The Weather Part 2

Right now summer break is coming to a close and I thought I would do a blog post on the weather in the past couple of months before it starts to get really cold again.

If you don't already know the seasons in the southern hemisphere are the opposite to the seasons in the northern hemisphere so for the past 3 months while everyone was freezing in America I was trying not to get sun burnt. Most of the time here in Melbourne the weather is crazy and can't make up its mind but during summer time it was not like that at all, it was actually really warm for most of the time. Sure there were a couple of days when it rained but that is nothing unusual. In January most of the days were between 75 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. One thing that is really different down here is that there are a lot of storms. At least once a month there is thunder and lightning then the next day it is really sunny which I have found interesting.

Now that summer is over I think it is going to go back to the normal weather like how it was before summer break. Today was a perfect example of one of those days. I woke up and threw my cloths in the washing machine like on all of the other Saturday mornings. When it finished I grabbed the cloths and hung them on the line outside to dry. When I was hanging them it was really sunny with very little clouds in sight so I just assumed that it would not rain. About a hour later Chris and I had to go his office for a little bit to drop something off and on the way there there it started to rain which did not make me happy. Right as I got home I ran outside and grabbed my cloths to prevent them from getting any more wet then as I finished hanging them in the garage the sun decided to come back out. That is how stupid the weather can be down here.

The weather will probably stay this way for the rest of the year until summer comes back about half way through November. Australia is not all warm and pretty all year around like we all think it is, unless you go to Queensland or Darwin, those places stay warm all year long if I have heard correctly.

The Life of a Foreign Exchange Student

The most common question that I will get from friends and family back at home is "How is Australia?" (it was a good question at first but now it is a little annoying to hear it). Whenever I get this question most of the time my answer is "good" because that is the answer you give everyone unless you know them well, if someone that I know pretty well (family most of the time) asks me that question I just ask them "how have your past 7 months been?" and then we have a good laugh. Back to the answer being "good", some of the times when I gave that answer my friends would say "good? shouldn't it be AMAZING? You are in AUSTRALIA!!!". At times yes I can say it is amazing but what I don't think they understand is that I am living a normal life down here just like I would up there. I go to school, do homework, do chores, and do pretty much anything else that they would do. Don't get me wrong I really love it here but it is not a 24/7 vacation. I don't go out surfing and tanning every day (It is hard to do those things in Melbourne sometimes because the weather can't maje up its mind).

As I said before I go to school just like everyone else but it is different here. For the first time in my life I went to a different school. Before I came to Australia I never had the experience of being "the new kid" and it is not as fun as it sounds. Everyone who has changed schools knows what I am talking about because going somewhere different with no friends and no knowledge of what they are trying to teach me in classes is not easy. It took me about two and a half weeks to find friends to hang out with and did not just like me because I had a cool accent and it took me about a month to finally figure out what the classes were teaching me and after that it started to get easy.

One thing that I heard so much about before meeting my host family is culture shock. If you have never heard of it then I will explain it for you. It is pretty much when all of the cool new things are not so cool anymore and you start getting confused with the different environment because you changed from one culture to another. Culture shock does not always happen within the first months, it can happen many months into the trip or even near the end. It can also last for different spans of time, it can happen for a day, a week, a month, or longer, or if you are lucky like me it can last for an hour. I am not afraid to admit that I had a culture shock because it is not something to be ashamed of and it is definitely not something you should be scared of. I had mine I think between one month and two months into my trip and I was lucky to have it last for just an hour. I had a bad day because I started to realize that my grades were bad (I already new that before but I thought it would change over time and get easier after I get used to Australia) and they were not getting any better. Back at home I had a 3.85 GPA and I did not like the idea of getting bad grades and that day I was also brainstorming all of the other things that I missed but that just made it worse. I finally realized that I was not doing myself any favors so I decided to live with all of the new things and not worry about it. I changed the way that I thought and I improved my grades and school started getting easier and I started to find fun new things to do to occupy myself and I can say that I am really happy that I did this.

