Weeks 2 - 4

I have now been in Australia for over 4 weeks and I am loving it more and more everyday. I have been working my through the city and am getting more and more acquainted each day.

One thing I regretted about my time in France was that I was afraid to get involved and join clubs. I am no longer afraid to get involved with what I enjoy. I joined the performing arts society last week and I am now the current secretary of the club. I am also to help run a thing called a sausage sizzle which has been explained to me as a fundraiser where you sell cheap hot dogs with pieces of wonder bread In place of a bun.

I also have started to participate in this mock trial like competitions for lawyers in training. I am a client with a set of facts and each week I am interviewed by a pair of lawyers who try to asses my situation and extract facts from their client. It has given me many flashbacks to my Mock Trial days and all the fun we had.

I have also started classes at my university, ACU (Australian Catholic University). So far it is a pretty light work load, however I am taking a level 200 3D art class which has been proven to be quite time consuming. The class, however time consuming, also has reinvigorated my love of art and its many facets. I have bought a sketchbook and has been doodling non stop.

Another interesting adventure I had was going to the city casino. I have never gambled before but the atmosphere in the casino was unlike anything I have felt. When I got home I immediately watched each of the Ocean's movies. I decided to stick to black jack and won a large amount of $25.

I also happened across a bar that sold PBR, which was quite a surprise. And I am just going to say that I think that PBR is the worst beer ever. Over the weekend I also has my first taste of Sake which I am just going to say taste a little bit like cloudy water. Hot cloudy water. It wasn't unbearable but it wasn't the most enjoyable experience. I think it got worse with every drink.


Between my first sake and my first footy (Australian football) this has been a few good week.
Overall I have had a blast and I am eager to continue my journey.

Week 1 - Katelin in Australia

In 2012, I went on a 10 month long journey to study in the north of France. Now, in 2016, I have decided to study abroad for 4 months in Australia. Therefore I have decided to resurrect my exchange blog for my four month excursion to Australia.

I arrived in Melbourne, Australia on Sunday July 24th. However, I had left San Jose on Friday, July 22nd. So technically I am living in the future.


I arrived after a very, very long flight in Australia at about 8 am. I then proceeded to wait through customs for about two hours. Typical. I arrived at my apartment around 10 am and found that I live right across the street from this awesome outdoor farmers market-like place called the Queen Victoria's Market (to the right). It is kind of a love child between a flea market and a farmers market. It is open everyday of the week (apart from Mondays and Wednesdays) from around 9 to 3pm-ish. It is gigantic and a place you could spend hours upon hours in. I have already several hours there despite me only being here for less than a week.

On top of that I have made many trips to the Melbourne city center and the city proper. F.Y.I. In Australia if you are not within the 10 or 15 blocks that is downtown you live in the suburbs which is a unique way to put it. So I, technically not in downtown, live in a suburb of Melbourne.

Melbourne has got to be one of the most unique cities, architecturally, that I have ever seen. There are plenty of modern buildings with slick lines but on the other hand there are some old apartments that look like Ancient china mixed with Buckingham Palace. There are oddly luxurious designs within the facade of many apartment buildings, but they have the same roof shape and colors as one would associate with traditional Chinese architecture.

I have already touched based with many of exchange student friends that I had made while in France. On my first night here I met up with Ashleigh, a girl I had met in France, who took me around the city. She is originally from Tasmania, the island south of Australia, but has lived in Melbourne with her boyfriend for several years. She took me on my first tram ride to downtown where we ate at this awesome Vietnamese restaurant in a little alley way. (The restaurant was called Mamma's Buoi) At this wonderful Vietnamese place, I ordered my first legal alcoholic beverage. (In France I was too young, in Ireland I was too young, and in America I will forever be too young) Apparently Melbourne is well known for their cute rue pietons, little alleyways that no cars can pass through. It was a wonderful introduction to the city and I found that the city truly lights up at night. Ashleigh also took me to Federation Square which truly reminded me of Disneyland. They had wonderful hanging lights that hung from restaurant to restaurant and the cobblestone steps were really a sight to see. I am excited to spend more nights there.

The next day I decided to go on a solo adventure into the city to buy groceries and other necessities like a bath towel. I walked through the streets and started to get my bearings. I have found that Melbourne has the most diverse kinds of Asian food ever. And there is such a large quantity of them. On every block is a dim sum, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese place. Melbourne and I assume the rest of Australia is really big on take away sushi. Places where you walk in and there are large trays of pre-made sushi and you pick and choose what you want and they give it to you to-go. I had some and it was pretty good despite it making my stomach hurt after. But I have found that about many food that I have eaten here. Part of me thinks my stomach is still getting used to Australia as well as I am. On my excursion I went to Target to buy towels, yes Target does exist. (K-mart does as well) I also happened upon this fast food place called Hungry Jack's on the sign it said "Home of the Whopper." So what I have deciphered is that Hungry Jack's is Burger King.

