We are Léa and Solène, two French girls who are from the north of Paris in France. We study food and health in the engineering school of Beauvais which is called Institut Polytechnique LaSalle Beauvais.
At the end of our second year we are required to do an internship in an English speaking country because we have to pass and get a certificate called TOEIC to graduate. It’s an English certification level. We chose Australia because we both wanted to visit this big and beautiful country. We want to improve our English but we also wanted to discover a country and Australia seems the best place to be. The internship is a very good opportunity to go to Australia.
So that’s why we are here in Griffith University.
Our internship is in the Public Health Unit, from June to September. In June, there was a Vietnamese delegation in Griffith, and we accompanied them in their visits to the Gold Cost University Hospital, Byron Bay, Nathan Campus and Gold Coast Primary Health Unit. Moreover, we help the public heath staff when they need assistance in their tasks. For example, we help an assistant researcher in her tasks.
Lecture with Vietnamese Delegation in Gold Coast Primary Health Unit
We live in Surfers Paradise but it’s easy to come each day to the Gold Coast campus with the tram because there is tram every 7 minutes. Gold Coast has good and regular public transport facilitites.
Life is very pleasant on the Gold Coast because there are a lot of beaches, the sun, restaurants… So life is active. When we don’t work, we go to the beach, we go to Dreamworld theme park, or we go visit other places in Gold Coast thanks to public transport. Also, we tried to surf because we think that it will be so bad to not try in a city called “Surfers Paradise”!
Our first surf lesson
Lone Pine Koala sanctury in Brisbane
People that we work with are very welcoming and help us with our new life in Australia. They are happy that we would like to visit Australia and thanks to them we’ve been to the Outback and the East Coast.
We went one week to the Outback, we did Darwin to Uluru in a campervan with 2 other friends. It was very beautiful and disorienting. We visited a lot of places like Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Kings Canyon and Litchfield National Park.
Kings Canyon in the Outback
Litchfield National Park in NT
Our second roadtrip was from Brisbane to Cairns in 2 weeks. It was less disorienting than the desert, it was more beaches and paradisiacal places. We went to Whitsundays, Noosa Heads, Mission Beach, Rainbow Beach, Daintree Rainforest, Cape Tribulation, we did an introduction diving course at the Great Barrier Reef in Port Douglas. It was amazing, we saw a lot of fish and the coral was very beautiful.
Snorkelling in Whitsundays with our 2 friends
We are looking at returning to Australia and Griffith University, once we have graduated to enrol in Master of International Public Health. This will enable us to expand our knowledge and allow us to put our theory into practice. Where else but Gold Coast!
Find out more about studying public health at Griffith University.
– Lea and Solene (Guest Bloggers)