The last crazy thing that changed for me was living with a different family to my own. Not very many people experience this in their lifetime. My biggest fear was getting a bad family because I have heard bad foreign exchange stories and I did not want any of those things to happen to me. At the orientation they gave me a good scare when they said that half of the students would probably change their family and about 10% of them would get sent home. That gave me a better reason to be scared but if you don't do anything wrong and you follow the family rules then you have no reason to be sent away. I finally got to meet my family which I was scared and excited to do. Seeing my family was the moment I realized that I would be gone for a long time. A funny story that I heard later was that I guess I walked past them in the airport and they even had a sign that said Cliff. They told me they saw me but did not want to say anything because they did not know if it was me or not. When they found me at the baggage claim it was the coolest feeling, the people who I have only seen on a piece of paper were finally there standing in front of me. It is the weirdest thing that you will ever experience in your life. I actually had to catch my breath a little because I was that shocked. At first I will admit it was very awkward to be living with them but after a week we were having great conversations and good laughs together which was great. After a month my fear of being sent away left because I knew that this family was good for me and I was good for them too. I am very happy that I met them and the day that I leave will be a sad one BUT I can almost say for sure that I will be seeing them again. You don't just live with people for 10 months and say good bye forever. When I am back here in Australia I will be visiting them and if they are ever in America I hope that they will come and see me and I can live through the awkward moment of having my real family meet my host family. Then I can show them more of my culture and we can have good times together.

If you are going to be a foreign exchange student in the near future the best advice I can give is don't be scared. School will start to be easy again, the culture shock will pass or if you are lucky you won't even have it, and your host family will be great people and even if that does not work out then you should not be scared because the organization will help you.

Being a Host Parent

Hi, I’m Chris – Cliff’s Host Father. So Cliff has asked me to contribute a few words about what the student exchange experience is like for a host parent.

Being host parents has been great for us (Anne and I) but I’m sure it is not a good idea for everybody. So let’s start with that. We have three of our own teenage children and we discussed this possibility with them at length before agreeing to take on an exchange student. I think this is really important – it isn’t like taking on a dog and hoping the kids will look after it! We needed to be sure that our kids were interested not just in the experience of having somebody from another culture
living with us, but that they were comfortable and aware of the changes that would need to be made. For example, Nathan had to move in with Simon so that Cliff could have a room to sleep
in. Also, you’d want to be confident that your children will welcome the exchange student into their lives. Our children are not overly shy, but neither are they unusually outgoing and we wanted to be confident that they would help Cliff with the challenges he would inevitably face.

I’m really happy with how everybody has adjusted to life with Cliff, and how they’ve made him feel like part of the family. Cliff has of course played a big part in that, by being willing to take part in our lives.

When we decided to take on an exchange student, we were hoping that we’d gain a bit of a sense of another culture, and share some of ours. We haven’t been disappointed! We’ve learned lots about the USA – we know about Smores, which have been a big hit. We’re already working on alternatives to Hershey’s which are hard to get here and frankly don’t taste that great. The Graham crackers are great and those enormous marshmallows are perfect for the job. We’ve also learned about Gridiron (a very exciting game – Go the Broncos!!), Shaft (fun card game), Apples and Apples (fun game), all kinds of American candy (I quite like Hot Tamales and Reeces Pieces, but those Kisses were pretty awful), and so many other things. It has been great fun showing Cliff Aussie Rules football (he’s now a Collingwood fan), Cricket (he even likes test cricket), Cadbury’s chocolate, teaching him fun Australian words, showing him around Victoria and so on. We’ve learned a lot about ourselves and our country by seeing how Cliff sees us!

A little bonus for us has been meeting a couple of the exchange students that Cliff has formed friendships with along the way. That’s been very interesting for us. Also hearing about life at home for Cliff has been fascinating – it’s been like travelling abroad without leaving home!

I would certainly recommend the experience of being a student exchange host parent, but I would advise that you need to be sure that your family is united and keen for the experience – five or ten months would be a long time if it’s not working out, so we’re really glad it’s been very positive.

The Last Week of Summer Break

As the title states this was the last week of summer break for me and next Wednesday I go back to learn some more. I am very happy that this week turned out because we were out doing something everyday which was so much fun.

The fun started on Monday with the Australian Open. If you know nothing about tennis then you will not know what this is but if you do like tennis then you will already know what this paragraph is about. The Australian Open is two weeks of tennis playing with all of the best people in the world and they play one game elimination until they come out with a winner. There is actually not a winner of the Australian Open yet because it is still going right now. Pretty much what I did on Monday was I went and saw a couple of tennis games which was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. The first match we saw was a doubles match between two French guys and two AMERICANS!!!! The Americans lost but it was not a big deal because it was still fun to watch. One guy on the french side was hilarious and was making jokes as much as he could and it was very entertaining. The match after that was a serious mens single match (this is where people actually played for money) which was very exciting. It was a Japanese person against another French guy. For some odd reason I wanted the French guy to win but he ended up losing but it was still close game. After that there was another match but we had to leave so I could pick up my friend who spent the night for the next two nights.

