Atherton day 2

This morning, we went up at about 7:00 AM. After breakfast, Zoe and Toby (my host sis and bro) took me for a ride with the quad. We went for about 15 minutes (and no, we weren’t going very slowly) through a rocky forest with grass as high as my shoulders, which was absolutely beautiful (and also all my host family’s property), then we came across their creek – wow. Just… wow. It was amazing, I’ll put up some photo’s as soon as possible. We stripped off our shoes and jumped bare feet from rock to rock (sometimes it was very slippery, one time I slipped off a rock and my foot got caught between two rocks under water), it was just like an adventure park! The difference was, of course, that this was all naturally grown and if there were something like this back in Germany, it would probably be man made. On our way back home I got to ride the quad for a short distance, that was so fun!!

In the afternoon, Zoe and I went for a ride in their “garden”. My host family’s got 3 horses: Jack (he’s huge and an ex-trotter), Gem (about half as high as Jack and very cute) and Coco (ex-race horse). We wanted to take Jack and Gem, but they were in the back of their huge meadow so we had to take the quad again to reach em. It turned out that Gem’s hooves were in really bad shape and way too long, so Nola (my host mum) helped us to cut them off a bit – at home, we would normally have to wait weeks till the blacksmith comes, so it's pretty cool (and convenient) that they can just do it themselves here.

After we got rid of Gems dispensable hoof parts, we finally started our ride. It was simply… amazing. Again. Everything here is amazing – the grass almost reached my shoulders, although I was sitting on a horse! And the best thing was that we actually saw wallabies! There were a lot of them, and it was so weird to see those animals I saw just a few days ago in a zoo hopping around in wilderness... The ride was great, and we will probably going every day now :)

First day in Atherton

Today, I finally flew to Cairns to my host family! We woke up pretty early (we didn’t want to miss our planes) and after breakfast, we drove to Sydney Airport by shuttle bus. We had to say goodbye to each other there because they are going to Brisbane and I’ll stay in Atherton... :(

After a three-hour flight, I landed at Cairns Airport, and there it was - my future family-for-three-months! It was great to finally meet them, they all looked so nice (my host dad just told me to write that “my adopted dad is totally awesome” and I promised it, so here it is)…

The first thing we did was going to a farmers market and some other market thing, which was pretty interesting because it was quite different from our markets back home. Then we drove to the farm (which is about 100 km away from Cairns), and really everywhere I looked was rainforest. And then there was a beware-kangaroo sign on the road! We didn’t actually see any though, but the sign was cool enough. As we went to my host family’s farm, I was surprised again by how huge it was. With huge I mean… really huge. From left to right, everything I saw was my host familiy’s property, including cattle, chooks, three guinea pigs, three horses, turkeys and a few ducks.

Tomorrow we will go for a ride in their “garden”, let’s see how big it really is!

Sydney day 2

Okay, so today we were supposed to meet Claudia (our guide) at 9:30 AM. To manage that we got up at 8:30 – just to discover that the internet we bought the day before didn’t work. We really had to fix that because we wanted to meet two friends of mine who were in Sydney, too, and  by the time we actually got it working it was about 9:15 AM – and we hadn’t even eaten yet. We tried to eat as fast as we could, but right after we finished, the fire alarm went off and we got kicked out of the building. Although it turned out to be false alarm (thank pastafari), another half an hour had passed until we were finally allowed to go back to our rooms. That’s why we had a delay of about one hour, and that’s why I was one hour late to meet my friends from Germany. It was so odd to see people I usually only see at school and in classrooms here, on the other side of the world! Because of our delay we only had one hour left before they had to go somewhere (don’t ask me where, I have no idea), so we spent most of that time eating and talking and laughing… it was fun!

After they were gone we went to a wildlife park to see some koalas, kangaroos, emus and lots of other “Australian” things. But although, or maybe also because of, all the animals were so cute and it was exciting to finally see them in real life, it was horrible to see that they were all in cages, behind fences or somewhere in between a bunch of screaming, pointing, chatting, loud and ignorant humans. All the people just treated them like… things, like UFO’s or aliens.

The kangaroos and emus were able to run between us, but the kangaroos just stayed behind their wooden fence (can't blame them for that...). The emus on the other hand walked through the gates all the time and one time I got punched aside from the back by one! I thought that it was one of those really annoying kids that were screaming and crying all the time, so I was pretty surprised when I discovered who the “bad guy” really was... :)

After our trip to the park, we wanted to finish the sightseeing tour. We went to the Rocks, the “old Sydney”, and by the time we crossed all of it, I was so tired that I could have gone to sleep right on the floor. But no, first we had to eat something – which was good, because I was also starving. We went to a restaurant called “Pancakes on the Rocks”. 

I basically fell asleep right after I finished my pancake (which was really yum), but one of the waiters told me (or no, actually he told my friend, I was asleep already) that I wasn’t allowed to sleep on the table… so I dragged myself to the hostel and immediately fell asleep there.

