Submitted by Lauren Hollmann on the 2018 winter session program in Australia sponsored by the Department of Hospitality Business Management…
I left for Sydney on January 2nd (Tuesday) and after traveling for what seemed like forever (26 hours), I finally arrived to Sydney Airport on January 4th (Thursday). I arrived to Sydney Airport around 7:30 AM and customs was surprisingly fast. You scanned your passport and were given a ticket and then you proceeded to a kiosk where it would take a picture of you to match it to the picture on your passport. The whole process took less than 5 minutes. We arrived at our lodging around 9:00 am and were checked in into our rooms. After that, we had lunch, but lunch didn’t sit well with me so I had to leave early and stayed in my room. I was getting dehydrated and feeling worse, so I went to the hospital, which happened to be across the street. The hospital was rather small compared to hospitals in the U.s. and I was being taken care of within 10 minutes, which I thought was a rather uncommon thing to happen, if I were to go to the hospital at home. I thought the most interesting thing about my hospital experience was the price of an emergency room visit without insurance. It cost me 138 AUD which converts to about 108 USD. I thought this was extremely cheap compared to hospital bills in the US, where an emergency room visit could cost you thousands of dollars without insurance. Despite my hospital visit, I was feeling better by Friday. On Friday, we went into Sydney on the ferry and were able to see the famous Sydney Opera House as we were coming in.
We spent the rest of the day walking around Sydney and a group of us even went to the Sydney Aquarium. I spent the rest of the weekend in Manly going to the beach and enjoying the 104 degree weather. Although I had a rough start to my program, I am certainly enjoying Manly and Sydney. Manly has a very homey vibe to it and while I do feel out of place at some points, Australia has a very relaxed attitude to it and no one seems stressed, so why would I be?