After a good nights sleep we went to a water park in Geelong (a 2 hour drive away) and it was so much fun. I had my friend and Simon brought his friend and we also had the whole family and it was a great time. There were only three good rides but those were three really good rides and we spent the whole day on them. One ride was one of those slides that was really dark because it was a tube and about 80% of the time I went down it I flipped at the end (We went down on tubes that had two holes for two people) and I got water up my nose which does not sound like fun but I had a good time. Another ride was a lazy river but we were not very lazy on it. We were racing to the other side and flipping each other over in our tubes which was really funny because half the time I flipped myself.

The next day was just a calm day where we played cricket and took my friend home. I am surprisingly starting to get better at cricket but I will leave that for a later blog post.

Thursday we went to Phillip Island where we went to a chocolate factory and got to see many penguins. The chocolate factory was so much fun and I sadly did not take my camera in but I think my host parents got some pictures. We had a tour of the factory and it started off with them teaching us how chocolate is made and after that there was a room where they had four little games where if you won then you would win chocolate and it was so much fun. The room after that is where they had all of the little quizzes like smelling something and trying to guess what it was or looking at something strange and trying to guess what it was and I was very bad at it but it was still fun to smell all of the good smells. After that we got to start making chocolate. There was a little machine where you squirted melted chocolate on it then it would go to the other side hardened and delicious. I spelt out US with mine. There was another machine where you got to pick the type of chocolate you wanted and the things you wanted in it then it would go to the other side all wrapped up and pretty and super delicious. I picked white chocolate and for the things in it I picked wasabi and cola which sounds disgusting but it was really really good. After that we went to a koala place where we got to walk around and find koalas and it was cool to be able to see the second animal everyone thinks of when they think Australia in it's natural environment. Sure they did not do much else other than sleep but it was still fun. We did a couple of other random things after that then we went to the beach where we sat down and waited until it got dark so we could see penguins walk from the ocean, across the beach, and go into their little holes. The people working there did not allow cameras but it was still a really cool experience.

Today (Friday) I got to sleep in after a long day the day before then we went to a tree obstacle course place which was very fun but hard at the same time. The obstacle courses were high up in the tree so we did have to be clipped into a cable for the whole time until we completed the course we were on. We would climb up onto a platform that was around a tree then we went from obstacle to obstacle gong from tree to tree until we eventually zip lined to the ground. There were four different levels of difficulty, there was green, blue, red, and black. I did not do green because it is for the smaller kids but I did do all of the other ones (blue was the easiest one I did and black was the hard one). On blue and black there was an option of taking a short way or a long way. I started of on the long blue and it was really easy. After that I did the red which was ok but I did get stuck behing people so it took a long time to get through. I finished that one and went to go onto the black one but I had lost my host brothers so I did not know if they did the long version or the short version. I picked the long hoping I would find them but I did not and I actually did not finish it. It was kinda easy at first but after a couple of obstacles I became tired because it was a very tiring task to go on these things. I got to an obstacle and all I did was looked at it and I knew it would be hard. It was similar to something I did earlier but 20 times harder. It is hard to explain it but I can say that it took me between 20 and 30 minutes to complete and I was really tired after it. After that I did two easy ones then a worker got me because my session had ended so I never finished the black one but I did make it past the hardest thing they had there.

This was a great week but I do kinda look forward to going back to school because it will be so much easier now. Keep your eyes open for the next couple of days for more blog posts. Sorry about having no pictures on here from this week. My pictures do not want to load for some reason.

 

Funniest Moments of 2011

As you all know it will be the end of 2011 in a couple of days so I wanted to re-live all of the hillarious stories from my last five months here in Australia.

