October - little things

In october I had already been here for more than 2 months, so everything was kinda a daily routine and didn't seem 'special' anymore. This also means that I started to get bored sometimes.
Unfortunately I ended up in a year level where there is only a small group of people who catch up after school or even on weekends most of them don't do much! Because I had 'buddies' in the group who almost never does anything I kinda ended up there which was and even now at the end of my year still is frustrating. 

Don't get me wrong - they are very nice people and I love them, it's just very hard to get them to catch up with you, it always takes a few months of planning for them to maybe do something.
Everyone is always very quick in saying "Oh we have to catch up!", but I learned not to get to keen for it, as it often gets cancelled on very short notice or just never happens.
That whole 'not - doing - much - ever' thing was probably one of my biggest challenges during my time here, especially to learn not to take it personally.

 

So, that was enough of  the winching, now I'm gonna write about a few little things that happened in October!
Yay only 9 months behind with my blog haha I'm hopeless, sorry!

daisy, amour and me at school, start of term 4
(I know I look like I'm 12 in this photo -.-)

We were very lucky with the weather in October and already had some really nice summery days (35 - 40+ degrees!) so I met up with some other exchange students at the beach a couple of times.
We met at Glenelg beach, which is the only one we could get to with public transport from the city. It takes me about half an hour to get to the city by train and the tram to Glenelg takes about another hour.

on the Glenelg Pier with:

Pascal(swiss), me, Mel(french), Sofia(swedish)

me&mel

One of the other hot days my host mum said I can take a day off school, so her, my host brother and I went to have a look at a town called 'Victor Harbour' about 1 hour from Adelaide.
We went there to see my 'host grandparents' , have a look around and go to a little native wild life sanctuary.

we fed the kangaroos and there were so many!
when they saw our food bags they kept following us around :D

me patting the Koalas!

view from the 'Victor Harbour Bluff'

We also had  our first orientation weekend for all the inbounds in our Rotary district (we're only 5 :/ ), but I'm gonna make an extra post for that.

first holidays

In the end of September and beginning of October I had my first holidays in Australia. We had two weeks off school between the 3rd and 4th term of school.
My host family took me on a road trip through the west of South Australia.
The first part of the trip was going to the Flinders Ranges, which feels like the middle of nowhere and depending how deep you go into there you can even officially call it outback.

It took us a few hours to get to "Angorichina village" which was a tiny campground with a few cabins and a little shop full of mainly random things. One of the cabins was our accommodation for the next 2 days.
The next morning we took some dirt roads (typical Australian red dirt, I love it), to get to "Wilpina pound", the most famous part of the Flinders ranges national park. We hiked up a little mountain "mt. Olsson-Bagge", next to saint Marie's peak. The hike was quite easy and only took about 1 1/2 hours on the way up (if I remember it right). However, the view was pretty amazing and definitely worth it.The only thing that made it exhausting was the heat and sun, there wasn't much shade around.
On our last day in the Flinders, I climbed up a hill next to our campground, to get a good overview of the area, it was definitely almost as good as from the top of the mountain the day before.

                                                                part of the hiking trail

                                                                        hiking map

An Emu came super close! (sorry for the weird colour of the pic)

                                                         
After that we drove to a tiny former mining village (dirt roads again) for lunch and exploring, except, there wasn't much to explore. It was still very interesting to have a look around, even though it was extremely small! And nothing more than dust, rocks and some little mountains/hills around. The local pub was surprisingly crowded though and the food was pretty good as well.
At night we went to the apparently very famous "Prairie hotel", which was about half an hour from hour accommodation. It is especially famous for its "roadkill" platter, which e.g. includes Emu and Kangaroo meat.

tiny village of Blinman

the prairie hotel

Outback sunset- in front of the prairie hotel

                                                       

The day after, we started the second part of the trip. We drove for about 6 hours further west on a VERY! straight road, to a small town called Cummins, where my host family used to live.
We stayed at my host sister's husband's parents' (the Modras) place.
The next morning we headed down to port Lincoln, which is a very nice town about an hour from cummins.

