The weekend

so tomorrow is friday, and its a sports day, which i'm not exactly sure what that means. but i know that all the kids in the school get divided into houses and you wear as much of the color house you in as you have. i'm in green. which is good because i have lots of green! so hopefully its good fun! well tomorrow right after school, i'm getting picked up and i'm running home to get my bag, and then i'm going to Mertylferd for a rotary ski weekend! i'm so excited! i cannot wait! Rotary weekends are always the best!! so much fun! so that's basically my big excitement this weekend i'll write more about how it was when i get back.

Girls Footy!!!

So yesterday...well Monday for me.... was the girls footy match. Which was soooooo much fun! girls cant play footy so once a year a few schools get together, and the girls can play footy and its just all for fun. but we all get pretty into it. Which makes it 100% more fun. So the teams were Kyabram, Echuca and Rochy. Each team played each other, and sadly ky lost! big time! however we still were playing pretty decent. I would like to proudly say that i took down many people. I took down at least 2 on each team. and it was so much fun! I played full forward, wing, and i forgot the name, but it was at the 50mark line. i dont know why they put me as full forward because usually the full forwards are the 2nd tallest group of people on the team. There's the rocker who hits the ball, and starts the game off. and its one from each team. and that person is the tallest person. But it was still all good fun. however i woke up today and was in a lot of pain. We were all in pain today! we were like i tried to walk...and it didnt work. haha. But i'd do it over and over again because its so much fun. Australian football is way way way better than american...sry to say. but its so much more intense. and fun!

Fauna Park

Wow i just realized that i forgot all about the highlights of my weekend when i was doing my post! anyways. this past weekend on saturday, i went to the fauna park. its this park with all these australian animals. Its the ONE thing that kyabram actually does have and most places doesn't! whoo!! but the fauna park was awesome! For one thing i sat next to a kangaroo. i actualy pet it...sorta. i pet it. then it moved and scared the living daylights out of me. so than i jumped. but i stil got to sit next to a kangaroo! i ssaw 40 something kangaroos that day! There were a TON! At this zoo there are a few animals that can walk around freely. such as kangaroos, emu's and a few others. However the emu's aren't always nice and they are scary scary birds. We went into the reptile cage saw a crocadial and then walked out. and spotted an emu. of course will decideds to call the emu over. he says you might wanna run. and of course i did run! i dont like birds. especially ones that size!!! so lisa and will got the emu to follow them and it was kinda cool. however emu's follow people when they see something they want, and then they try to get it.not always a good thing! Well we also saw dingos,wombats, koalas, snakes, these other birds that stole our map! and scared me BIG time!, and lot of other ones. I'll have to put up pics when i get a chance. but between the 3 of us, we took quite a few pics on our cameras.

Weekend

Well this past weekend was a lot of fun. i had two of my friends (lisa and will) over which was quite fun. we of course played poker, however will forgot the chips so we played with swedish fish. no one really won because we sorta ate all our 'chips.' but it was still a lot of fun. we played a ton of games. We started talking about footy, and talked about how i have a girls footy match on monday. The girls footy match is a match where we play against a couple schools around the area. Well anyways. people that usually play footy are very tall! so i needed to learn how to tackle. Which i'm absolutely terrible at!!! It was hilarious since i would try on lis and will and they're both really tall. So i'd run attempt to take them down, and then i couldnt. instead they'd flip me over and i'd be the one on the ground instead of them. I pulled a muscle and still hurting a bit but i'm really hoping that tomorrow i dont break a bone or soemthing. I have to be able to ski at the rotary ski weekend next weekend! anyways. its been exactly 4 weeks since i left home. which is kinda exciting!

New Zealand!

My third host family asked me today if i'd like to go to New Zealand with them in November. and of course i said i'd love to! Actually it was sort of a surprise, because rotary all knew my 2nd host family who i'll be staying with at that time knew and it was all set and so they asked me today and i was so excited! They said that they're taking me as if i'm their own daughter and that all i need to bring is clothes and spending money! i'm so excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Benalla

So yesterday i went to Benalla with Lisa since one of our friends Will lives there. Lisa's from Sweden and Will is a rebound student. Anyways, Benalla was so much fun. I tried Kangaroo for the first time. If you dont think about it being kangaroo it tastes great! tastes sorta like steak. However if you think of it being kangaroo then it was hard for me to get down, but it wasn't too bad. i kept thinking oh its some good steak. and it wasn't bad at all! We also went possum hunting. Which really isn't hunting or anything like that. it's just finding possum's and taking pictures of them. So we saw a lot of them, it was sorta hard to find, but will knows what they sound like since you can hear their call. and so we found a lot of them. The pictures didnt turn out great, but we didnt want to take to many pictures or you can make them mad, and they have very very sharp claws. we also went to Kids Town. It was great for about 20ish mins. haha we went down the slide, and went on the playground and then by then we were quite bored. But we made it a lot of fun. Also we went to see Ned Kelly, who's the most well known person in australian's history. I still need to read the phaamflets. but i'll write more later when i know more about him. but its this tourist place where you see a statue of Ned Kelly and see other things about him. Kinda a cool place we wern't there all that long but it was still fun. I also learned to play poker! We didn't play for any money, however i did win! i won big time. and will and lisa aren't too bad at the game themselves. So i was pretty excited! but they think its just because they are good teachers. But now i'm prepared to play for rotary weekends!