My first story did not actually happen in Australia, it was in America just a couple of days before I left. I was a church all nighter and we were playing this games called barbie ball, it is just tag but with a ball (the first time we played it we had a ball with a barbie on it so that is why it is called barbie ball). Before we started the game we turned on the light in the courtyard which is located in the middle of the church so it lighted up most of the church so we could see what we were doing. About an hour into the game we were all getting tired but cept on moving on (it was about three o'clock in the morning). My friend and I were running away from the person with the ball and we did not think she was chasing us but we turned around and she was so we actually started running. We turned the corner that would leed us to the courtyard and someone had turned off the lights so we could not see anything. I cept running but realized that I would never make it to the door in time so I dove to try to avois the ball and this was not any ordinary dive, all of my body parts made it off of the ground and it felt so awesome until I felt a weird heat sensation in my head and saw a flash of light. I woke up a couple of seconds later with all of the lights on and my friend standing over me asking me if I was messing with him. I was a little confused because I had just woken up and I felt a weird bumb on my head. My friend wanted to get me outside so I just went with it and when he helped me up I realized I was bleeding really bad. It turns out there was a table right where I dove and I went head first into it. My friend layed me down outside and went to get help and since I had so much adreneline running through me it did not hurt at all so one by one as unsuspecting people walked outside to see what was happening, I just laughed, as the freaked out at the sight of me bleeding. The adults stopped the bleeding and a couple of them drove me to the ER where I met my m0m and my sister who were not the happiest people to be woken up at three thirty in the morning because I hurt myself but they eventually cheered up and we all had a great laugh about it. I had to get 12 stitches and you are probably wondering how this is part of my exchange trip, if I had hurt my head much more than what I had already done I probably would've needed to get my stitches removed in Australia which would have been a little weird considering that I would get them out the day or the day after meeting my host family. The funniest part about this story for me is that after I got my stitches and was all back to normal life I found out that the person with the ball never threw it and the table that I went head first into did not fall over when I hit it.

At school I had this teacher (I won't give any names) that was the funniest person ever, this person was not funny because they tried to be but they were funny because of the way they acted every day. This teacher was probably my favourite teacher because of that. I have multiple hillarious stories with this teacher but it would take too long to explain all of them so I am only going to tell two of them. This teacher is terrified of spiders and one day we got on the random topic of bug s and he said that he hates them so one of the students put a picture up of a spider on his smart phone and showed it to the teacher. The teachers eye grew to the size of bowling balls and the teacher ran out of the class room as though he/she was running for their life. It was a very funny day but it is not the funniest story.

At school I was famous for just being American, everyone loved my accent especially the funny teacher. One day I raised my hand and answered an question and he started rambling on about my amazing accent. After about five minutes of talking about my accent and writing different versions of words on the board he eventually said "Cliff, say water". I sayed it and all he said was "thats amazing". Later on that same day when I was in math class this funny teacher walkes in, whispers something to the math teacher, then before leaving he scanned the room with his eyes and then he saw me. He said to me again "Cliff, say water". I said it again for him and all he said was "isn't that marvelous" then he closed the do and walked away. The whole class was quiet for about three seconds then everyone started laughing at how random that was. It was a very weird day but still hillarious at the same time.

I have told this story in another blog so I will say it agai but I will try to keep it short. My first week with my family was a little weird because I was still trying to get used to all the differences between countries. We were at a shopping center and it was luch time so we all split up to get food. I decided to go to KFC because it would be a little bit like home. After ordering the person behind the cash register asked me if I wanted any sauce, I told her that I wanted ranch and she gave a strange look and asked me to repeat myself. I quickely realized that this could be another one of those moments when I find another difference between America and Australia so I just said "nevermind" and walked away. I later realized that almost nobody in Australia uses ranch so that ment that I made myself look very stupid, again.

Before I left for Australia my dad told me that I need to go to Tasmania and see all the cool sights down there. After he said that I made it my mission to try my best to get to the island of Tasmania and do just that. When I was in Sydney one of my friends that I met was sent to Tasmania for their foreign exchange trip so I thought it would be a cool idea for me to go visit him and see the sights. The idea never worked out but we did talk about it and it was an ok possibility for a little bit and as we were planning this trip that never actually worked out I had a chance to video chat with my sister who was getting close to leaving on her trip to Africa. I told her that I might be going to Tasmania and her being her blonde self asked "Are you going to take a train there?". I just laughed and she was really confused then me and her at the same time realized that my host family in the room next door were also laughing extremely hard and that is when I told her that Tasmania is an island. Her face instantly became red and I just laughed even harder. I put this story up because my sister probably won't read it and if she does read it then, thanks for being a good sport Cassy. I don't think she will think that much much about me putting this story up but just in case, sorry Cassy.