On Wednesday we had our orientation at the University for the exchange students who were going to be attending the school this year. I got to meet many new people and I ran into some familiar faces. There is quite a large group of DePaul students who go to ACU and it was comforting to see some faces that I had seen around Chicago. That night we decided to do some school bonding and went to Winter/Night Market, which is a night event that happens at the Queen Victoria Market from about 5 to 10pm. The night market has much more hot food and drinks. There was a stall at the Night Market where they sold emu sausages, crocodile burgers, and kangaroo fillets. I, of course, had to try it. I decided on the crocodile burger. It was actually really good. The thing that surprised me was that the meat was white almost. It was quite good and I think next time I will have to get the kangaroo.

The one overwhelming feeling I have of this city is that is very up and coming and lively but somehow relaxed and not too congested. Despite there being hundreds of people on the street constantly, there is a calm nature to the city which I enjoy.So far it has been an exciting first week and I can't wait to see what the rest of my trip has in store. I am already planning trips across the country. I have plans to visit Perth, New Zealand, and of course the Great Barrier Reef.

10 months. I have been in France for 10 months. I have made bonds I didn't think were possible. I have met people from all over the world and I have made true friends that will never lose touch.

It is coming down to my last month in France and I can truthfully say I will be sad to leave. I have made some great friends and done some amazing things in these eight months and I can't think about what I am going to do without all these awesome people. Although I will probably miss kebab doner the most! :) For those of you who are Americans. Kebabs are the greatest food known to man. And they look like this.

 It is legitimately the greatest food of all time. My real parents have just left France after a 2 week visit here with me. It was great but I think Longwy (my town) was to sunny. Oh wait just kidding it is never sunny in Longwy. It is always grey, raining, or snowing freaking cats and cows. I mean there are a lot of cows here. Anyways, France is great and will miss all the great people and places I have seen and done. I mean how many times can you say you were with a Canadian, an Australian, a Taiwanese, a Mexican, a Brazilian, a Norwegian, a Finlandaise, a New Zealander, a frenchie, and a freaking chilean? I feel I have made some real friends that I will never forget. Besides all that mushy stuff, I am really excited to go this thing called the FREAKING EUROTRIP. It is were me and a bunch of foreigners go on a 2 week bus trip around Europe. I am so pumped. Okay that's it. By the way I was watching French Top Chef the other day and the funniest conversation occured.
Ok here it is translated.



(Brings out dish that the judges judge)
Old Chef 1: Wow that has Swag.
Old Chef 2: Who is Swag.

I think I died of laughing.



Ok salut mes potes.



En francais.

C'est le dernier mois de mon voyage en France et je suis tres triste de partir. Je me suis fait beaucoup de bons amis et j'ai vu des choses magnifiques. Mes amis vont me manquer. Mais je crois que les kebabs vont me manquer encore plus. Ils sont trop bons. Delicieux! :) Miam miam.

Mes parents viennent juste de partir après avoir passé 2 semaines avec moi!  C'etait super cool de voir mes parents!
Cerise sur le gateau : il y avait  beaucoup de soleil à Longwy. Mais non je rigole parce que il n'y a jamais de soleil ici. Juste le gris, la pluie, et la neige.

Et oui,  mes amis vont me manquer. Combien de fois ai-je été avec une canadienne, une Australienne, une Taiwanese, une mexicainne, une brésilienne, une norveigienne, une finnoise, un néo-zélandaise, une fraçaise, et un chilien?  Je ne vais jamais oublier les amis que je me suis fait.

De plus, je suis très impatiente de participer à l'EUROTRIP. C'est lorsque beaucoup des etudiants  étrangers vont voyager pour deux semaines en Europe. J'ai vraiment hâte.
Voila, c'est tout.
Ah, j'ai oublié : j'ai regardé top chef hier et c'était trop marrant!


Le plat est devant les juges.
Chef 1: Wow. ca c'est le swag.
Chef 2: C'est qui swag?


MDR!!!!
Allez,  Salut mes potes.

There is carnival in my city and although it is nothing like Great America (fun and olnly!) it was pretty cool. Got a stuffed teddy bear, named her Leah and got a stuffed dog and named it Woof. Quite possibly the most imaginative name ever. I have also decided that I have become 100% more sassy since being here. :) Idjits. That is all.

