MAFOTWTCBAILEIIMSW

well well well
here is a combination of a report of the happenings and also of my aussie feature of the week.
last few days have been quite busy and mainly due to preparing my safari trip. so monday and tuesday had been fairly normal days but on wednesday i packed up everything that goes on safari in my safari bag and also all the rest was stored into my CCM bag because right after safari i change host families....
wednesday afternoon i went to pacific palms and visited john morris from my rotary club. he showed me around pacific palms and told me this story here about a beach and this is my aussie feature of the week:

a beach in pacific palms is called blueys beach and this supposedly is because once a cow had been on a patch of grass and then had tripped over a small cliff and fell into the water. the cow was called bluey so thats what they called the beach. here is a picture of it:

 

the beach that i can see on the left in the back is blueys...

i stayed at johns house for the night and then in the morning i caught the bus to school. then today at school we had the RYDA day. this is a program called rotary youth driving awareness day where people from rotary organise special activities to demonstrate different things like showing braking distances and listening to real life stories that happened to other people. it was really impressive and revealed facts that are very useful to know.

then i went to johns barbeques galore store where we booked my return flight. i will return on the 13th of january at about 7:15 in the morning i think. 

and now of course tomorrow i am getting picked up by a guy from valeries rotary club and then he will take us to port macquarie where i stay at the place i have stayed before with jan and bob. and then saturday safari starts :-) ..

well thats about it i will blog again when i get a chance to so hear from ya when i hear from ya aye!

hello everyone

seriously this weekend...pretty boring. although that is fairly normal when its storming and the surf goes crazy and waves are 3 meters and more. but like always up to now forster and tuncurry have shown themselves as very flood safe places to live. other parts of australia havent been that lucky and were flooded brutally.
now on friday i got a haircut after school and then stayed home and hoped that soccer would be on saturday morning. but it wasnt on so i had basically no plans except the weekly barbeque at bens but not even that was on so yeah was a "rather" boring day that i passed with reading a book for school.
then today i went to the lakeside church in the morning although this church is very very different from an average church in switzerland. a band consisting of young people plays a few songs in the beginning and then the rest of the program goes on. also very different is the location. its basically a room that has walls not painted properly and is about the size of a big living room..
after that i finished that book for school and then went to buy some new shoes before safari starts on saturday next weekend. after i went to the aquatic center to go for a swim.
and here i am now at home one last week to safari although its much more five days.
also i spoke to florian lichtin today he is also an exchange student from switzerland and he is in sydney and we agreed on trying to book our return flights on the same day. we are booking next week.
so whats comin up? school is getting really tough now......for my mates hahahahhahaha
nah i'm just takin the mickey outa ya mate...its not that rough down 'ere...
i wrote a business test the other day and i am still convinced that i beat two of my mates...well we'll see but i shall remain confident.
and last but not least i hereby tribute this last line to the most important ongoing stuff in switzerland tonight
GO FCB!!!

hello everybody

just a quick note
the weather is really bad and its storming a fair bit and further p north there are heaps of flooded areas. check my gadget on the right hand side near the bottom where you can check the wave height. somebody told me it will get up to 15-20 feet waves tomorrow. that would mean about 5-7 meters.
wow i think i will go take some pics for sure.

hang loose!!

contacts

here just a small but for me very important remark

this morning when i went to the optometrist i got the contacts in second go which was a fantastic thing and after about five tries i got them out again. i now have them at home and am very relieved  that it all worked out after all..other than that not much happened during the day...school was school and practice is gonna be practice in half an hour. luckily it's not raining cuz its not that much fun playing soccer in the rain for two hours especially after that fever and i still have a bit of a cold...a cold and today it was 26 degrees...crazy mate isnt it??

