I have opinions of my own – strong opinions – but I don’t always agree with them.

I had my first day back at school and I'm already enjoying it! I mean, you always enjoy the first day back at school (even though eventually it all goes downhill) but I'm feeling good about the next four months of my school life... especially seeing as it's the last four months that I'll ever be at school!!

My first day back only went for about 1 1/2 hours. We talked as a class about lots of school stuff, obviously, and also about how our holidays went. I don't think I'll ever be able to forget the sentence, "Wie war deine ferien?"

I'm excited about these four months at school though because I've improved a lot with my understanding of German, so hopefully I'll be able to be more a part of the class. :) I plan to try to do the lessons as much as I can because I'm going to need to be in the habit for Uni back home anyway...

I think I might struggle a lot with some of the subjects though... like Chemistry and Psychology... but I need to try because my host mum seems to think that I can handle them. I honestly don't think Psychology will be good though. I also need to do P.E. lol. I haven't done P.E. in more than three years!! I'm not really keen on that but I do need to do some form of exercise... I'm keen on doing Biology though! Seeing as I'm studying Biology at Uni, I think it could be a lot of fun!

Althouh my "first day back at school" wasn't my first day back to learning, I rather enjoyed it! It was really good to see people again and talk to them about their holidays and to find out what's been going on in their lives. I'm keen to get started with learning... keen to have some routine back in my life!

"A daughter needs a loving, available, predictable father or father figure who can be counted on, whether divorced or at home. She needs his best paternal intentions, even if his efforts occasionally fall short. She needs his maturity and limit setting and sexual oppositeness, so that she can function with confidence in the wider world of adult love and work."

Sometimes, I look at other people and see how much they make their family proud. Then I look at myself and wonder if I make my family feel the same.

The most important thing in the world for me is to make my family proud, especially my dad. I hate myself so much whenever I do something that wouldn’t put a smile to his face. For example, when I got my university results I cried for hours when I found out my score wasn’t what I needed for the course that I wanted. I was so scared to tell my dad the score because I didn’t want him to be disappointed. I still remember the feeling I get when I got his phone call… my heart dropped- in the next few moments I was going to hear a lot of disappointment in his voice, even if he didn’t want to show it. This was, honestly, one of the hardest moments of my life.

Later, I found out that the score I was told was my original score- my score without bonus points. When I found out my score with bonus points I was super excited… I got into the course that I wanted the most! The first, and only thing that I wanted to do was tell my dad, I just knew he’d finally be proud of me! And he was, he helped me organise everything that I needed to so that I could defer for this year and I got everything done that I needed to.

Then came leaving home to come to Austria. This moment was even harder for me, even though I knew it wasn't a disappointment to him. I know, the 21st January 2012 was one of the hardest days for both of us- he was letting his little girl fly to the other side of the world to live and I was finally leaving home. All I can remember of saying goodbye to him was holding him and never wanting to let him go.. but I had to, it's all part of the experience.

Later on, in late February, I found a letter that my dad had sent over with me. The letter told me a lot of the things that he’s been the most proud of me for over my life. I never realised how much I did to make him proud of me, and mostly it was the simple things. I’ve always tried so hard to make my dad happy and I never took the time to notice that he was proud of me no matter what.

My dad loves me, and I love him… I love him more than I could even try to explain. But I hate that it took me travelling half way across the world to realise it.

Daddy, I know now that you’re proud of me and I’m so glad about that. I know that you’d be proud of me no matter what I do, but I’m always going to do my best to make you proud to say, “That’s my daughter.” I love you, with all of my heart, no matter what happens. <3

It's not hard to be a father but it takes a lot of courage to be a daddy and this man is the best daddy I could've ever asked for! <3

Unfortunately, not everything is smiles, laughter and fun…

“Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.”

 Homesickness is a bitch. It can hit you at anytime, no matter where you are. You could be doing the most amazing thing that you’ve ever done and all of a sudden you juts feel like shit. Homesickness has now hit me twice, once at day 42, and once at day 69. I’m now at day 82 so I’m not too worried about that… 2/82 days of feeling sad isn’t too bad..

I've heard that homesickness hits everyone differently. For me, it makes me feel incredibly bad for a day or two and by the time the third day comes I feel completely better... So far every time I wake up I'm happier than I've been in weeks for what seems like no apparent reason. Now, I think it's probably because I go from feeling so shit, back to feeling normal, it just seems a lot better...