This last story I am really famous for and I know that I have already put this in a blog post but for everyone that hs not heard it yet I will put it up again. On the outback tour the night after our longest hike the tour guide came out from inside the kitchen with two very strange things, one in each hand, he said "these are moths and they are very high in protein". All of the girls freaked out and asked if he was going to eat it. When they sayed that the thing that ran throught my mind was a famous quote by my sister, before I left she said "If there is anything stupid to do be the first to do it". That quote was the only thing running through my mind as the tour guide was talking to the girls about it then out of nowhere one of the other adults grabbed one of the moths and threw it into his mouth. I instantly became jelouse because I was not the first to eat it so I remembered a different quote that is by myslef, the quote is, "do not think about it, just jump" (this was said before my friend, my sister, and I jumped off a 30 foot cliff). I grabbed the other moth and just threw it in my mouth without thinking about it and it did not taste bad, it just had no taste to it. I kept chewing and found it to be very disgusting (I won't give any details) and it was the ultimate test of my gag reflexes. I swallowed it and that followed with a hand shake from the tour guide and the first one to get dessert. I found after dessert that my tongue was actually hurting and it was not fun. I asked the tour guide what to do and he told me to brush my teeth and drink water. I did both and it did not help, the other moth eater did the same and it failed for him too. I decided to just give it one night and it will be fine in the morning. It wasn't better, if anything it was a little worse and I also had another problem when I woke up that morning, I also got gastro along with my friend that I shared a tent with. So for the next week eating anything was not fun, first my mouth would hurt them my stomach would hurt. By the time we made it to Alice Springs (civilization) me and my friend were not able to walk without it hurting. We went to the hospital and we both got medicine but I got nothing for my tongue. Turns out that one can only be cured by time and a couple days later it was better. Now I am famous for being the idiot that ate a moth and got sick (the moth was not actually what gave me gastro). I think the funniest part about this story is that I am famous for it, I have had multiple encounters when someone that I did not know very well or that that I did not know at all mention my moth experience to me. How they heard about it we try to figure out ourselves but in the end it is still freaky but hillarious at the same time. I just want to say before I finish this that I DID eat the moth ententionally, turns out someone read the story the first time and did not realize that and that scared them (I guessing they will be comming to Australia in the future).

There are all of my funniest moments in Australia, I hoped you like it.

Jams Down Under

    So every night when I fall asleep I turn on the radio to cut out the awkward silence and I just want to say that music down here is not very different from music in America.  They listen to most of our popular artist but they also have their own artist and they are actually pretty good.  For most of my time here I thought these cool songs on the radio were American but later when I went to   I found out that I could not get the original version of the song that sounded cool and that is because it was not popular in America so it did not come up on the American itunes store.  I am going to put some of these videos up so that you guys can see all of the cool new music I have discovered (not all of the music is made in Australia).

 

This is one of my favourites, it is called Good Night by Reece Mastin.  This is the first song that I discovered was not on the American itunes.

 

This is an ok song, it is called Somebody that I used to know and I don't know who it is by but I do know they are Australian.  I could not put the official music video up because it was a very interesting one.

 

This song is called What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction and I have fallen in love with this song.  This band is actually from the UK but it is still really popular down here.

 

This song is not Australian at all and it is not even in english.  One of my German friends showed it to me on the outback tour and I rally liked it.  It is part of my experience so I think that makes it worthy to be put on the blog.  I have no idea what he is saying or singing about but I do know the song is called Jan Pilleman Otze.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!!!

    So before I go on to tell you guys about Christmas I just want to say MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!  Now that I got that out of my system I am going to tell you about how my holidays have been.

    A couple days before Christmas my host family took me to the city so I can see all of the decorations and it was pretty cool.  All of the pictures below are from my trip to the city.  We saw lots of decorations that were around but two different places caught my eye the most.  When we were walking down the street my host family walked into this random building so I followed them and there were all these huge ginger bread houses with all of the random building in the city like the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) and the art center.  They were so cool and they also looked very delicious.  The other place that we went to see decorations was a store called Myer and I honestly don't remember if we have that store in America or not but their decorations were awesome.  There were multiple windows where they had little elves and santa dancing and singing, it was awesome!!!!!  We had to wait in a line to see the decorations and this was intersting because we later found out that no workers were actually guiding people through this line, it was like everyone just magically decided to line up in an orderly fashion when in most cases they would croud around and be annoying.  Shortly after my host dad pointed that out I remembered that at my orientation in Sydney they actually said that most Australians like to line up in an orderly fashion and it freaked me out when I realized they were correct, I did not believe them because the lunch line at school is horrible but it turns out they were right.