MAFOTWTCBAILEIIMSW

okay here's how today's rotary meeting went....

in the beginning everybody starts to trickle in sometime between 6 and 6.30 so usually i have a chat to a few people and catch up with them. today i caught p with my first host dad and i really like him. then slowly everyone grabs a seat only to stand up again to say/sing rotary grace and then there's always bread rolls and butter. then some of the board members report on going things like upcoming fund raisers or the treasurer says whats been happening to the money and all that....
then the meal comes in which is usually a choice of fish or chicken with veggies and bacon and other things. during the meal there's always discussions about the ongoings in the footy comp and right now there are two main things that everyone talks about. firstly and thats what really everyone is talking about is a scandal involving footy players that had a group sex scandal back in 2001. now the team and the league are losing sponsors and also their reputation. it all reminds me of a certain FC Thun in switzerland....also last years champion of the league, manly, isnt going to go through to the playoffs so thats a big disappointment for man(l)y (please understand the genius in this word play!!i just thought of that myself!!oh yeah!!). then the desserts are served. today i had pavelova.
after the meal there's the fine session which is always funny. one guy in our club, trevor, makes a list of things that he can get people for so that they have to pay one or two dollars. today people got fined for being early and late and heaps of other things... and then after trevor is finished fining everyone there is the possibility for cross fines where individuals can fine individuals... i got fined today with the following by a guy called david:
he said to me :"David you do know that there are some places where you can cut your hair in tuncurry?" yeah yeah i got the message but responded that he was probably just jealous that mine is still growing the way it is :-)
after the fine session we had a guest speaker today that is a teacher at my college and is also the principal of the junior campus. he is going to india fairly soon to work there at a school and be the principal there. i think its a great thing of him and his wife to do. a great challenge thats for sure.
after the talk everyone sings the australian anthem and then some stick around adn others buzz off straight away.
i had a talk to david nix from my club and he told me that the fourth family that had been planned so far is just moving out of town so i won't be staying with them. he also told me that he has someone else that is 99% sure and that he will tell me tomorrow or so.
so thats the procedure of a rotary meeting of course not very detailed but it gives you a rough idea. i will blog again later on in the week to tell you how my meeting with the optometrist went that i have tomorrow morning. and also i am now getting rather angry with the people from the surf shop because i have called them twice and been in they're shop twice and still they have always only told me that someone will contact me concerning a surf lesson that i have a voucher for.

i bring to you MAFOTWTCBAILEIIMSW.

hello everyone
i know that last week i didnt mention an aussie specialty of the week
 because i was thinking of some food. well i will change the intention of that weekly post to a more general life based thing. to make it simple i call those posts from now on:
my aussie feature of the week that can be anything i like even if it might seem weird, or in a short form MAFOTWTCBAILEIIMSW.
so this weeks edition will be on tonights rotary meeting. i will take my ipod with me to make some notes and then afterwards when i get home i can make my first blog entry on that matter.

just quickly what else has happened: on friday as always i went to the soccer fields in the evening with my mates to watch some games. saturday morning we played a game and lost for the first time which is okay cuz sometimes i asked myself how such a chaotic team managed to win the fist two games in a row so i guess we can still be very happy with the way we are going so far. in the arvo i went over to forster to get a sandwich at subway and met kellie from school there and then went back home. it was a beautiful day and riding over the bridge with my bike was very nice.
in the evening i went to ben's place for the usual bonfire and barbeque and on sunday morning i got up early to help my rotary club with a project of theirs called the rotary motor market which i think i have explained before but please correct me if not.
also i had caught a nasty cold at the end of last week so on sunday in the arvo i had a bit of a fever and headache and i decided that it was safer for my mates at school if i would stay at home today to recover fully :-)

anyways i'll get back on you later after rotary!

