Author: Josephina von Blücher

Cairns Trip – Day 1

Aboriginal Culture Park, Crocodile & Wildlife Park, Daintree Rainforest

On our first day we visited the Aboriginal Culture Park where an Aborigine named Joe told us about differents nuts and plants that are used in washing and cooking and explained us how to play the didgeridoo which is an Aboriginal instrument that only the males play. Later he showed us how to throw boomerangs and speers and we got some face painting.

Crocodile & Wildlife Park

Later on we visited the Crocodile and Wildlife Park where we went on a boat ride through a lagoon for crocodile feeding and took pictures with a koala named Daisy 🙂

With Daisy 🙂

Daintree Rainforest

Later that day we went on a two hour bus trip to the Daintree rainforest which is the oldest continuously growing rainforest on earth and spent one night there. Our lodge had a great location right next to the beach.

 

 

 

Bondi Beach

This weekend I‘ve finally been to Bondi Beach! Since summer isn‘t far away and Bondi is crowded in summer Luce and me decided to go there this Sunday. It is beautiful and I really want to go and surf there one day in summer 🙂

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Saturday, 27th August 2017

Saturday, 27th August

I started my weekend by ticking off a point of my bucket list, Luce and me already wanted to do since a long time, trying the famous Australian Vegemite. I have to say that I already expected I wouldn‘t like it and I proofed myself right. Our hostmom advised us to eat it with a toast with butter and only a little bit of Vegemite since it has a very strong flavour. At first it only tastes salty and than it has in my opinion a pretty bad aftertaste. Well now I made the experience…

Doesn‘t look really tasty …

Later on I went to the Paddington Markets with some girls and in the evening we visited the rugby game of the “Sharks” which is the team of Cronulla! They played against the “Roosters” and unfortunately the “Sharks” lost the game in the last ten seconds with a score of 14:16 but we still had a very nice evening and I filmed the day a little bit.

Cooking in Marine Studies

Cooking in Marine Studies

1oth August 2017

Yesterday marine studies was on my timetable and since my teacher enjoys fishing in his free time we were very lucky because he brought some fish he caught as well as potatoes to cook fish and chips 🙂 !

To prepare the dish we used a deepfryer. We cut the fish into fillets and mixed flour and beer into a beer batter. Once the potatoes slices and the fish fillets were fried we ate them with so called seafood sauce… they were delicious! 🙂

 

selfmade chips 🙂
selfmade deepfried fish 🙂
Since we did the cooking in school I thought it might be nice to add a picture… this is the entrance sign
And this is the street where my school is …

First blog post

Let‘s start!

I think it might be a good idea to start this blog with some general information.

My name is Josephina von Bluecher. I‘m a 16-year-old German exchange student and I am spending a year in Carigbah at the Southern beaches in New South Wales in Australia. I am staying with a host family consisting of a mom and dad whose children don‘t live at home anymore and I have a host sister from Switzerland. My high school is the Endeavour Sports High School which isn‘t far from where I live and luckily my bus stop is right in front of the door! Right now I‘m in grade 11 but since this school year only has three terms I will start year 12 in September. Talking about school there are some main differences in school here. The first thing I realized was the relationship between teacher and student. It still depends on the different teachers but some of them have a rather friendly relationship with their students which sometimes also has a negative side since some students don‘t take them seriously. Nevertheless all students I talked to so far are all very sympathic and open. Secondly the subjects are different. I only have six subjects and I found out that the only subject that is compulsory for Australian students (at least in year 11… I don‘t know about the other years) is English. We, the internationals, have to take English and Maths but we can chose the levels and the other four subjects. I have English Advanced and at first I chose Maths general but I changed to Advanced since they did topics I already had in Germany. The other four subjects I chose are geography, CAFS, SLR and Marine Studies. Geography is pretty self explaining I guess. CAFS is short for Cultur and Family Studies and right now where are talkig about family structures. The next subject is SLR which stands for Sports & Lifestyle Recreation. This subject implies theoretical lessons where we talk about technics etc. as well as practical ones. My sixth subject is Marine Studies. In this subject we talk about the Sea in theory but also do some practical lessons. For example in the first lesson we deepfried Kalamaris and in the next lesson we talked about different ways of preparing fish. Another big difference are the school uniforms. Every school has its own unifrom. So some schools might have dresses for the girls while others have skirts. My uniform consists of a knee-length red skirt with grey and white stripes, a white blouse with the school logo and you can chose between a red jumper with the school logo or a black and red college jacket with the school logo. I chose the college jacket. As shoes we have to wear black lace up leather ones but most of the students just wear black snickers. I wear all black Superstars. Since Thursday is sport day every student has to wear the sports uniform. It consists of black knee-length shorts with the school logo as well as a red-black-white polo shirt with the school logo.
After school most of the students either go to the Miranda Mall which is very near to our school and has a food court or to Cronulla which is the beach here.

I have already been to Sydney with my host sister on our first weekend and several times to Cronulla. I will add some pictures and impressions in the following.

Have to stop writing now since dinner is ready… every Sunday is pizza day and my host dad is a great cook 🙂

Cronulla Beach 🙂

My uniform
My sports uniform
My host sister Luce and me in front of the harbor bridge in Sydney
Sydney Opera House
The internation girls and me at Darling Harbour
Another one with the international girls and an Australian girl from school 🙂
Cronulla with the girls
Fisrt day of school
And a good bye group photo from the airport in Germany

My first surf lesson

Surf and beach weekend

Saturday, 29th July

Saturday I went on a surf day trip with some international students and had my first surfing lesson at the Farm Beach which is south from Sydney. It was so much fun! I really enjoyed it!

The Farm Beach

In my wetsuit
With the internationals 🙂
Thumbs up to the coach because I did it
Happyyy 🙂
Concentrated…

 

 

 

 

Sunday, 30th July

On Sunday we had super good weather and 26°C so my host sister Luce and me went to Cronulla to spend the day at the beach!

Cronulla Beach
Cronulla beach sign
🙂