    For those of you that don't know I am actually on summer break right now because in the southern hemisphere summer starts late in Nevember and ends in the middle of Febuary so I actually had a warm Christmas.  I did not think much about it until Christmas eve when my host dad, brothers, and I went to a amusment park and had to put on sun screen.  That was the moment it started to get weird for me.  Christmas and warmth don't sound like they should be in the same sentence to me but down here it is totally normal.

    Now I get to share my Christmas day with you!  So instead of opening presents early in the morning we opened our presents super early on Christmas (I am trying to find an easy way to say that we opened them Christmas eve night right after midnight when it was officially Christmas day).  It was so much fun to open present when it was still dark out and I got some of the coolest things.  Over my five months here I made a list in my head of the souvenirs that I have to to take home and I got almost all of them for Christmas which was fantastic.  The obvious thing that I wanted to take home was a lot of shirts and I did get a lot of shirts, I never thought I would be that happy getting cloths for Christmas.  The other thing was a true Australian hat and I got the coolest one out them all, mine in super Australian and folds easily so I can pack it in my bag easily.  The last souvenir that I wanted to get before I depart from this country is a my own cricket bat, I did not ever think that I would actually ever like cricket but I watched and played it with my host family and it was so much fun and then on Christmas day they gave me one, it is one of my most prized possessions.  The funny thing about it is that I saw it wrapped under the tree but I new that my host brother was getting one too so I thought it was for him.  It was a huge surprise for me.  That morning we got up and we visited multiple extended family members and had fun playing the game apples to apples (I got my host family that game for Christmas, it is not sold here).

    The next day was an interesting day, it was a day called boxing day and it was a nother public holiday.  I don't know why the day is called boxing day and I don't know what is actually done on that day but I know it is famous for the moxing day test match (a cricket game!!!!!).  The game is Australia vs  India and the game is actually not finished yet.  It is a form of cricket that takes four to six days to finish.

    Well that was my Christmas weekend for you, it really was not to different from our Christmas, it is just warmer.

The Game Show

    So I wanted to write a post a bout all of the new Australian slang words that I have learned but I knew it would be boring if I just typed random words that nobody knew so my host dad, host brothers, and I put together a video with most of the slang that I have learned.  This is not meant to be a serious video so there is a lot of goofing around and acting stupid in this.  Now just sit back and enjoy the videos!!!!!!!!  P.S. I told my host brothers to act stupid in this, they are not as stupid as they sound in this.

 

 

Australia's Video Games, TV Shows, Movies, and Shops

Over the months that I have been here in Australia I have had friends from back at home ask me what kind of video games are played here, what do they watch on tv, and how are the stores different from the stores here.  There is not a lot that is different with all of these subjects but there are a couple of key differences in these subjects.

    Australian video games almost have nothing different than American video games.  Australia has the Wii, Xbox 360, and the PS3 but the main difference in this subject is how people view each of these consoles.  In America or at least in my area the Xbox 360 is the console that everyone likes, not a lot of people have a PS3, I have talked to people in Germany and they said that they like the PS3 more than they like the Xbox 360, but down here in Australia everyone has a different opinion.  I have talk to students from school about this subject because for some reason it is a really popular topic and about 50% of them liked the Xbox 360 and the other 50% liked the PS3, it is very mixed.  The Wii has been left out of this subject because not very many people my age play the Wii often no matter where they are from.  A big difference with video games is that down here in Australia the video games are really expensive, in the states a new game cost 50-60 dollars and down here a new game is 100-120 dollars, it is really expensive.  The last difference in video games is that all of the new games will come out in America before Australia.

