Lenka has now been in Melbourne for 2 months and has begun to settle into school and family life. Our sincere thanks to Carla and Scott Tatulaschwili and their boys for welcoming her into their lives.
Despite only being at MAC since July 21st, she has already completed SACs and multiple assignments. Her marks have been outstanding!!
As well as attending multiple Rotary meetings, she has helped at BBQs, tree planting, at the VU Open Day, saw MAC Mamma Mia production, went to Healesville Sanctuary, 10 pin bowling and multiple football games thanks to her host brothers passion.
Lenka’s BlogG Australský blog Počarovské – Záznamy z výměny
31/8
On Monday, I had the only SAC of the week, that was Media. I'm not entirely sure about it (although I say this about every test), because I was running out of time at the end, so I filled it in so haphazardly. We'll see. Anyway, I have already received the results of one of the SACs last week, or rather from Biology. Even when I wrote it, I was very sure of it, and in the end I got 93% of it. (<- boasting)
On Wednesday I went to a school production of the musical Mamma Mia, in which one of my friends, J, performed. (It seems strange to me how many people here are called by other names than their first names. In class in the Czech Republic, we also had nicknames, but here, almost every other person has a nickname (hyperbole), and how am I supposed to know that, for example, Ellen is Jules or that [redacted] is J.) The musical was surprisingly good; they more or less didn't sing out of tune and it was easy to understand them, even though there were problems with the microphones (well, most of them; some were mumbling).
I always had a problem with musicals that I saw online, that I simply didn't understand them in terms of meaning, couldn't distinguish the phonemes, but in person it was fine. (Ok, this sounds a bit negative, but I enjoyed it there.)
Towards the end of the week I caught a mild cold; my head and throat hurt a bit, but I bravely survived it and I'm feeling better now.
On Saturday night I went bowling with my host family; it was my first time bowling, so I was terrible (9-year-old host brother had more points than me), but it was fun. Illustration of epic bowling skills:
On Sunday we spent almost the whole day at Healsville Zoo. I fed the kangaroos: Floe the one-eyed kangaroo (left) and host brother Max (right). Apparently 
the kangaroos like to eat carrots and pine needles.
the kangaroos like to eat carrots and pine needles. Koalas are said to sleep 18-20 hours a day. They have a special plate on their butt that they hook between branches to prevent them from falling while slee
ping. It drizzled a little most of the day. On the way home we stopped at a waterfall. The nature along the way is honestly one of the first things I looked at and thought Hmm. This is Australia.
ping. It drizzled a little most of the day. On the way home we stopped at a waterfall. The nature along the way is honestly one of the first things I looked at and thought Hmm. This is Australia. 24/8
SACs are more or less gone. I have mixed feelings, but I don't see it as a failure.
On Thursday I attended the Rotary meeting of my host club, RC Flemington Kensington. It was a bring-a-friend meeting, so the atmosphere was even more relaxed than usual; it was mainly about a presentation about Rotary, a quiz and food. Rotary meetings here are usually held in "pubs", which I would describe as somewhere between a restaurant and a bar, so the food was pretty decent. I had a spicy chicken burger, which wasn't spicy, and I quite enjoyed the meeting.
On Sunday I went to help my other host club, RC Footscray, at the Sausage sizzle at the Victoria University Open day (although they were so busy that they probably didn't even need me there - I mainly folded toast and napkins for them). Photo of the view from the 10th floor of the VU Tower over the city:
The Rotarians there gave me some free time to look around and see what they had at Victoria University. I don't know if I just look like easy prey or what, because almost every person there spoke to me. It was kind of funny watching them try to convince me why I should study at VU, when it's probably not even physically possible. I even chatted with some of them, so it was cool. They also didn't have any proper information signs there; they had it set up in such a way that for each faculty they just had a stand with the name of the faculty written on it (eg. Criminology) and then a few volunteers standing by it, and if I wanted to find out anything about the faculty, I had to start talking to these people. Crazy.
My host mom was supposed to pick me up right after Sausage Sizzle to take me to my host brother’s football final, but due to some miscommunication about which campus I was actually on and illegible bus signs, Jess, my host mom’s sister, ended up picking me up from a random bus stop. But she didn’t drive to the final with her host grandparents (does that work?) until half an hour later, which turned out to be fine, because I spent half an hour at her apartment drinking tea and petting her two greyhounds. I wasn’t particularly into dogs before, but here in Australia, every other person has a dog, so I’ve grown to like them through long-term exposure. I sometimes walk my host family's dog, Lolly, in the park opposite the house
Before leaving, I wasn't much into ornithology, but since there are many species of birds here that I don't know, I bought a handbook for their identification. A small lesson in recognizing Australian birds (I apologize for the blurry subjects, unfortunately, instead of being considerate of amateur photographers, birds tend to brazenly sit in trees):
The one on the left is called a “rainbow lorikeet”. Apparently, such colorful species live wild here, which supports my biology teacher's theory that colorful animals are found everywhere except in the Czech Republic.
The one on the right is a “red wattlebird”. You can usually tell by its red collar and yellowish belly; if you can zoom in enough to see it, I'll take a picture. The tree it sits on is called a “peppercorn” (the pink things smell like pepper when crushed). It is not native; it was planted in Australia at one time mainly because it grows quickly and provides good shade.
