While studying abroad, I wanted to explore as much of my host country as possible. My roommate and I visited Melbourne, Australia for a weekend and while it was amazing to experience a new city and see new sites, there were some things that didn’t go to plan. Still, we managed to make the most of our trip and still had an amazing time!
A pretty view of Melbourne and the autumn leaves!One of the biggest attractions when visiting Melbourne is the Great Ocean Road; however, it’s about a 2-3 hour trip from Melbourne! With no car and no other way to go see the beautiful attraction, our only real way of seeing it was to book a tour. This trip was planned very last minute and while a lot of the tours were booked, we managed to find one the day before and booked the trip! We were so excited and had planned our whole day around the tour.
The view of Melbourne from my window seat on the flight!On the day of the tour, we woke up very early and met our group at the agreed location. While everything seemed to be going to plan, this was where everything went wrong. Our bus driver denied us getting on the bus and said our names weren’t on the list! We showed him our tickets, showed proof that it was for the same company, and asked him how else we were supposed to go on the tour, but he didn’t seem to listen to us. He told us that there would be another bus to pick us up and it must have been running late. With that, he took off with everyone else on the bus but us two. Suddenly things didn’t feel right at all, and we knew that was supposed to be our bus. We tried calling the company, but after being on hold for 30 minutes, it went straight to voicemail. We waited over an hour and no other bus came.
So, we were devastated. We had planned our whole day around this tour! What were we going to do now?
My roommate and me taking a picture with a Park Seo-Joon cutout, a famous Korean actor who is a representative for the food company Bibigo!After wallowing in my sadness, I realized I couldn’t waste my time being upset and just sitting here, waiting for a bus that would never come. I had to make the most of my limited time in Melbourne! My roommate and I looked up things to do and we found out there was a Korean Festival happening! Interested in the culture and the activities, we decided to go.
An activity at the festival where you could learn how to write your name in Korean!The festival was so much fun! There was Korean food (I had my first spicy tteokbokki!), plays and music performances, B-Boy dance performances, taekwondo demonstrations, and even Squid Game games! The festival took up our whole day and we had so much fun learning about and experiencing Korean culture.
A screenshot of the B-Boy group ’20 Century BBoys’ during their amazing hip-hop dance performance!In the end, I’m so glad we got to go to the Korean festival! It was the first one after three years of COVID and I felt so lucky we got to go. While I am still sad that I didn’t get to go see the Great Ocean Road, I’m so glad I got to experience the Korean community in Melbourne. It was an event that I wasn’t expecting, but I still gained so many memories from it!
Lexi Witherspoon, University of Central Florida, is studying abroad in Australia with TEAN.
