensive side to me.  After hearing the price and attempting to smother our shock we each fished through the rainbow of brightly colored bills in our wallets and pulled eight dollars (which by the way is a purple bill and two coins: a one dollar coin and a two dollar coin to be exact).  The money here is so pretty and each of the bills is a different color, none of which are green like the United States money we’re used to seeing in our wallets.  The closest comparison I can make is to say it looks almost like Monopoly money (not to say that even remotely lessens the sticker shock we’ve been getting from looking at prices here). 

From seventy dollar cabs to seventeen dollar drinks, everything is more expensive than it is stateside (alcohol, food, you name it).  The only cheap thing we’ve found in our first week here is the thirty cent soft serve cones from Maccas (McDonalds to non-Australians) which are starting to look like a viable meal option.  For those of you who are thinking that we’re not looking hard enough for good deals you’re talking about a group of girls who scoured the aisles of Kmart choosing one plate over another all to save a dollar.  Thats right one measly dollar.  Trust me it adds up quickly.

With a minimum wage of just under sixteen dollars an hour and one of the lowest crime rates around, Melbourne is considered one of the most livable cities in the world but to anyone who’s not used to the city life the prices are sure to shock you.  After only a week here, I’ve learned that even eating a meal at Maccas will cost me a least seven dollars and cooking my own food in the small hall kitchen is probably the cheapest alternative.  One thing is for sure, if you’re living in Australia for an extended amount of time you should look into getting a job.  I sure am.

Australian money!

Australia: An Unexpected Journey

Plans had been in motion for over a year and the time was finally here.  I was leaving the country for five months to study abroad at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia (well the city is forty minutes away but still)!  Studying abroad had always been at the top of my college to do list and as someone who loves to travel visions of adventures in far off places had always been flickering through my head.  Where would I go?  There were so many options, so many places I could see, but after sifting through flyers for what seemed like countless countries I finally settled on Australia.  

The closer my departure date the more excited I became.  I’d been on break from school for almost two full months and I was sick of being home (sorry mom and dad).  I was more than ready to start the new adventure that would be my semester abroad...or so I thought.  The furthest away of all the countries I could choose from, I’d known the flight to Australia would be long but I’d assumed as a twenty-one year old college student it would be no big deal.  I was young.  I could handle it.  It couldn’t really be that bad, could it?  After all, when would I ever want to travel so far again?  (Answer: probably never) I wasn’t expecting the journey (almost thirty-five hours with layovers) to put my love for travel to the test.  Could I really survive almost a day and a half of nothing but airports and flying?  Only this across the world journey I was about to embark on would tell.

I’m somewhat of a frequent traveler so I’m past the point of paying much attention to the in-flight safety instructions (as anyone who travels a lot knows once you’ve heard it once you pretty much know what to do) but Air New Zealand put their own spin on it to make it humorous and capture the attention of even the most seasoned flyers.  Their The Hobbit themed video was a new take on the same old information I’d been seeing almost monthly since deciding to go to school eight hours away in Baltimore (and yes to anyone who got the reference in the title I know The Hobbit was filmed in New Zealand and not Australia but parts of my journey here were and are “unexpected” so it fits).  That being said it’s both the same and different here from the States.

I’ll admit the flights on Air New Zealand came as somewhat of a culture shock being from New England.  Everyone was so nice and they were actually sincere (quite a change from Massachusetts I can assure you).  Once the flight took off it was accents and manners oh my.  When the flight attendants came by to serve the first meal of the thirteen hour flight across the Pacific it was “Will there be anything to eat love?”  (I’m pretty sure a little piece of me died of happiness).  Despite the length of the length of the flight (which really seemed shorter than the flight from New York to San Francisco thanks to the abundance of sleep aids our group brought not to mention the complimentary in-fight wine) it was an unforgettable experience and as far as I’m concerned any other airline will pale in comparison for the foreseeable future.

Now that I’m here there’s so much to discover (attempting to decode the Aussie slang among the most important but more on that later).  I didn’t expect to stand out from the locals quite so much.  I had assumed that going to a country a country where they speak English (always a helpful thing to people who, like me, are bad at foreign languages) would help me blend in more but every time I open my mouth to talk to someone new the first question they ask is the telltale “Are you American?” (My new goal is to blend in enough to avoid this but we’ll see how that goes).

A couple of the other girls and I are constantly making what could be considered “dumb” mistakes but hey we’re new here give us some time to adjust.  We still look left when crossing the street (you’re supposed to look right because they drive on the left) which has resulted in a few close calls with local cars (I know I know we’ll try to be more careful) but they seem to know to look out for international students when driving around campus.  Also, the wall outlets have to be turned on here before you use them (weird right?) which I discovered (thankfully without having to ask) when my new Australian hair straightener “mysteriously” wouldn’t heat up.  But thankfully I’m not alone and the other students I came with are having similar experiences.  I know we’ll adjust eventually but meanwhile the other girls and I are crossing our fingers that our new Aussie friends find our American ways and lack of understanding of anything related to the metric system or temperatures in Celsius (not to mention the things above) endearing and not idiotic.