on the way to cummins we stopped in a town called 'Whyalla'

cummins!

port lincoln

One of the major attractions there is "swimming with the tuna". My host parents invited me to go and do it with them.
At first we went on a boat to get to more open sea, where they have  there big tuna farms. One of them got changed, so they can use it for tourists. Once we arrived there, we had to change into a wet suit, goggles and snorkel before we could jump into the (cold) water. Once we were in we swam snorkeling around looking at the big fat Tunas for around 1 - 2 hours. It was a great experience, I was surprised how big the Tunas looked from up close! Luckily tea and coffee was included in the price, so that helped me warm up after I got changed back into my normal clothes.

the swimming with the tuna boat

the platform

When we were back in Lincoln I caught up with Gus from Belgium again, who is hosted there. He showed me around the town, his school and house, but we only had 1 hour before we had to go back to meet my host parents.
Back in Cummins we drove out of the town to have a look at the Modra's huge farm and met the little grand children (4, 2 and 1 yr old), who came over for dinner after. It was really great for me to have the little ones around that night, because I was used to having my little sister in Germany. Playing with them was great fun!

the modra farm

The next day, the fun part of the trip was over, as we had to drive back to the Adelaide hills in one go (more than 7 hours...).
All together it was a great trip!! I was a bit sad that none of my friends were able to come with me so I was the only young person but I still had a great time!!

sorry I couldn't find a lot of photos I think my host family still has them....

ROYAL ADELAIDE SHOW

Another thing I did in the beginning of September, was going to the Royal Adelaide show at the Adelaide showground, with Gus from Belgium. It's a big event which comes to Adelaide and all of the major Australian cities for a few weeks every year.At the show were a lot of big sheds full with farm animals like horses,sheep alpacas and cows. In other halls they had pets and even stuff like snakes and baby crocodiles.
Another thing they had in the halls are competions for almost every crafty thing you could think of, for example hats or cakes.

In the outdoor area they had heaps of rides, but we only went on one of them because they were so ridiculously expensive. They also had shows for some of the animals, for example a baby pig race or things like a tree cutting competition. In two of the biggest halls they had a lot of people selling all kinds of stuff and gardening and cake competitions. We just walked around the whole showground for a few hours and had food and coffee breaks in between.

aussie footy game

On the day after the briefing day, I went to a Australian football match with my 'whole' host family, so my older host sisters and their partners came as well. Australian football or 'footy' is a unique sport and very different to European or American football. The game we went to was the last Adelaide Crows game for the season 2014. It was really fun to watch that and luckily they even won!! 

they are playing on an oval instead of a rectangular field and there is no norm for the size  

I took the photos of the oval and the other ones are from the internet, just to show you a bit more of the sport.

                                                         

 



                                  das logo:

first meeting day of all inbounds (in August)

Hey, I am really sorry that I didn't post anything for the last 4 months I'm feeling really terrible about that! I have summer holidays now, so I finally got organised and started writing a diary/ journal for myself and decided that I'm gonna post about everything that happened so far in the right order, that's why this post is about our in- and outbound 'briefing day' we had on the last day of August.
 I just realized that I haven't posted a photo of me in my school uniform yet, so I'll do that here as well.

that's me on my first day of school wearing the winter uniform

We had our meeting at the Nunyara conference centre near my school and it was a compulsary event for all students from my district D 9520 and our 'neighbour' district D9520.

We are 5 inbounds in my district, coming from Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Germany. In D9500 are 7, from Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Finland.

It was the first time we all met each other, so we were really excited and looking forward to that. In the beginning of the day, we all had coffee and started excanging Pins for our blazers. After that everyone had to come into a big conference room where the Chairs of our districts introduced us to everyone and took a photo of us.

 

a group photo of all students in and from my district

  

obviously paying attention while the chairman is talking

Then inbounds and outbounds split up and we inbounds got told all the rules again and told everyone a bit about our self, as did the rotatians and rotex students who were there.