You know your in the country

So, Ky is basically the closest thing to the country i've ever lived too. It's crazy its sorta just in the middle of two larger cities. well larger meaning 30,000. not that large, but this is about 6,000. so its a lot! smaller. but seriously you know that when you see a person walking their pony on the side walk that your in the country. i was going to school. and look there's a pony on the street. the guy was just taking it for a stroll. strange! and then we were on a highway, well it was about 80 i beleive and thats km but still its pretty fast. and theres one of those GIANT tractors just driving on the road. taking its dandy old time. its kinda funny but so strange.

well it has been now 2 weeks and 2 days. crazy! i can't believe it. it seriously have been going by so fast. i've been so busy. and my weekends even though i'm staying in ky, i havent really been in ky much. first weekend, i went to mount buller for snowboarding, 2nd went to dookie for rotary weekend, and this weekend i'm going to Banella with lisa and were going to one of our friends house. A few of the exchange students are getting together, and so were all staying in banella! whoo. next weekend they're coming to ky. which well there's not all that much to do, but were going to go to the fauna park,which is this park where you can go and pet the kangaroos, there's koalas, dingos, wombats, emu's and many other animals. so that'll be interesting, attempting to host people in ky. its harder than it sounds. and the weekend after that is a 'official' rotary weekend and its the rotary ski trip, so were all going skiing. Its in sane that for the next 4 weeks i have my weekends planned. and it all just happened in like 2 days.

School's going great! i'm loving my classes, and i can get around the school without getting lost! I'm kinda just one of the aussie's now, except i still have my accent. A few days ago, my P.E. class went to shepparton (about 30mins away) for bowling. and i actually won, sadly i won with a 94. With bumpers. i know its pathetic, but it was still a lot of fun. My gym teacher is so much fun, he likes to take us on trips and such, so there's all these trips being planned. sadly i'm going to join outdoors ed class next week. which i am very excited about, but i'd like to go on the trips with my P.E class. Outdoors ed is even better though. they go on a couple trips a year, and you go for a week. and the next trip i'll go on, is a canoeing trip, and we go camping and do all this outdoors stuff for a week. Next year after summer break, we will go to the beach i believe, and i know that the kids get to learn to surf. so i'm excited for that!

Well i learned about the rock to reef trip which is the trip around australia with rotary. Its only 19 days, and it use to be 21. however those 2 days that we dont have, in previous years were spent driving on a bus. What we do is we go to down to Melbourne, then west towards and go to a few cities, then we go to the rock (hense the name rock to reef.) for the past many years what would happen is from the rock you'd take a 3 day drive to Canis. NO you would not stop at hotels or anything! its 3 days in a bus. different drivers taking over. you'd have food and bathroom breaks. that's all! however this year. were not doing that, were flying from the rock to canis! which i'm very happy for. and we all are. because seriously even though its a bus ride with all your friends, the desert is only fun for so long. But i cannot wait for that trip! everyone says its the best part of their exchange and i just cannot wait!!!

Melbourne!

So yesterday i went to melbourne with school and we went to the arts center. This is the place where all the shows are held well many of them are, and it was amazing! When the building was built it took 3 million dollars to build, if you were to rebuild it today it would cost 3 billion dollars. The place was so pretty. the architect died and apparently he's some famous guy that got all these awards. The sad thing about going to the building is that in most places of it you cannot take pictures. so i wasn't able to get all that many pictures of the place. but anyways. The building had an absolute ton of marble. all the floors were covered in this certain type of marble. and the guy who created it tried to do a whole australian theme, with the colors and being all in the desert and stuff. very neat. anyways. we went to see this show called "Cranked" it was a bit strange and hard to explain, but it was really good. its more of a story you have to explain in person. So i didnt get to go see all that much in Melbourne, but i'll have many more chances, so thats not a problem.

going to Melbourne

so tomorrow i'm going to melbourne with my school to go see a show. i believe its called crank. i dont really know what its about, but i know i'm going. so i'm excited it should be good!

Dookie!!!!