Life is good.

You know it is really hard to stand up on a bus with heels on. And when I said hard I mean HARD. I mean I don't have great balance anyway. So standing on the bus alone is difficult but adding anywhere more than and an inch or so and I will for sure fall flat on my ass. Pardon my french. (haha get it because I am in France. That is literally my favorite joke here.) Anyways so that was fun. But I can now proclaim that I have mostly mastered the bus system here. Even though I got lost yesterday I Indiana Jones my wayed back to my house. My new room is quite nice and I have just cleaned it for the first time. You should have seen it. It was like the Tasmanian devil came at destroyed my suitcase. (shout out to my australians who taught me what an actual Tasmanian devil looks like, if you don't know then here is a picture) \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/

Anyways back to the subject it is clean and mean. Not really my room is nice. Anyways my new host family is also awesome got a really big tv. That is cool and it is 3D soooo... no big. There is a lot of snow you know typical day in Longwy and when there isn't snow there is rain. That is the biggest thing I need my sun from California. But it cool to experience other weather. COOL. IT IS COOL. Get it. It's a pun. I love puns. Okay well that is me signing off, til next time. I think I stole that phrase from a tv show oh well catcha ya on the flip side. :)

It is really freaking cold here. And my boots are soaking, but at least snow is pretty. It beats rain everyday. Here is a video of snow.

Just finished with a vacation to the North of France and finished with Christmas. It was different. People eat to much friggin chocolate I think I am going to die. Met the host families family. Super nice but kind of awkward. Because I said Hey how are you I am the replacement daughter hows it going. A bit bizzare but pretty nice. Went to the Louvre, not the the real one but the younger red-headed cousin look-a-like of the Louvre in the north. I am having some feelings about missing my friends and family in america, but I can get through this. So pretty good vacation so far can't wait for the rest.


btw. I have an irrational fear of becoming a hobo.

This week was quite eventful. It was the holiday of Saint Nicholas. It's like Christmas but different. The story, I think, is that some butcher captured these kids and chopped them into little pieces. And then Saint Nicholas came and saved the three children and turned the butcher into bad santa, Pere Fouettard. And if you are a bad kid he hits you with a stick. harsh. So that was cool and we went to this church and we sang the same song 60 times and broke a world record. It was so long. And I felt like my arms were going to fall off because I was holding a banner. It was so cool but really long. And last piece of info is that I didn't have school on Friday because of the snow!! It was wonderful!

Today was an almost perfect day. At first I was feeling a bit homesick but I am awesome now. Made some new friends in the canteen :) and talked to the person who rides the bus, which is a big step. I was talking myself in to when would be the perfect moment for me to talk to him but then he came up to me. Sorted. I gave another presentation and we talked about the differences of cheese and bread in the US. We also played pop culture Jeopardy, I won. Given I made the test but... P.S. the french don't know who Aretha Franklin is???? Well today pretty good. It was also probably the coldest day in my life and if it gets any colder I think I am going to die. I'm a boss in English as usual and I actually officially start PE/sport tomorrow. Stoked. Also nervous. Signing off. By the way since the clock is back an hour I finish school in the night time. If I take the bus at 5 or 6 it is night dark night. It is bizarre but I kind of like it. I stare out the window and I pretend I am in one of those movies where the main character is down on their luck and they take the bus "wherever it takes" them. Or the beginning of a really good movie where a person gets rich but starts on the bus with the bums. Not that there are bums on the school bus. Okay now I am signing off.

It is my first week without Anna and it is going fine. But I am very stressed about school. There is a controle that we take home and I don't understand any of it and I am scared that I am going to fail the class and be in a bad place for senior year. It sucks when you can't understand a single word of your homework even after you have translated it. So yeah not the best feeling in the world right know.