When that was finished we finally had lunch and a bit of free time, which we spent sitting outside in the nice spring weather. Because we were all so excited about finally meeting everyone we took heaps of photos.

having lunch

having a break afterwards

and of course taking photos

all inbounds

In the end we all had to go to the conference room again, where two rotex students told us about their experiences during their exchange year.

the view from the conference center, down at the city and the sea behind it 

You'll here from me again, soon, my next post is gonna be about the things that happened in September.

finally a post

I still can’t really believe it but I’m already more than 2 weeks in down under! 

I'm sorry for those of you who were waiting for a post that I didn't write anything before.

The flight was very long but luckily I was able to sleep most of the time. I met some other exchange students in Dubai and we wanted to sit together but the people at the check in said that it isn’t possible so we were all sitting in different parts of the plane...

                                            my first view of Adelaide (from the airplane)

After arriving in Adelaide we had to wait an hour just to get our stamp for the visa in our passports and then we had to wait for our luggage and had to queue in for the customs duty. More than 2 hours after landing I finally met my host family.
My host family is living in the hills close to Adelaide so we only had to drive about half an hour to get home and we stopped on the top of one of the hills to have an amazing view of Adelaide at night.

 My host brother was waiting at home so I met him, too before I went to bed very soon.( after almost 30 hours of travelling I was looking forward to that very much).

                                                    first thing I saw in the kitchen

On the next day (Thursday) I went to the uniform shop of my school with my host mum to buy one for me. 

                                   the uniform is kinda ugly but I have P.E. 4 times a week 

                                   so I only have to wear the formal uniform once a week! 

                                   (there's a special P.E. uniform which is quite comfy :) )

On Friday I went to school to meet my “buddies” (some girls who were looking after me and showing me the school the first days). I also went to their classes with them because I had to wait until the afternoon to choose my subjects. Everyone was very welcoming and friendly and they all were excited and wanted to know if I’m in any classes with them.
I have to do maths, English, science, history and PLP and had to choose two additional subjects which are music and P.E.
I think music is my favorite so far! I joined the school choir which is a lot of fun and I’m also taking part in the school musical which is awesome!!
School starts at 08:35 but we always have a meeting in our “home group” before we have to go to our classes and finishes at 15:25. Sometimes my host parents are taking me to school but most days I’m taking the bus. 

All the other students are still very friendly and I already made some friends.

                                              every student gets his/her own diary

I went to a Rotary meeting of my host club last Monday and also had some other meetings with my counselor and other responsible persons.

On my first weekend here the husband of my counselor was having a birthday party and I was going there with my host parents. My counselor had also invited a girl from Sweden, who is hosted by a club nearby, so I was already able to meet another exchange student!! We were both very happy about that and I met her again on Wednesday, when she was doing her presentation about Sweden in her club. It's really a lot of fun to catch up with other exchange students!
 Some people asked me what I’m usually doing during the week/ everyday so I’ll tell you a bit about that:
I usually go home  right after school and do anything I want to do at home, but on Monday night I have a dance rehearsal and on Tuesday a choir/singing rehearsal for the  musical.

 On the Saturdays I can basically do what I want so I can meet friends or do whatever..
This weekend for example, one of  my host sisters and her husband were coming over and the whole family  watched aussie football together because “our” team, the “Adelaide Craws” were playing.
Australian Rules football seems to be as popular as soccer is in Germany and everyone is looking forward to the matches each weekend.
On the next Sundays I’m always having a 4 hours long musical rehearsal.

                                                    the poster for the musical

In the areas around my house/street are a lot of trees (all Australian gum trees) and if I’m lucky I’ll see some koalas soon. Sometimes there are even kangaroos!!  

                                    beautiful neighbourhood on my way to the bus station

                                                               gum tree 





                   I hope it was not too boring and I’m sorry for any mistakes in grammar.