In fact, Dunedin girl Viva Foster calls her new life as a student of Melbourne's National Theatre Ballet School "amazing" and "a dream come true".
Since early this year, the 16-year-old has been one of 10 first-year students selected for the three-year programme at the school, which trains dancers for professional careers in ballet.
Compared to her old routine at Kavanagh College in Dunedin, school was now "completely different", she said.
"We go to school to dance all day. Everything is related to dance. We do some correspondence school work, but much of it is the theory of dance. It's really good to be in this environment."
Miss Foster started ballet when she was 8 to help with her gymnastics.
"But it's sort of turned out the other way around."
After about two years, she knew performing ballet was what she wanted to do for a career and she was accepted to the Melbourne school after an audition.
Miss Foster is one of four Dunedin women studying ballet at the National Theatre - Samantha Voss (18) is also a first year student and Phillipa Stewart (21) and Phoebe Begg (22) are third-year students.
Miss Foster recently returned home for the holidays, but wanting to keep her dancing up, she entered the British Ballet Organisation's South Island dance theatre awards in Christchurch last week - which she won.
At this stage her only immediate plans are to make it through the next three years, but she wants to work as a professional dancer.
In the meantime, the Daughters of Divine Zeal (the chapter of nuns that run the hostel where she is living) were not so bad, she confided.
"They are Italian and don't really understand much English, so you can get away with a little bit," she said with a grin.
