Hi! I arrived in New Zealand last night, and am going to stay until next monday. Guess what!? I have got 3 stamps in my passport - woho! :D
We are going to travel all over the place, for instance: Auckland,
Rotorua, Whakatane, Bay of Islands. We visited the gardens in Hamilton
today. It was such a wonderful place :)
Hi everyone! I haven't really had
much time throughout the last couple of days, and I won’t have much spare time
in the future weeks either. I have now been here for 3 months and 11 days, and
I have never through my whole life done so much over such a short period of
time. I'll give you an idea of what I am up to the next weeks, and don't get
me wrong, I am really looking forward to all these things! I am so thankful to
all these people who are making this possible for me, especially my first host
family! Words can't describe how thankful I am, and if you wouldn't own a
flower shop, I probably would send you 100000 flowers!
We spent the weekend in Sydney,
where my host dad and I climbed the Harbour Bridge. It was an absolutely
fantastic view from the top, and I would recommend everyone who hasn't done it
to do it! Have you ever wanted to say something but you can't? Well, I
experienced that as a lady introduced herself to me in Norwegian and wanted to
have a chat, but I seriously couldn't get out one Norwegian word! Embarrassing!
We were invited to my third host
mother on monday, and she made an absolutely great dish. We had a lovely time,
even though it was confusing with two Becs at the same table :P I am still
pretty busy. Rotary yesterday and tonight, the other exchange students are coming over on
friday to stay until saturday. We are then having a quick meeting for PNG, and
are leaving for New Zealand just one hour later. Then, when we are back again,
I will be here for 4 days before we are going to Port Macquarie on saturday and
sunday, and are then leaving to PNG on monday the 14th of november! Back in
Australia I then have another week of school before we have a final briefing
at Tocal, and after that I am moving to my second host family. The weekend after
I am going to Cockatoo Island with some members of my Rotary Club. After
another week I actually am off school for a month! Summer holidays in December,
how good is that? - and within a few seconds 5 months are gone and I only have
6-7 left! You may understand why I really love, and need my calendar!?!
We got baby chickens last week.
Seven really cute fluffy feather balls are now running around in the chuck shed!
I saw an echidna on sunday
night! We are getting closer to summer, but are still in spring with
"just" 35 degrees. I seriously don't know how I am going to survive
summer!
When I was told that I had to do all the yearly exams for year 11, even though I only had been there for a few weeks, I nearly freaked out. The test that scared me the most was bio since the teacher told me to read through the whole ***** book (680 pages). Naturally my focus was on this exam. Today, I got back the results, and bio turned out to be my second best test. It wasn't a really amazing result, but anyway, I did them in my 3rd language, and had to learn the content from one year in one week - So I'm pleased with the result. And I passed! (In Australia you have to get more than 50% to pass)
I spent the last week on "RYLA Island”. It was a Rotary program where young adults could learn about leadership. To be honest: during the first couple of days, I never though I would make it through the rest of the week. So many things have happened throughout the last three months, and I think my mind at this stage had reached a point where it was full, if that makes sense. In Norwegian we would say: "Det var den siste dråpen som fikk glasset til å renne over!" In the end I'm glad that I finished the course. I have got a new point of view on many opinions, learned a lot about myself and made many new friends. Thanks a lot to my sponsoring Rotary club!
Just a quick overview:
We had to listen to a lot of different guest speakers, had a self defence course, but we also spent a day at Mayona Bay where we did some climbing ++.
We had to organise different activities like the Mini-Olympics, RYLA's got talent (concert night) and of course the Graduation Dinner on Thursday night.
We had a bush dance evening where I also learned the Nutbush, obviously the Australian version of Macarena, and how to crack an Australian wood whip! :D
The holidays have now come to an end, and I have to go back to school tomorrow. Aaaand *drum-roll* I'm no longer in year 11, but in 12! I'm also looking forward to meet my schoolmates again! :D
I went to Newcastle with Adrian today where we had an amazing lunch at ----. We had a huge fishplate, which originally was meant for one person. It was definitely enough for two. I had my life's second oyster, and hopefully it was the last one (a). We also went to the movies and watched "Crazy, stupid, love." Not a bad movie actually!
My holidays have been really great, and something I definitely needed! The time here in Australia kind of stands still, but at the same time the time goes so so fast! I didn't do anything on monday, and it was sooo nice! The weather isn't that good, but on the only really nice day, tuesday, I went to Newcastle beach together with some of the exchange students. I also met my school friends there, something I really persuaded. We drove down to Sydney at 6 am wednesday morning. The truck was packed with all the stuff for PNG, and we dropped it off at "Donations in Kind". I also went to the doctor and found out that I have to take 4 different injections for PNG. I am looking forward to the trip sooooo much!
I met some of the exchange students at Charlestown (a big shopping sentre) on thursday, and after some time, we decided to stay at Joackim's place. Again it was the Scandinavian countries who ended up together - suprisesuprise!
Previous students say that the "Big trip" is the highlight of the year. And finally we got the program for our trip. Just amazing! The Australian trip is called the Capricorn Ramble, and covers 10 000 km all around Australia. We will leave the 18th of April and visit all states besides Eastern Australia. Our district is going to travel with two other districts from Sydney, so we will be about 40 together in one bus.
I'm going on a kind of camp tomorrow, so I will be away the whole next week. We are also going to set the time an our ahead, so the time difference from Norway to Australia will be 9 hours, and when you set the time an hour back in Norway it obviously will be 10 hours.