Just because it's only one day, doesn't mean it's any easier. Last time I was out with my host sister and her friends. I'd just come home from a camp with other exchange students where I didn't speak any German so what I knew before the camp, I'd forgotten. I was hearing people speak German everywhere, all night, and I couldn't understand it anymore. All I was thinking was "I don't belong here". The next morning wasn't much better... We got home and I went to my room. I didn't want to see anyone, seeing people made me feel worse. I felt like I don't belong for multiple reasons- for one, the language, and two, all of the girls here have such beautiful figures and here I am, just me... Just plain old me. Most of the time this doesn't get to me, but when I'm feeling homesick it's one of those things...

The one thing that I want to do when I'm home sick is talk to someone... Mostly my mum. She's the one that I always talk to when I'm not feeling good. She's the one person that I'd trust with my life. I love her, more than anything. 

If it wasn't for these few horrible days, this would be the most exciting time of my life. I dread homesickness... I always find myself trying to do something so I don't get the chance to feel homesick. I do love being here, this year is amazing... but homesickness is a bitch!

Altmünster- Language Camp

I have to stop thinking about home so much. I think about my sister and how much she's going to grow up and change over the year. I think about my mum and dad and how much I could help them through the year. I think about my friends and how they're having fun and going places without me. i know that all of this is stupid because I'm going to change so much over this year, I'm going to need a lot of help with different things, and I'm going to travel to so many places that most people will only ever dream about! But people do always say, "you always want what you can't have"; that's definitely how I'm feeling... I mean, I'm actually having the time of my life here. I'm doing so much and meeting lots of new people.
I've recently spent two weeks at a "Language Camp" in a place called Altmüntser. It's where all of the new exchange students go to learn German as fast as humanly possible. There was nearly 30 of us all together, ages ranging from 15 to 18.

                                            Just some of the crew!


 For me personally, I'd been taught most of it in school already... but being 14 at the time I thought "Why should I pay attention in German? I'm never going to use it in my life!" - Well actually, 14 year old Molly, you are going to use German, it's a very important part of your life at 16/17!
But I found it all very useful, and I did remember lots of the information from school, believe it or not. We did lots of work on articles and simple vocab so that we could at least find our way around Austria.. We learned a lot of sentence structure which gave me a headache a lot of the time because it's sooo different to English; rather than saying "Today I bought a dog" you'd say something like  "Heute ich einen hund gekauft" which translates to "Today I a dog bought". IT'S SO HARD! But I keep getting told that it'll get easier the more I practise...
We spent roughly 6 hours a day doing German work- not including homework, and there was a lot of that too! On Saturday's we got it easier though, we only did 3 hours, and Sunday we did a "group activity".

                                           My classroom! :)


When we weren't in class, from Monday to Friday, we were either playing in the snow, shopping, chilling in each others rooms, or doing homework.. Most of the time I was the one doing homework, ha. But if I wasn't, I was outside in the snow! I can't say I'm much of a shopper, and there wasn't really much to shop for anyway, unless you count chocolate... But the snow was good fun! I ended up with two snowmen, a few snowball fights and LOTS of bruises! Everyone had lots of fun doing whatever though, there was always something for everyone.

                                            My fatness in my snow suit. ;)


Without us realising, on Saturday, the teachers had organised a day out with some of the "Rotex" people- they're people that have been on exchange in the past, between 5 years and 6 months ago. They told us about some of their highs and lows of the exchange and gave us pointers on how to make it the best experience that we can, it was really good to hear everything from them. They took us ice-skating too, it was good fun.. I'd never done it before so I found it hard to stay on my feet, but I survived and didn't break anything!

                                           Ice-skating: the crew!


The second week went all too quickly.. it wasn't too different to the first week really... two people had head injuries, both needed to go to hospital, one needed stitches, but both were okay. Everyone became more relaxed, a few rules were broken (NOT BY ME!) but everyone had fun and had stories to tell their host family and family at home.
Omg, I can't believe I forgot the food! It was amazing! Every meal, except breakfast, had soup. Lots had a salad, which was amazing, and the main meal was so so good! We all had table rules to follow, most of which were too hard to comprehend apparently because a few of the boys just couldn't do the right thing! But it was always funny, everyone always enjoyed the meals, mostly 'cause of the 'action'.

                                            Dinner time!


On our last 'full day' on Language camp we took the afternoon off of the school side of things because we'd made plans to go ice-skating. We all walked their together, which took about an hour, but by the time we got there it was closed... just our luck! But we decided that it'd be fun to check out a nearby town, called "Gmunden". When we got there we decided what each of us wanted to do and split up into groups accordingly. The people I was with decided to visit the "Lake castle". It was so beautiful! We didn't spend heaps of time there but we had lots of fun! We found another way home, it was very pretty; we walked along the lake side, and took lots of pictures of course! When we got back to Altmünster we went into the local café/restaurant for a coffee and cake. After an hour or so I went back to camp with a couple of other people. In my opinion, this was the best day of language camp!
Whenever we were all just chilling together it was such good fun! There was lots of laughter, and lots of noise! So many good friends  and good memories made!