    Australia television is again not very different then American television.  There are a lot of the same shows that are played here like glee, survivor (the american version), and every single CSI type of show (those are the most popular in our house).  If you really try hard enough you can pretty much watch anything that is also watched in America, even football, every Friday at 1:00 pm I am watching Thursday night football.  Australia also has their own version of game shows like deal or no deal, it is almost the exact same thing it just has a couple of differences.  Australia also has two popular tv shows that are not shown in American, the first one is Master Chef and I really liked this one when I first got here.  What it is done on that is normal people with normal lives go to this 5 month cooking competition like thing and people are eliminated until there are two people are left and they battle it out for Australia's best master chef.  There are three different versions of this show, there is the normal one with people that are 18 and older (I don't know the age limits exactly), the is the junior version with kids around the age of 12 cooking and that is really amazing to watch, the little kids can cook as good as real chefs in real restaurants, and the last version is celebrity witch explains itself.  When I arrived here the normal version was on and I really liked that one, then after that finished the junior version started and I was not as much into that because I had school to worry about, and next will be the celebrity version and that will probably finish around the time I leave the country.  The second popular show which I actually don't like at all is the renovaters, it is the exact same thing as master chef but they don't cook, they renovate.

    Autralia has every movie that American has and the reason why they like ours so much is because their movies are really bad.  I have tried to watch them but it is just not good and if you ask them they will probably say the same thing but there are some good ones.  I can't think of any examples but there are good ones out there somewhere.  When a new movie is going to theaters there is the same differences as the video games.  America will get the movie way before Australia does, one of the first weeks of school when I was waiting for the bus to come I saw an add on a different bus saying that the movie Zookeeper was coming out in about a month and I did not think much of it until I saw it again later that week and I remembered that my sister had already seen it in America, I remembered her telling me how good it was about a week before I left.  Another difference that is the same as video games is the movie are really expensive down here too.  I don't remember the price for a new movie but I do know it is really expensive.

    Australia shopping is not any different than America shopping but there are a lot of stores that Australia has that America does not have and there are also stores that we have in common.  I want to start off with the fast food restaurants.  The stores that we have in common are Makers (that is slang for McDonalds), Subway, KFC, and Pizza Hut.  Here in Australia there are a lot more Makers' and KFC's than in America and that might be because I don't live in a very largly populated area in America (I do live in a really big suburb area down here).  I have only seen one Pizza Hut around and it was really small, the reason for the lack of Pizza Hut's is because the Australians don't like it that much.  The fast food places that are different than what we have in America is Hungry Jacks (almost exactly like Burger King), Wendy's (I know what you are thinking but this is an ice cream place that is way different than the American Wendy's, it is almost like a small Dairy Queen), and Red Rooster which is a lot like our Red Robin.

     In the world of gas stations I have only noticed one similar gas station and that is 7 Eleven and there are way more of those here than in my area of America.  A interesting fact about 7 Eleven is that they have a 7 Eleven day wich in America is on July 11th because it is the 11th day of the 7th month but here in Australia it is on November 7th.  In America the order of the date goes month/day/year but in Australia it goes day/month/year.

    Along the lines of grocery shopping we have nothin in common except for Safeway.  Down here their popular grocery stores are Woolworths and Coles and they are both very similar, they are like our Albertsons. 

    The last kind of store I can think of is just a regular store.  The popular outdoor store out here is Anaconda which is nothing compared to Cabela's because they can only cover the areas of camping and fishing while Cabela'a can cover the areas of camping, fishing, and hunting.  It is illegal for any Australian to own a gun unless they have a gun permit so the stores can't sell guns.  It is actually illegal for me to shoot a gun even with the people who do have permits and foreign people are not allowed to get a gun permit.  In Australia they do have Target the store but that is really the only similarity in this area, the only store that I can think of in this category would be Big W.  I would have to do some walking around to find out what else there is.  There is no Australian store that is even close to Wal-Mart or Costco and They really want these two stores to come to Australia because they think they sound amazing.

    The same thing that all of these categories have in common is that almost everything you get cost more than in America.  To get just a can of soda out of a machine cost $2.00 and to get anything bigger is 4-6 dollars.

Click on this link to view videos from the last Junior Master Chef season http://www.masterchef.com.au/video.htm?movideo_p=45833

 

Mountains?

    Most of the time when you think of Australia you would not normally think of mountains, most people think that Australia is a flat from Sydney to Perth but this is not true.  Yes it is mostly flat across Australia that is why it is the flattest country in the world but there are a good chunk of mountains around, you just need to find them.  This last weekend was a four day weekend because there was a horse race on Tuesday and it is one of the most popular horse races in the world.  During this four day weekend most of my host family and I went to the Grampians which are a huge tourist attraction in Victoria.  The people who came were my host brothers (Simon and Nathan), my host dad (Chris), and a couple of other extended family members.