Sydney day 1

G'day from Australia! Oh well, actually it should be g'night because it's about 11 PM here right now...

After a long, long flight during which we watched the probably most amazing sunrise you could ever imagine, we finally landed in Sydney - solid 18 degrees up here.

 We (that's me and my fellow two high school students, they are both going to Brisbane) were all so tired that we could barely walk, so the bus transfer to the youth hostel we will stay at for the next two days went by pretty silent. The first thing we did after entering our hostel (and yes, the first Australian sentence I heard was actually "No worries") was taking a quick shower, and although it was short, it immediately woke us up.

After dropping our stuff in our room we went for a walk in the downtown-city of Sydney. I was amazed that most of the people I saw were Asian - and I thought the city would be full of surfing, good-looking Australian guys... ;) And it wasn't only the people that looked Asian: the whole city really reminded me of Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. 7Elevens everywhere, and a lot of traffic lights.

Then we came across the Hyde Park, and I was finally fully aware of the fact that we really were in Australia, the country I've always wanted to go to, the country I had only seen on tv screens so far.

One of the many amazing things I saw after we entered the park (which is beautiful) was an ibis bird. It looked so weird with its long, thin, almost banana-shaped beak, but our "guide" (the person who will have to stand up for all our problems here in Australia for the next couple of months) told us that there were a lot of them here and that they were basically equal to the pigeons we have in Germany.

After crossing the entire park we finally saw the famous Opera House and the Harbour Bridge! There were lots of tourists up there (and we didn’t have enough time to go inside the Opera House anyway) so we decided not to spend hours watching something we had already seen a hundred thousand times on post cards and photos, so instead, we took the ferry to Manly.

After half an hour on the ferry we reached the island, and as soon we were there we headed straight to the beach. And that’s when I finally found the Australia I had always imagined: beautiful green-ish blue water, beach, surfers and sun… Paradise.

Sadly, we couldn’t stay too long a the beach. First, because we only had two hours time to spend on the island, and second… yep, it started raining. So we spent about one hour running through every shop we could find… oh, and we had the best. sushi. ever!

Long live Australia!

A short flashback

Wow. Time went by so fast - I can't believe I'm leaving in three days!
Okay, so to get this blog started I'll give a short discription of what happened so far:

Last year, it was during Spanish class I think, I discovered a brochure of TravelWorks, a student exchange organization, laying on a table, probably forgotten by someone. I was bored so I decided to take a look in it - and I was immediately thrilled by the idea of going abroad for some time, especially because I've always wanted to go to Australia. The nature, the culture - everything about this country seemed incredibly interesting, plus it had absolutely no likeness to any country I had been to so far. So I went home, with the idea of going to Australia already starting to settle in my mind, and began to carefully ease my parents in to the idea of spending a lot of money on a trip that would certainly be an experience for a lifetime.
When I first told my dad about it, he thought that I might have lost my mind. €10.000,- for only three months!
But anyway - at some point he got used to the thought and, just to take a look and to inform ourselves better, we went to an exhibition of about 20 exchange organizations in late November last year. That's when I decided it for sure: I would go to Australia, no matter how.

The following 2 months were a bunch of chaos and it was pretty difficult to decide which one of the hundreds of thousands organizations I wanted to go on adventure with. I made a lot of charts, indexes and lists of the different prices, whether the flight was included or not, blah blah blah. And finally, after weeks of struggling and insecurity, I decided to go with TravelWorks after all. They seemed really professional and experienced and just super nice in general, but just to be sure, I also applied for two other organizations, in case TravelWorks wouldn't let me in their program - and two days later I got three calls from all the three organizations, inviting me for an interview with one of their employees.

Those interviews were a piece of pie. Everyone was friendly, we joked around a lot and the English part went just fine. So, if you are going to have an interview like this: don't worry! You'll be fine. Nothing to be nervous about. Just a few questions about yourself, your family and friends.

And then... I don't know how and when  it happened exactly, but I got a few letters from TravelWorks, giving me information about my homestay area (Atherton), my school and finally... my host family.

Interestingly enough I sort of already knew who I wanted as my host family before I really knew they actually existed - because three weeks before I got my family I got to know what school I would go to and I did a little "research" on the school's website and finally found some essays from other exchange students. One of them, she was from Germany, too, wrote that she had lived on a farm with three horses, a dog, cattle, a lot of other animals and a mom, a dad, a host brother and sister. What she wrote about sounded absolutely amazing and I was hoping so badly that I could get that family!
Of course, the chance of actually getting them was so little that I had basically given up my hope the moment it came up, but... A few weeks later I really got the letter that I would stay with that very family!
I was so excited that I was literally jumping around my house ;)

By the way, if you're thinking about going on a High School year yourself (and you live in either Germany, Austria or Switzerland): www.travelworks.de is the site you're looking for! Also, they have heaps of other programs like work & travel, au pair etc. Check it out! Bet you'll find something interesting :)

So, that was how I got my host family and now I'm just hoping that the plane won't crash ;)