                                            The castle

                                                     Our beautiful walk home

                                            Our "coffee and cake" crew


It's so good to know that the people that I met over those two weeks will be there for me forever, no matter what. All of us are going through something similar and I think whenever one of us is down the rest will be there to bring them right back up! We had so many fun times together, all will be remembered forever! These people are all so amazing, each in their own way and I love them all to pieces!

Lots of the crew <3

My first impressions.

To begin with, I’m just going to let everyone know that some of the stuff that goes onto this blog could be found as offensive. Obviously, that is not my intentions; the writing I do is just my thoughts, experiences and memories of this trip. Now, to begin…

The flights to get here seemed like forever. Adelaide to Melbourne, Melbourne to Singapore, Singapore to London, London to Vienna, Vienna to Salzburg. All up I think it took nearly 40 hours, going from one plane to another and waiting in the airport. It was just lucky we had a Rotary member at most of the airports to help us get from one gate to another. By the time I was in Salzburg I was so exhausted all I wanted to do was eat something and go to bed. Luckily, my host parents had been to Australia so they knew how I felt and they gave me some soup and sent me to bed.

I always said to myself “I’ll never have a problem with jetlag.” I was so wrong! Every night, for the first five or so nights I was in bed by 8:30pm and woke up at 4:00am. I was the most grateful person in the world when I could finally get a decent night sleep.

Something gives me the feeling that while I’m over here, the longest sleep in I’ll get is until 8:00am and being a teenager I like my sleep. There’s a little boy in the house I’m living in now (I’ve been asked not to use names, so for this he can be Kane.), he’s 4 years old so he doesn’t agree with my sleeping in habit. Every morning that I’ve had the chance to sleep in over here I’ve woken up to Kane yelling about something downstairs.

My first couple of days in Austria were very relaxed; my host family had to go to work/school so I spent time at home just settling in. On the first day, my host sister (we can call her Rachael) came home at 2:30pm from school so that she could take me into the city to get some clothes, seeing as I was sent over here with the clothes on my back and one spare set of clean clothes. I’ve borrowed a lot of clothes too; Rachael has been kind enough to let me borrow some of the stuff she no longer wears. I consider myself to be a good shopper, I have a habit of bargain hunting so I got a lot of different things for only a little bit of money.

As I’m on a student exchange and using a student visa, I have to go to school. I’m at my host sister’s school, Musisches Gymnasuim, which would probably be about the same size as the local public high school at home, Murray Bridge High School. That’s about the only thing that’s the same though… Everything else is incredibly different! But we’ll get to that shortly…

On my first day at school, Wednesday, my host mum took me to school and showed me around a little bit. I needed to get to know the school as soon as I could because after my initial tour, I’d be on my own. Nobody wanted my first day to be too overwhelming so I was told to only go for English. Once I was in the class, I was asked to introduce myself a little bit. I didn’t really know what to say so I said a lot of “um” and “ah”. Luckily, seeing as my German consists of very basic German, it was an English class so everyone could understand me when I spoke in English. When I didn’t think I had much else to say I asked the class if they wanted to know anymore. They all came up with funny questions like “Have you been to Uluru?” and “Do you go scuba diving?”, but the strangest question I got asked was “Have you ever seen an Aborigine?”. Now, to me, this was the most stupid question in the world. Of course I’ve seen an Aborigine, I’m a friend with lots! They couldn’t believe that it was normal to have Aboriginal people in school with “the white people”. Once I asked them to explain to me what they thought of when they say Aboriginal, I realized why they were so shocked. In school, when they learn about Australia, they hear about the Aboriginal people that are still living in the bush, wearing hardly any clothes and carrying around boomerangs to catch their food, etc. It took me a bit to explain to them all about the Stolen Generation, but I think I made them understand it all. I was just lucky I paid enough attention in class at home to know about it. By the end of the lesson I was feeling reasonably comfortable with the people and the teacher which made me excited to go back from then on.