    We started our journey early Saturday morning because it is about a four hour drive to get there and we did not want to get there too late.  We arrived there at about two o'clock in the afternoon and from thee we just set up our tents and then Simon and I went for  a little adventure to find some geocaches.  Geocaching is a thing when people hide containers and they put the coordinates online so others can find it.  We had just a small walk, we did nothing major and at this time the sun was starting to go down so the light was getting dimmer and I guess this is the perfect time to see kangaroos because on our way back I saw five or six of them just chilling in the bushes.  It was really cool to see them and my host brother was telling me that I could probably get closer to them but I did not have my camera with me so there was no reason to.

    The next day was the Pinnacle walk for us and that was a huge adventure.  The Pinnacle walk was the hardest walk in the whole area because it was just steep stairs the whole way up.  We packed our lunches and started our journey.  Nothing really happened on the way up except for rest stops and cool picture moments.  When we got to the top it was the most spectacular view, we could see as far as the eye can see, there was one mountain and in all of the other directions there was nothing, that is one of my favorite parts aboutAustralia, there are no mountain to stop you from looking as far as you really can.  It was time to walk back and we were about to leave but then I realized that there was a geocache in the opposite direction so Simon and I decided to extend our journey while the others walked back.  walking to this geocache was really scary because the rocks that were made into steps were a lot more dangerous then the rocks on the other track and there were puddles everywhere making our shoes really slippery.  We found the geocache, after walking through another parking lot then going down another trail then we started to walk back to camp but before we could get to camp we had to go past the Pinnacle again then go down there first trail we went down.  Simon and I did it, sure it took a long time but we eventually got back and now we can say the we hiked the Pinnacle walk twice from both directions in one day which is a pretty good accomplishment.  Around the camp fire that night everyone was roasting marshmallows and I was very sad that I had no smore ingredients to show them how to make smores, Australia has no gram crackers and they don't have Hershey's so it is hard to get the supplies to make smores down here.  The other thing that was sad is the size of their marshmallows, they are so small compared to the ones that are in America and it was very sad for me to see people roasting small marshmallows.

    The next day was our last full day at the Grampians so we decided to do the second hardest walk there was but it was not that hard for most of the way up until we got to the danger zone.  This area was where we stopped walking on dirt and started walking on rocks and on some sections we had cliffs on both sides of us and this section was so much fun for me.  There are two sections that I remember very well, one section was a rock that we had to climb up and it was not too tall but still tall enough that it was difficult.  After most of the other struggled to get up it I walk over to it and got up it in no time at all.  The other section is when we almost had to crawl up a rock because it was on a pretty steap slant and as the other were slowly going up I screamed "rock climber extreme!"  then when nobody expected it I just fast and swiftly ran past everyone that was crawling and I finished the danger section really fast.  It was so much fun.  We got to the end, took some pictures, then walked back to camp.  After the walk Simon and I decided to take a little walk to a nearby geocache again just because we wanted to and on the way there Simon almost stepped on a snake, of course it scared him but I was curious and I kept on asking if I could pick it up but Simon did not know what it was so I just avoided contact with it because most snakes here are poisonous.  After that little encounter it was that time of day for kangaroos to come out and when we got back to camp we saw some so I gave Simon the camera and I went to see how close I could get to it, this one was just a small one so I was not as scared of it attacking me and I got to the point where I could almost touch it but it hopped away before I could.  That night I showed everyone how to make hunter stew, if you have not heard of this it is just meat, potatoes, and any vegetables you want wrapped up in foil and tossed onto the coals to cook.  My host family really liked it and they really want to do it again which made me happy.

    The last day was the last day and all we did was pack up and go home to watch the horse race.  We got home and the horse that I had money on to win got last place I think and that was really funny.  It was only two dollars so there was no real worry to it.

The whole gang at our first rest stop on the Pinnacle walk

That is one of those great view I was talking about

ME!!!!!!

Simon sitting next to the nerve test, it is hard to see in the picture but there is a large skinny rock that can be walked on.  Only people with nerves of steal and host parents that let them do it can do it, that is why it is called the nerve test.

Kangaroo!!!!!!!!!!!!

Poor Simon is stuck under a waterfall

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nathan and Chris with their manly man poses

Half of the gang (I just realized how good of a picture this is considering I hit the button on my camera then ran into the picture)

Kangaroos are the best when you can get close to them