Thursday, April 7, 2016

Victoria Herdegen -- Australia (Home Club: Delmar)

March 30, 2016

Another great month I'd say! When is it not a great month, though? I have had a few more experiences to share with y'all.  

First off, in school I tried out for the SEISA (varsity) Softball team. We have been competing against others schools all month and we went undefeated. We made it to the Grand Finals and with a close game we WON!!! This means at our weekly monday school assembly I get to be presented next to my team in front of the whole school with an Australian certificate. 

In my school every student is split into four different, what they call, houses. Its like Harry Potter. Throughout the year we all participate in activities and events earning points for our houses to get an overall winner at the end of the year. This past month was House Athletics Competition. We all signed up to represent our house while competing in events such as throwing, jumping and track. I gave a go to Javelin and, haha, failed miserably. Out of my three throws only one actually counted. At least i made it onto the board. I did a bit better in my track competitions. I have not had much of a running background. At least not much track but i had to run the 500m. Its a whole lap around the oval and can be a bit of a funny run because technically your supposed to be sprinting but its way to far to sprint. I came 7/8 and had NO breath left. I felt i could do much better with a 200m or 100m sprint. So i went and asked if any of my house members that were signed up for the 100m did not want to do it. I replaced one girl and was excited to try it out until i realised i was in the 100m A not the 100m B this meant i was racing against super fast girls. Way out of my league! I came 8/8. I was glad i got to try though. 

Raping up the 1st Term was school photos. I got a school photo in my school uniform! Also because it was so close to Easter the school gave us all Hot Cross Buns. This a Very Australian traditional Easter food. Everyone has them! Other than that Easter isn't very big. Again Australians are not very religious so a holiday that is surrounded by religion is only really celebrated for the chocolate. Not to say that there are not some religious Aussies out there but for the Australians i was with it just seemed like another regular day. Although another thing Easter means is NO SCHOOL. It is the end of Term 1 so we are now on school Holidays for two weeks!

My second host family, the Davies, went to go visit family friends for Easter  in Perth and invited me to go with them! I have been to Adelaide, Melbourne , Sydney and out of all of them Perth is my favourite! It is the perfect city for me because it is small and spread out. Its not huge and crowded with people and buildings and cars. The roads are wide and the footpaths are wide. There is so much space! Perth is the cleanest city and is in one of the warmest (all year round) places. It felt especially warm because we are now in the fall season and Victoria, where i live, has the worst and rainiest weather.  Perth  has heaps of green parks and one specifically called Kings Park that over looks the whole city. Next to the city is a nice lake which is confusingly called Swan River. Perth sure loves their black swans.

While in Perth we took a ferry over to a nearby island called Rotness Island. Its not very big but sure is beautiful. My family and i started on a bike ride around the island. Its only 22K around the whole thing. After about 5 - 10k my sister, chloe, and my mum, Linda, decided they had enough with the ups and downs. Did i mention it started raining as well? Well my host dad, rick, and i decided to ride on around the whole island. It was tough, haha, but it was so much fun!

There is an animal on Rotness Island called, well, Rots,haha. People used to think they were big rats but discovered they weren't  so they called them Rots. I think the Rots look like baby kangaroos. They are so used to people that they will actually walk up to you and they love to be pet! When we started to pet them they nearly looked like it was going to fall asleep. 

Anyway i was glad to have been able to visit yet another Beautiful part of Australia!!

Its hard to believe that i only have another term left!! Some exchange students are already counting down but i don't want to do that! 

Thank you all so much!!

Cheers,  
Torri
 



 


 
Pic 1- Beautiful Perth City 
Pic 2- My sis chloe petting one of the rots that walked up to us

 Pic 3- Family selfie in Kings Park with the city behind us
 
 
 
 
 

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