Now, to how school’s different (these comparisons are between Musisches Gymnasuim and Murray Bridge High School, not any other schools)… Everyday, school starts at 7:45am, so I have to be awake at 6am at the latest to be on time for the start of day. The school day ends at a different time everyday depending on your timetable, for example, the earliest I can leave is 12:30pm but my latest day goes until 6:30pm! There isn’t a set recess and lunch-time either. There are short breaks of 5 minutes between each lesson and after the third lesson there’s a 15-minute break where you can leave you class and stretch your legs. Everyone has a set class, so you’re always with the same people, until you have a “special subject” (Music, Dance, Art). I’m in the class 7e. We have a specific room, most of the time, and the teachers come to us. For me this was unusual because I’m used to switching around classes and moving to where the teachers are. There are some classes that we move classes for though- Physics, Biology, Music, Dance, Art, PE and Geography… but for the most part we stay in the one class. There isn’t a dress code, my personal dress code is four layers of clothes at the least, and after that it’s whatever. I’m not sure if I like not having uniform. I feel like people are more likely to judge you on what you look like if you get to choose what to wear, rather then having a uniform to wear everyday. We don’t wear shoes at school, we have to take them off and put them in our locker so we don’t make the floor dirty. My class is very relaxed about everything; people are allowed to eat whenever they want so some students leave the class midway through a lesson just to get some hot food from the canteen. All things considered, I like this school… it’s very casual and I can tell already that it’s not going to stress me out.

There’s one girl in my class, her name’s Roosa; she’s amazing. She’s done a very good job at making me feel happy in the class. She’s also from the exchange program, but she’s from Finland and she’s been here for 6 months already. It’s amazing the people you meet while you’re away from home. She’s what I call my “oldie” and I’m a “newbie”, I’m guessing it’s fairly obvious how the names work? Anyway, she was my first friend at school. Actually she was my only friend for a while.

The main way to get anywhere in Salzburg is by bus. I had to learn the bus route quickly too. By Thursday I was taking it from school on my own, not by choice but because I had to. We take a train to school, but to get home again we have to go by the bus. My host parents are too busy to take us to and from places because of their jobs, but it’s okay because we’re old enough and smart enough to work it out together. So far I haven’t been lost, but I’m waiting for my day.

My first Friday night in Austria was the Senior Ball for school. At first I was a bit nervous, I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know of anyone that was going that I knew because Roosa had other plans for the night. The only other people I knew were my host family. The night turned out to be truly amazing! I met my next host sister and hung out with her for the night. There was three main sections of the ball… the traditional area, where people could do choreographed dances like the tango, salsa, waltz etc. I spent most of my night in the disco area, because that’s the only kind of dance I know. There was also an area where there wasn’t so much music, so people could go there when they didn’t feel like dancing. By the end of the night my feet were killing me! I wore heels to the ball, at home I don’t wear heels to parties, I wear flip-flops.

I had my first one-on-one German lesson with a girl on Saturday. She was lovely. It wasn’t much of a real lesson where I learned new words; it was more a day of working out what I already knew. It turns out I don’t really know too much, but Kane’s helping me more then anyone to learn new phrases because he doesn’t understand English so he tries to make me understand German. Being 4, he gets frustrated at me when I don’t get it, I just laugh at him though and he laughs beck most of the time.

My host dad took Kane and myself into town for the day to show me the local castle. That was very cool. It’s things like that that interest me a lot. I took lots of pictures so I’ll always remember what I saw there. It was so gorgeous! Being there made me feel like I was from the medieval times, but I also felt like a princess. While we were in the castle I had to look after Kane for a bit and I had two girls come up to me and ask, in English, if I was an Au Pair. It was really funny but I understand why they asked me. They were Au Pairs themselves and when they heard me talking English to Kane with him talking back to me in German (we were probably talking about completely different things but…) they must have assumed that’s what I was doing. They were really lovely though, and I appreciated them coming up to me and asking, it must’ve taken a lot of guts.

I’ve also seen the Sound of Music Museum exhibition. That was amazing! Having grown up with the musical I found it incredibly interesting to find out the real story behind the scenes. I couldn’t, and still can’t, believe how different the movie and reality really is… but at the same time it makes sense when you put them both together. I really appreciated seeing all of the cool things in the museum and I even bought a couple of books to get some more information out of it.

Sunday, exactly one week into my trip, was the first day that I got sick. It was only a cold but having a cold in this weather is horrible! My nose ran like a tap for 3 days and my throat was so sore! My host mum and Kane were also ill at the same time as me. I took one day off of school but then decided to go back because if I was at home mum wouldn’t have said I could stay home more then that.

I had my first dance class at school on Tuesday, it was so bad. I don’t get embarrassed very easily but this made me feel so useless. They were doing jumps and tumbles and couches all in time to the music. I was useless, always at least half a beat behind everyone else. I could hear them all laughing, so I knew I looked stupid. I just laughed with them at the time because there was no point doing anything else, but when I got home I told my host mum and she told me we’d sort something out, THANK GOD!

In a few days I go on Language Camp for a couple of weeks, and from what I’ve been told it’s meant to be amazing! That’s the next big thing for me but you’ll have to wait to hear about it when I get back.

Until next time.