October - little things

In october I had already been here for more than 2 months, so everything was kinda a daily routine and didn't seem 'special' anymore. This also means that I started to get bored sometimes.
Unfortunately I ended up in a year level where there is only a small group of people who catch up after school or even on weekends most of them don't do much! Because I had 'buddies' in the group who almost never does anything I kinda ended up there which was and even now at the end of my year still is frustrating. 

Don't get me wrong - they are very nice people and I love them, it's just very hard to get them to catch up with you, it always takes a few months of planning for them to maybe do something.
Everyone is always very quick in saying "Oh we have to catch up!", but I learned not to get to keen for it, as it often gets cancelled on very short notice or just never happens.
That whole 'not - doing - much - ever' thing was probably one of my biggest challenges during my time here, especially to learn not to take it personally.

 

So, that was enough of  the winching, now I'm gonna write about a few little things that happened in October!
Yay only 9 months behind with my blog haha I'm hopeless, sorry!

daisy, amour and me at school, start of term 4
(I know I look like I'm 12 in this photo -.-)

We were very lucky with the weather in October and already had some really nice summery days (35 - 40+ degrees!) so I met up with some other exchange students at the beach a couple of times.
We met at Glenelg beach, which is the only one we could get to with public transport from the city. It takes me about half an hour to get to the city by train and the tram to Glenelg takes about another hour.

on the Glenelg Pier with:

Pascal(swiss), me, Mel(french), Sofia(swedish)

me&mel

One of the other hot days my host mum said I can take a day off school, so her, my host brother and I went to have a look at a town called 'Victor Harbour' about 1 hour from Adelaide.
We went there to see my 'host grandparents' , have a look around and go to a little native wild life sanctuary.

we fed the kangaroos and there were so many!
when they saw our food bags they kept following us around :D

me patting the Koalas!

view from the 'Victor Harbour Bluff'

We also had  our first orientation weekend for all the inbounds in our Rotary district (we're only 5 :/ ), but I'm gonna make an extra post for that.

first holidays

In the end of September and beginning of October I had my first holidays in Australia. We had two weeks off school between the 3rd and 4th term of school.
My host family took me on a road trip through the west of South Australia.
The first part of the trip was going to the Flinders Ranges, which feels like the middle of nowhere and depending how deep you go into there you can even officially call it outback.

It took us a few hours to get to "Angorichina village" which was a tiny campground with a few cabins and a little shop full of mainly random things. One of the cabins was our accommodation for the next 2 days.
The next morning we took some dirt roads (typical Australian red dirt, I love it), to get to "Wilpina pound", the most famous part of the Flinders ranges national park. We hiked up a little mountain "mt. Olsson-Bagge", next to saint Marie's peak. The hike was quite easy and only took about 1 1/2 hours on the way up (if I remember it right). However, the view was pretty amazing and definitely worth it.The only thing that made it exhausting was the heat and sun, there wasn't much shade around.
On our last day in the Flinders, I climbed up a hill next to our campground, to get a good overview of the area, it was definitely almost as good as from the top of the mountain the day before.

                                                                part of the hiking trail

                                                                        hiking map

An Emu came super close! (sorry for the weird colour of the pic)

                                                         
After that we drove to a tiny former mining village (dirt roads again) for lunch and exploring, except, there wasn't much to explore. It was still very interesting to have a look around, even though it was extremely small! And nothing more than dust, rocks and some little mountains/hills around. The local pub was surprisingly crowded though and the food was pretty good as well.
At night we went to the apparently very famous "Prairie hotel", which was about half an hour from hour accommodation. It is especially famous for its "roadkill" platter, which e.g. includes Emu and Kangaroo meat.

tiny village of Blinman

the prairie hotel

Outback sunset- in front of the prairie hotel

                                                       

The day after, we started the second part of the trip. We drove for about 6 hours further west on a VERY! straight road, to a small town called Cummins, where my host family used to live.
We stayed at my host sister's husband's parents' (the Modras) place.
The next morning we headed down to port Lincoln, which is a very nice town about an hour from cummins.

on the way to cummins we stopped in a town called 'Whyalla'

cummins!

port lincoln

One of the major attractions there is "swimming with the tuna". My host parents invited me to go and do it with them.
At first we went on a boat to get to more open sea, where they have  there big tuna farms. One of them got changed, so they can use it for tourists. Once we arrived there, we had to change into a wet suit, goggles and snorkel before we could jump into the (cold) water. Once we were in we swam snorkeling around looking at the big fat Tunas for around 1 - 2 hours. It was a great experience, I was surprised how big the Tunas looked from up close! Luckily tea and coffee was included in the price, so that helped me warm up after I got changed back into my normal clothes.

the swimming with the tuna boat

the platform

When we were back in Lincoln I caught up with Gus from Belgium again, who is hosted there. He showed me around the town, his school and house, but we only had 1 hour before we had to go back to meet my host parents.
Back in Cummins we drove out of the town to have a look at the Modra's huge farm and met the little grand children (4, 2 and 1 yr old), who came over for dinner after. It was really great for me to have the little ones around that night, because I was used to having my little sister in Germany. Playing with them was great fun!

the modra farm

The next day, the fun part of the trip was over, as we had to drive back to the Adelaide hills in one go (more than 7 hours...).
All together it was a great trip!! I was a bit sad that none of my friends were able to come with me so I was the only young person but I still had a great time!!

sorry I couldn't find a lot of photos I think my host family still has them....

ROYAL ADELAIDE SHOW

Another thing I did in the beginning of September, was going to the Royal Adelaide show at the Adelaide showground, with Gus from Belgium. It's a big event which comes to Adelaide and all of the major Australian cities for a few weeks every year.At the show were a lot of big sheds full with farm animals like horses,sheep alpacas and cows. In other halls they had pets and even stuff like snakes and baby crocodiles.
Another thing they had in the halls are competions for almost every crafty thing you could think of, for example hats or cakes.

In the outdoor area they had heaps of rides, but we only went on one of them because they were so ridiculously expensive. They also had shows for some of the animals, for example a baby pig race or things like a tree cutting competition. In two of the biggest halls they had a lot of people selling all kinds of stuff and gardening and cake competitions. We just walked around the whole showground for a few hours and had food and coffee breaks in between.