So i just got back from Dookie, which is a college in Australia. It's where rotary district 9790 has their rotary weekends which are sooo much fun! I am beyond tired but if i sleep now i'll never be able to tonight, so i'm doing my best to stay awake. However i have gone 31 hours without sleep. There were only like 4 people i think who actually made the whole time. there were a bunch more who snoozed on and off for a tiny bit, but it doesnt count. i mean we were 100% in it. at 5 am we decided to start dancing to the macarina and the chicken dance, and many other things. oh and the hooky pookie! australia does the hooky pookie wrong! big big debate on it, and we finally agreed that we were equally wrong, however america was closer on that one and got a point. It's kinda this inside joke between australia and america. Its this on going thing about how you pronounce words, and spell it, and many other little differences. But its just between america and australia. Great fun! but this weekend i meet all the other inbound students and the outbound and it was so weird being an inbound. i'm so use to be calling an outbound that its sometimes still strange to be called the inbounds. But the inbounds have more fun, so its better! Anyways, overall those days were great! still feels like a saturday, and i have to admit that during the presentations this morning the 4 of us were falling asleep on and off. well not completely because there were rotarians watching. however many other people were complaining about being tired, but they didnt hold the record for the night so they dont count. During the middle of the night at about 1:30am we all started to get very hungry, we were having an hour by hour countdown to when breakfast was happening. then comes around breakfast and were all in a conversation and were having so much fun that we forgot about it. Then one kid is like, WAIT! the time?! and were like ten till 8!!! and we all jumped up and ran down the hill to the dinning area. When we got there all the doors were locked, so we just started to bang on the doors. we finally got in, and ate sooo much food. Even though it was only 30 some hours, we did a lot of work within that, and so we were just soo tired by the morning. cannot wait for dookie in november!

Difference of Australia and USA

Well there's many differences however one big one is the way the cars drive. I am getting pretty use to looking the right way now, but i dont know if i can even count how many times i've almost got ran into by a car. I also still sometimes get in the car on the right, and then i remember that, that is also opposite. Well another big difference is they have breakfast, lunch and tea. Which is very strange when you first hear it, because i was invited to go with my friend to this restruant, and my host mum was saying that i was going out to tea with sophie and her family. i was like okay sweet! and then i went there and then later was confused as to why there was no tea. Tea doesn't mean having tea, it means dinner. so if your asked have you had tea? they're really asking if you've had dinner yet. They have these things called chips, which aren't really chips, they're fries. however they also have fries like you can get at mcdonalds (called macca's here.) So chips are fries but they have a chicken flavored salt on them. They are SOOO good, the best fries EVER!!! no joke!

There's so many more differences that i cant really think of off the top of my head but i'll post them up when i think of them.

Well this weekend is my first rotary weekend, and i'm so excited! i get to meet all the other inbound students that i'll be going on the ski trip, and many other trips with. Which includes the Rock to reef, or whatever its called, but the trip around australia. Which i cannot wait for!

School Social

So yesterday night was the school social. Which is basically a school dance just they call it a social, and the theme for the dance was hollywood. so my friends and i went as the hollywood billboard sign, i was the letter w :). Anyways it was a lot of fun, i meet a bunch of kids that are going to be in some of my classes that i haven't started yet, but i'm so excited to start. and overall the dance was so much fun! This weekend is the first rotary weekend, and i'm so excited for it! i cannot wait!

So the school busses here are the coolest things ever! they are like shaffer busses. just not all of the busses have tv's. but they are soo cool! They are soo fancy!!!
Well i have almost got ran over by a car about 10 times. I am still looking the wrong way all the time. Slowly getting better, but its so confusing!

Names

So i'm just normally terrible at names, but seriously i never knew exactly how bad! I've met so many people and everyone wearing the same thing makes it even harder to remember who's who. I feel so bad because people will be like i'm in your photography, and your PE and all these other classes and i'm just like... you are? But i'm getting better, i have quite a few down but its been only 3 days. So i guess its understandbul to not remember everyone yet. But when i meet people its usually in a large group and someone will be like okay this is... and then name everyone. sorta hard to get them all in when its like that. so hopefully i'll get better really soon. That's basically the hardest thing right now and i feel so bad. they all understand is like no no its okay, you have so many names to remember. and its not like i'm meeting just one grade. i've meet most of year 9 and year 10. So thats like 150 people to remember in 3 days. not easy! Other than that, schools great! i love it!

elly is rad.

^ elly wrote that

The town

So ky is like the smallest town ever! actually it really isnt but its still small. its about 6000 people. and its kinda as if everyone knows everyone. and stuff. they have no street lights. the nearest street light is in the next town over which is about 30ish mins away. Its sorta like in gilmore girls how you walk everywhere. if you live in town you can basically get anywhere in like 10mins. and if you live at the edge of town, you can drive to the main road. park and then just walk up and down the street. Most of the stores are locally owned stores so many of my friends parents own a lot of them.

On friday i learned that you never ask where is the bathroom. i was at school and this was the first time trying to get somewhere on my own. i tried to find the bathroom asked a kid where it was. they gave me a strange look. when they think bathroom they mean room with a shower in it. you ask for the toilet or the loo. and then i tried to get back from the "loo" and then got lost again. had to get some more directions. This school is a bit confusing!

So today i went snowboarding. well. i tried. At the end i could make it about at least 30ish or so feet without falling flat on my face. however at first i couldnt even walk with one of my foot in the boot thing. and then when they had us put both of them in, i couldnt get help. we took a class and the instructor had to help me up.. but later i finally could get up on my own. i learned that one pretty quickly after falling so many times. I have never been so clutzy then i was during that. seriously snow boarding is soo hard! but it wasn't too too bad in the end.