First few days 'down unda'...

Current AU time and date: 6:45 pm, Tuesday 4/30/13
Current US time and date: 4:45 am, Tuesday 4/30/13

Hello from Australia, my favorite 5th graders! 

Have your forgotten about me yet? Don't think I've forgotten about you all! Sorry its taken me so long to get in contact, things have been quite hectic over here. Because of that, I haven't been able to email everyone so I'm starting this blog to keep you guys updated on what I'm up to while I'm here! 

Where do I start? Well, I left for Australia last Tuesday (April 23rd). Before that I spent a lot of time at home with Dozer and the family trying to pack and get all my paperwork sorted out for leaving the country. Packing was a very hard task! I'm not very good with packing, so my mom had to help me otherwise I would've tried to take my entire closet and would've had about 8 suitcases of stuff. 

Above is Barbie! She's my Australian buddy traveling with me! She's saying goodbye as we load the suitcases into the car before heading to the airport. Notice Dozer trying to see if he'll fit in the trunk too! He wanted to come with us.


My flight left out of Philadelphia and flew to San Francisco. That took about 7 hours, it was a very long and boring flight--especially because I was all alone. I stayed awake the whole time because I wanted to keep my body on a normal sleep schedule. Once I got into San Francisco (California), I had a 3 hour wait in the airport until my next flight to Sydney (Australia). I got some food and relaxed, then at 10:45 pm my flight left for Sydney. That was a 15 hour flight! Thankfully, I was tired because it was so late. They gave us dinner on the plane, then I fell asleep until about 3 in the morning. From then, I read my book and ate the breakfast they gave us. Before I knew it, it was 6:30 in the morning (Australian time) and my plane was landing in Sydney! It was also Thursday the 25th! Because of the time difference, I lost an entire day while flying over to Australia. They are 14 hours ahead there.

Barbie: "Made it to San Francisco! Got my passport ready, next stop: Sydney!"

Mountains in California

Sun rising as I'm above the clouds getting ready to land in Sydney!

After I landed in Sydney and collected my bags, I met my host family (the people I'm living with) in the airport waiting for me. They're such nice people. My host parents' names are Scott and Louise. They also have a 7 year old son named Riley! He goes to my new elementary school, but he's in 2nd grade so I won't be teaching him. Here, they call elementary school "primary school" and 2nd grade "year 2". It gets kind of confusing! They say a lot of things differently, but I'll get to that. 

The day that I arrived on, April 25th, is a national holiday in Australia called Anzac Day. On this day, they honor all soldiers, current and veterans. They have big celebrations all over Australia to celebrate. We watched one of the parades while in Sydney. Here are some of the pictures of the soldier parade!

There's Riley!

Veterans 

After the parade, we toured around Sydney, which is a big city in Australia. We went to the famous Sydney Opera House and saw the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Then we headed to a popular beach in Sydney called Bondi Beach! (Unfortunately Barbie was a little too jetlagged to join, so she stayed in the car)

Harbour Bridge

Sydney Opera House

Riley and me at the Opera House!

Me with the Harbour Bridge

This is a didjeridoo! Its an Australian music instrument 

Riley and (sleepy) me with an Aboriginal. The Aborigines are like the Native Americans of Australia. They are people that were first on the land and owned the land. 

Bondi Beach, how pretty?

Riley heading right for the water!

That was my first day! After all this, we headed home and I slept a lot because I was very sleepy and trying to adjust to the time difference--I was jetlagged. The next day my family took me out and showed me around Newcastle, our city that we live in. Since the students are currently on 'holiday' (vacation/break), Riley was home and could show me around our 'primary school'.