At the time I was walking to school, the street I was walking on was artistically lit by the sun, so despite my (in)abilities as a photographer, I have a few scenic photos of it: The streets here are strangely but helpfully straight. At that time, when I had not yet completely mastered the route to and from school, I decided to try a new route (certainly not because I couldn’t remember the right one), so I simply set off down a street that seemed to go roughly in the right direction, and after walking a little less than a kilometer in a straight line, I ended up just a short distance from my house. That’s about the end of my knowledge about the construction of Australian cities.
17/8
I was at a mandatory Rotary camp all last weekend, which put me a little behind on my homework, but I'm somehow surviving.
Next week is the SACs (Australian Tests), which will be even more fun. I think the fact that I can speak English quite well works against me here - if I was worse and didn't understand in class, they would be nicer to me, but they treat me like just another student who knows what they did all last semester - because the Australian school year is half a year ahead, I arrived halfway through the semester.
However, the subjects I've chosen are quite good, so it's not like I'm drowning in it, I'm just awkwardly waiting around. On Wednesday we had more or less a day off because it was Course Counselling – in practice it went like this: I sat down with the teacher for 15 minutes and we talked about what subjects I would have next year and which ones I would kick out (in Year 11, where I am now, we have 6 subjects, while in Year 12 I will only have 5). The decision was all the more interesting because I have had those subjects for less than a month, but luckily one subject was somehow offered (bye bye Art, as a subject you are fine but I have about 3x more assignments from you than from any other), so it went smoothly.
Otherwise it was a surprisingly pleasant conversation. Specifically the teacher I spoke to is excellent, however I think that teachers here are more friendly to talk to than I am used to from the Czech Republic.
After Course Counselling I went to hang out in the city with a friend from school. The weather was good (see photos below), so even though we didn’t achieve anything specific, it was at least a pleasant walk. We got a little lost along the way – we somehow reached the Australian Parliament building (pictured below) when we wanted to go to the mall a few blocks away, but at least I have a photo and a walk of it. We also walked past a few other buildings that looked interesting:
I got hungry in the mall, so we went to the food court for a bite to eat. I had gyoza – it’s a Japanese dish, not Australian, but I’ve been hearing about it for so long that I had to try it. It doesn’t look like much in the picture, but I really enjoyed it – so much that I forgot to take a photo before I was half way through.
Speaking of food, on Monday my friend brought me haluvšky (???) to school because his grandmother is from Slovakia, and when he was at her place over the weekend, they got more food than they knew what to do with, so when he remembered the conversation where I said that the food here is a little different than in the Czech Republic, and where I mentioned haluvšky, he decided to bring me some. They use Feta cheese instead of bryndza. They were a little undersalted, but in my opinion that is a constant of Czech cuisine (or at least my mother's cuisine), so they tasted almost like home.
On Friday I wrote a practice SAC for philosophy, which was in practice an essay on a given topic, in which I had to compare the opinions of 2 philosophers on this topic and then express my own opinion. It took 90 minutes and I spent almost all of them thinking or writing - I feel like it was the longest time I have ever written without stopping. When my time ran out, I was disoriented and excited – a very strange feeling.
Today (Saturday) I mainly studied for the 3 SACs that will be next week, and caught up on assignments that are eternally endless, however, I went for a short walk with my host mom in the evening, from which I have a few scenic photos: On the way back we saw possums (?) (it was already dark, so the photo is not very good). Who would have guessed that they climb trees?
The rest of the week was more or less school mode – apparently it is similar in Australia to ours. I will write about my experiences from tomorrow, if there are any, in the next blog. For now, bye!
When I arrived at Melbourne airport, it was after about 25 hours of flying, even more hours of travelling overall, and about 3 hours of sleep. It all seemed incredibly comical to me. I flew out of Vienna airport (we were closer there than in Prague) on Saturday 12/7 a little after eleven in the morning. I feel like there is a certain flight length in hours at which the price of over a hundred crowns for six hundred ml of water becomes extortionate. It is probably less than eleven. The food was not great, but that is to be expected; at least it was edible, although I had to plow the rice and the “banana” dessert tasted like toothpaste. The nicest thing I can say is that I was hungry before I ate it, and I was less hungry after eating it.
Cheap airlines, everyone. On the plane I was sitting next to a Taiwanese woman who was intrigued by my Rotary jacket, so she started asking me if it was a school uniform, if I was really flying alone, etc., and then she asked about the exchange program. She was returning home from a trip to Europe, and just happened to be in the Czech Republic.
(The thing I found out in Australia is that maybe every second person here has been on vacation in the Czech Republic at some point, and always only in Prague; maybe in Český Krumlov if they are connoisseurs. I'm a little fascinated by this because a) I don't know many people from the Czech Republic who have ever been to Australia, and b) I've never seen the Czech Republic as a tourist destination.)
A Taiwanese woman had just visited Český Krumlov, but she pronounced the name so distorted that if I wrote it down here, it would come out as something vulgar. She was very friendly and, even though we spoke a bit broken, sometimes unintelligible English to each other, it was just a good feeling to talk to someone new and unfamiliar, but kind. I had about an eight-hour layover in Singapore; the airport is supposed to be nice, but since I was paranoid about going too far from the gate, I didn't see much of it. But the food was very good and surprisingly cheap.