Vacation

I’m on vacation right now. We are in the middle of nowhere and there is no Wi-Fi. Which is like no food. I think I might die. I never realized how dependent I am on the Internet. Let’s just hope a mass power outage never happens. Ever. I missed California a lot this week because it was Halloween. And my host family and I didn’t do much. I missed dressing up and getting diabetes from all the candy. You know what the saddest part was. I downloaded “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” and I watched it in my room alone. Yeah that sucked but I am okay now. It’s my birthday Wednesday the 14^th of November and I am super pumped. I also bought this postcard and it looks like the Hogwarts Express that was cool. Speaking of Harry Potter, no Internet has given me the chance to read my books that I brought, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. (p.s. Lupin is a bamf) Also I have found out some really merdey (I know that isn’t a real word but I didn’t want to curse because my parents read this) news. Apparently all the rest of the Rotary weekends with all the inbounds in my district are canceled, because of some bad choices that were made at the last weekend. Which sucks ass. Because I am really close with all of my fellow inbounds. They are my true friends here. So to not see them makes me really sad. I also hate the fact that the Rotarians may never trust all of us again. Which is horrible. It feels like when you ask your parents if they are mad at you and they say, “no, we are disappointed in you.” That is like the worst thing a parent can say. It’s like ahhhh crap they are disappointed, not mad, disappointed. It is like them saying, you can have cake but it can only be 20 year old fruitcake. And it pains me that the Rotarians are disappointed in all of us. And even though not everyone did something bad it makes me sad that everyone is getting punished. That said, I understand why they are doing this. And I respect their decision. But it still sucks. So this weekend has been quite a roller coaster ride of emotion. But I am stoked for my birthday. Ok, that’s it.

Hey, sorry I have not posted for a while but I am going to try to post once a week now. Everything is going amazingly! Everything is so much fun! I love all my new friends from France and around the world. I honestly think that has been one of the things that have made my exchange AMAZING so far. I recently got a 20/20 on my English test! Score. But I guess I am supposed to do that. Oh well. Also today we had a 3 hour seminar on the cautions of driving drunk. We had to put on these special glasses, that made you seem drunk, and then you had to walk a course and count by your x2 tables. Lets just say I failed epically and I should brush up on my time tables. Today was a good day, and I am getting pumped for my 16th birthday!

Today was my first day, I think, of homesickness. I was sitting in SES (Social Economic Sciences) and I was thinking, wow. I miss Mrs. Green's chemistry class with Raychelle and Katie and Bradley. Then I thought about how I miss lunch with Sterling and just being able to communicate so easily with someone. I also miss my room and family. But this is just a little downer on the day. Overall I have been having a great time in France! Everything is cool. I am speaking now, which is good. I have friends, both French and not. I signed up for a dance class, which I am excited yet frightened for. My shoulder hurts like crazy, but the cool thing is I can feel the screws in my shoulder. I also miss school spirit and color. There is no color in my school in France, except for my French teacher's classroom which is neon pink. Why? We will never know. Well i am having a good time, and yeah.

Here's a picture of me eating McDonald's with Alissia from Belgium.

So last weekend I visited Ostande, Belgium. It was pretty amazing! Except for that time we were walking a lot in the rain, but I better get used to it! We went to the beach, went shopping, and went to Brugge. (I hope I spelled that right) Brugge is a very old town and it was awesome we went on a boat tour around the city. And by the way in Belgium, Ostande, they speak Dutch, which to me sounds like one of the silliest languages of all time. To me it sounds like this, "je flaben pour a graben flawjhfdbnv.khjfb.fb.dfk." So yeah, lets just say I didn't understand it. Anyway the vacation was great and school is awesome! It is going to be a good year.

I am going to Belgium for the weekend! Super excited!

Today I finished school at 1! And I also found out my parents are letting me go hang with a friend in Metz and I am super pumped! Things are going great but it is getting cold. A little. But I can do it! I also have started to understand some of things my teachers say but I am still doodling cool things because I don't understand but I think I am getting better! Also I ate McDonalds and it was good but I don't really know what I was eating, but it wasn't half bad. But the homemade French food id delicious!!!

 This is kind of late but this is the first French piece of land I saw from Charlotte to Paris

And this is Kyle. I sat next to him on a 9 hour flight, luckily he was awesome! I know this is really late but yeah.

Today was a long day in France I started school at 10 and finished at 6. It was an eventful day of boring school. All this preparation and talk about the BAC doesn't really concern me and that is boring. Lat weekend my friend Alissia visited me from Belgium. She stayed at my house and we had a good time. We went to the castle in my village which is actually quite small. And the castle is only open 2 days in the year because someone lives there. Well I will tel you more later. Oh yeah and it rained one day. I am sure the first of many cold, rainy days.

I have a friend. It is quite exciting. Her name is Sara and yep. So school is getting better and better each day! My best class is English and I think I have an A, which is good. My hardest class is probably German because I have never taken German so... yeah. Tomorrow is Friday! And every Friday I begin school at 12. Jealous? My French comprehension is also getting better and I am speaking more and more everyday! I am particularly excited for tomorrow because Alissia is coming!!!!! Yeah! She is staying over and I can't wait! She lives in Belgium and is visiting me before she goes to college. So that's cool. I also went to Luxembourg the other day. That was cool it was cool to know that one house it Luxembourg already has twice the history of my home country. Yep everything is great!