Its much different than PVI! A lot of it is outdoors. Also, they have a lot of 'tea breaks' where the kids go out for outdoor time while the teachers go have tea in the the teacher's lounge. Another thing is that they don't have a nurse or nurse's office. Its called the 'sick bay' and its just a room with ice and bandaids and the teachers have to help the sick or hurt students. They also don't have school busses. The students either take public transportation, walk, or have parents drop them off. They don't have a cafeteria or lunch ladies either. They have a 'canteen' and parent volunteers to give them food at the canteen. Then they take their food and eat outside at the picnic tables all year long! They have covered areas for days that it rains. It doesn't snow here because it doesn't get that cold. A lot of people here have never even seen snow. The temperatures don't get nearly as low here as they do at home--but they're all in Celsius so I've been using our composite function a lot to help me convert the temperature to Fahrenheit so I know what to wear! Here's some pictures of my school.

All the hallways are outdoors! 

The gym! And where the younger grades eat their lunches.

Riley being my tour guide

Some pretty flowers in the 'hallway'

The next day we went to Louise's field hockey game. Field hockey is very big here. Everybody plays it including Scott, Louise, and Riley. Scott also coaches it and coached one of Louise's games that day so I hung out with Riley and his cousin Cooper as we watched. 

Cooper and Riley watching the game!

The big sports here are field hockey, rugby (which is kind of like football), netball (which is kind of like basketball), cricket (which is kind of like baseball) and Ozzie Rule (which is like a combination of football, basketball, and volleyball! Its crazy!) They call rugby "footy" and when I talk about football, they refer to it as "gridiron". Like I said, they say a lot of things different than us, and Riley has been fast to correct me on my American English. He thinks its funny that I say things differently that mean the same as their Australian English. I'll write a post on here later with a lot of the words they say. I've been keeping a list. 

Sunday, Riley and I went exploring and went down the street to the park. It was an awesome park! I'm glad I had Riley with me because then I could go on all the slides and rides and not look crazy for being a grown up on them :) they were so fun! Later we walked over to the lake, which is also down the street, and we skipped some rocks and enjoyed the sun! 

Some of the park!

Riley and me in the climber going up to the slide

The lake

I've been going for runs around this lake because there is a path alongside it. Its so pretty!

Monday and Tuesday I went to school, but Riley got to stay home since they're still on holiday. Every few weeks they end a term, which is like a marking period, and then get 2 weeks off. They just ended 'term 2' so they had 2 weeks off until 'term 3', which starts tomorrow. That's when I'll finally get to meet my fifth graders, which are actually called year fivers here. Instead of fifth grade, its year five. I'll also be able to hand my new students your letters tomorrow so you can get your pen pals! 

So far, Australia has been wonderful. Everyone is so welcoming and friendly! I don't get to use the internet very much because they don't have a lot of wireless like we have at home, but I'm going to try and update this as much as I can! One final thing I wanted to share with you all was the food! They don't eat too much differently than us. They even have McDonald's, Subway, Dominos, and Pizza Hut! These places serve smaller portions than America though. My family has been making us a lot of food on the grill (the grill is known as the barbecue or barbie in Australian English). There's a lot of things they don't have though or have never heard of. I brought over marshmallow fluff and Pop Tarts because they don't have either. I wanted to let my family try them; Riley loves the fluff! They also don't know what s'mores are! We're having a fire this weekend so I'm going to make them some. Also, they call a lot of foods different names than we call them--which is getting pretty confusing. Again, I'll get more into that when I post a list of Australian words on here. One of the main food differences is this thing called 'Vegemite'. They put it on everything and love eating it. My family made me try it, and I was not a very big fan. I think it tastes like a salty mushroom! I guess its something called an 'acquired taste', meaning you start liking it after many times of eating it. 

Riley with the Vegemite in the grocery store!

Barbie: "Tried Vegemite for the first time today! It will probably be my last time having it!"

Well guys, this entry has gotten quite lengthy. If you read it all, I'm very proud of you! Maybe this should count as your 15 minutes of reading today ;) The other posts after this shouldn't be as long as I'll be trying to write more frequently.

I miss you all terribly! Wish I could be finishing the year with you guys right now. Please feel free to comment on this! There's a space below for comments,  click on where it says 'No Comments' or 'Comments' (depends on whether or not comments have been made on it). Make sure you're including your name!

Be sure to check back as I'll be trying to write posts on here as much as I can! 

Cheers! (that's Australian for goodbye!)

-Miss Probasco