Why golfing and contact lenses arent too different after all

Hello everybody!
last time you heard of me i was about to go to port macquarie to visit my friend mika who is from finnlan. i went up on thursday afternoon on a bus with about 10 seats so it was very cozy and about two hours later i was in port with mika. we went to buy a dvd for the evening and then we watched it. it's called "you dont mess with the zohan".
in port i stayed with mika's hosts called bob and jan. they are really nice people and i had a very nice time staying in their apartment.
on friday mika had to go to school but before i went to rotary breakfast at his rotary club with him and it was very good. pan cakes and scrambled eggs...mhhmmm was delicious!also i met a guy called peter grob who is a swiss living in port since 30 years.  after that mika went to school for the first part of the morning until he came to have lunch with bob and jan and me. after went to the center of port and mika caught up with some mates so it was god for me to also meet some new people. in the evening we went to a mates house. saturday was really rainy so we didnt get up to too much but it was good anyways...
sunday was mother's day and it was quite special. we went for a drive and it was nice but still very rainy. we went to a lookout and then went for some burgers and fish n chips.
monday morning i left port at 7 a.m. and went to school around 10.30. rotary in the evening was normal and tuesday was soccer as always. on the weekend my soccer team had won again on saturday so we are now top of the table and looking forward to defending our lead on saturday.
yesterday i went golfing with paddy burn from my rotary club and it was the first time for quite a while and it went very well and i was quite pleased. still it is one of the most frustrating things....
then today i had an appointment with the optometrist in the morning and he started to show me how to put in the contact lenses and putting them in went alright but taking them out...a disaster. it isnt easy and i knew that already before but i felt like i didnt get anywhere so after a while i got another appointment later in the day after school. so i went back to school with the contacts in and it was very good. then after school i went again and i got alot closer but still am unable to remove them so he took the out and we made another appointment. so overall i am very happy with the result but also awfully frustrating. just like golf :-)
so now i am at home, my eyes are really really sore from all that trying out with the lenses and the weekend is now surely coming closer.
on saturday like i said i have a soccer game and then in the evening i'm going to bens for a barby as always. then on sunday i have told my rotary club that i would help them with their "rotary motor martket" where people who want to sell something with a motor and then other people come and have a look at it so you can bring it there instead of just have your car standing in your front yard.
i am still looking for something as the aussie specialty of the week and am confident that i will find something.

aussie specialty of the week

i almost forgot about this part here!
for the party me and nicole made some rum balls i even have some pictures to prove this!

they are quite easy to make! i have a link with a recipe for you and i can confirm that its a good one but what we did was leave away the sulatanas.

so yeah enjoy and try it its really a much much easier one this week compared to last weeks lamingtons :-)

here is my link
http://www.exclusivelyfood.com.au/2006/10/rum-balls-recipe.html

and here the pictures:

 

Nicole making the rum balls with me. 

Pat

  

left overs of the rum balls. 

  

one particular rum ball covered in white chocolate and marshmallows. 

hey guys

long time no posts aye...this is always a good sign but because that means that i dont have time to blog and that was exactly the case this weekend. my host sister nicole came up from sydney with her boyfriend pat and anther friend called ben. they came up because my host lyn had her 50th birthday party and there were stacks of people around the house and i was really glad to be able to hang with them! i had a really great time with them! they involved me in everything and i really enjoyed it and they even came up with the idea of me visiting them in sydney and then i stay at their place for a few nights. this will either be before safari or sometime after. by the way safari starts on the 30th of this month or the fist of june i'm not sure yet....
today i booked a bus trip to port maquire tomorrow in the arvo so that i can be there in the evening and meet mika and his hosts. then on monday morning i catch the bus again and come back and go back to school.
what else?hmm oh yeah on the weekend i had my fist real soccer game of the season and we played at bulahdelah which is like the smallest place with the least going on and so on... it took us about an hour to get there with our two team buses. when we got there my first reaction was something like:
okay i see the goals but where's the field? well the field was the thingy surrounded by something that looked way too much like a swamp or something. the field was very uneven but that wouldnt be an excuse so we pretty much smoked them with a 5 to nil win. i didnt score but as a midfielder i did my job and set up three goals.
yesterday it was soccer practice and everything would have been good but when we were playing a game i had decided to tackle and the tackle was great except that afterwards my right leg hurt really bad and i could hardly walk.... of course it had happened exactly where i have my scar :-)
oh well some ice and sleep helped and now i feel a lot better!

i spose that i'm all ready for port now whatever might come!