First Weeks pt.2
Door: Anna-Maria Janssen
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01 September 2013 | Australië, Glenore Grove
…arrival…
It was the 24th of July in the morning when I left home, I got in Australia at about 10pm in Brisbane. Now that’s what I call a long travel, I was really tired but also very excited to finally be in Australia! I had to give up a snack I took with me from Holland at the border in Australia, I figured out that the government here very strict is, but the people who live here can be very laid back. When I arrived my local representative was waiting for me to pick me up. She gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, in Holland it’s usual to give people three kisses on the cheeks, so I was trying to do that and that got us in an awkward situation… I had my first culture difference experience! I was so excited about it that it didn’t bother me at all! She gave me a water bottle, which made me remember one of my greatest concerns when I was in Holland, would I be able to drink water from the tap? I drank a lot of water back home so I was afraid I had to buy like three bottles of water a day to keep up with my habit. It’s luckily safe to drink the water from the tap here, so that also gave me a lot of joy, it really was a big concern for me in Holland.
However, my local rep and I went to Mount Cootha the same night, that’s a point in the city where you have a beautiful view of the CBD and some suburbs. We also went for a little drive around the CBD and then we went home. I was very tired so I just went to bed, there I was finally able to read a letter that two friends wrote back in Holland, I was only allowed to open it at my first night in Australia so I was very curious. Then I finally went to sleep… The next day my real host mom came to pick me up with her sister, they are both really lovely women, just as my local rep. On our way home to Glenore Grove, we stopped at Ipswich and then I finally got to my new home! Over there was my local coordinator waiting for me so that we got to know each other, she is like a ‘trust person’ she is the one I can go to if I’m having trouble with my host family or if there’s something else and I can’t or don’t want to talk about with my host family. The organisation is very keen on the wellbeing of the exchange students, which is really nice to know. At the same day I went to school to pick up my host sister, I was very nervous to meet her, but I really wanted to pick her up. She was a little bit quiet and shy at the beginning, but I think we’re good sisters right now.
…First week…
The first week here was a little bit tough, I constantly thought about home and me not being able to see my friends and mom for a whole year made me very sad… Also the fact that I completely lost my independence was and still is difficult for me, the distances here are huge and you can’t get anywhere without a car, so that means that my parents have to take me everywhere at any time. WEP told my host family to keep me busy so I won’t think about those stuff a lot, so we went to Brisbane Down Town with my host father, we went to the movies and of course I had to go to school the next Monday. That was really scary, but everyone was really friendly and curious about the new girl, so everyone’s asking questions and stuff like that, which is nice, otherwise I would just be sitting in the classroom saying nothing. School was really different to what I’m used to, because they have several small buildings with about four classrooms per building, so for every lesson you have to walk outside, in the open air to go to your next lesson! That is amazing and it gives you a little bit of a feeling of freedom. The kids are also really informal with their teacher, which is something I didn’t expect because you have to wear a uniform which gave me an impression of a very strict school. Another thing that’s also different, is that we only have four lessons a day, and just six classes for the whole year! Some lessons can take one and a half hour, but some of them can only take an hour. That’s weird for me, because every lesson takes 50 minutes in Holland. We also have ‘houses’ at school. We have the stingrays, taipans, redbacks and scorpions. It’s just like in Harry Potter, kids are in a certain house and during the year everyone can collect points for their house and after the athletics carnival the house with the most points wins. Those are the things that are ‘most different’ to what I’m used to at home.
We also had two students from Korea staying at our place, they were here for three weeks, but they didn’t really interact much with us. However, they gave me some Korean food and when they went to movie world with school, they gave me some lollies they bought over there.
After two weeks of me being in Australia, they left.
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