Jacqueline during her internship in Sydney, Australia

Jacqueline: "From Miami to Sydney!"

Hello everyone,

As I write this, I’ve just been in Sydney for one day and I want to take you back for a moment to my preparations and expectations for this big adventure.
I have always been someone who starts each day very prepared and doesn’t like unexpected things. So it’s quite impressive that I’m now in Sydney… The plan was actually to go to America, a decision I made three and a half years ago. It wasn’t yet certain whether I would go there for a year for both my internship and minor, or just for half a year for one of the two.

To make a very long story short: this adventure unfortunately fell through two days before my school deadline. Luckily, I never give up, and not on this day either. I immediately started calling around and through Abroad Internships I got the amazing opportunity to do an internship in Australia, in Sydney, for half a year! This took some getting used to because I hadn’t prepared for this at all and now I would be in Sydney within four weeks, so it was pretty last minute to get everything arranged like I had for America. Even though everyone thought I would never do it, especially not without proper preparation, with the support of my boyfriend I decided to take the chance and go to Sydney.

The next four weeks I was mostly busy submitting my internship paperwork to school and arranging a visa. This all went faster than expected, especially the visa! Within an hour—yes, really, one hour—I received the confirmation email for my Working Holiday visa. That was such a huge relief. Other important things to arrange in advance are a medication passport and changing your bank card to worldwide usage (I also thought it was smart to authorize my parents for important matters). Oh, and of course the most important: don’t forget to apply for your public transport allowance and out-of-town grant (if you weren’t receiving those yet).

The rest of the time, I mostly focused on carefully deciding what to pack in my suitcase. At first, I wanted to travel with just a few outfits and buy the rest in Sydney. When I booked my flight ticket — which I arranged through Kilroy — I saw that I was allowed to bring 40 kilos! So I decided to bring as much as possible, but mostly old clothes so I could enjoy shopping and buying new clothes there. Lastly, I already started looking for a room via Flatmates. This site worked best for me, but I also heard it’s better not to confirm anything right away. Beforehand, I made a few appointments to view houses during my first week.

As you’ve already read, everything happened very quickly for me. I expect it to be a big challenge with some setbacks, but mainly an amazing experience that will boost my confidence and greatly improve my English.

Besides that, I hope to learn a lot during my internship and get to work on cool projects and assignments.

Finally, I obviously want to make friends quickly and explore Sydney and the surroundings together with them. Finding a room still seems like the biggest challenge, as well as coping with saying goodbye to my family and friends back home. That won’t be easy, but fortunately there’s Skype and WhatsApp, and my parents and boyfriend are coming to visit for three weeks!

That’s it for my first blog — I hope you’re looking forward to my other stories. I’m definitely excited to write them for you. But now I’m going to enjoy my first real full day in Sydney. Bye!