Safari part one

Well.... i came home from safari on sunday night and changed host directly because they had already taken the rest of my bags to my new host's house, the dwyer's.
i will try to tell you a lot about the safari trip although u have to understand that i am not too keen on writing everything... for various reasons :-)
anyone that doesn't feel like reading too much:
it was great and i would do it again anytime. the city and the outback experience were both very interesting and the people on the trip were just great!!i am uploading plenty of pictures on facebook and also i will put new pics into the slideshow on the side of this blog

now for the people that have the time and nerves to read a bit more than that:
Okay here's part number one of my safari trip:

it all started of with me going to port macquarie on friday morning to stay with mika, carlos and renat who were already there or arrived the same day.

Day 1
on saturday we all got on the safari tour bus and met all the new people from the district of brisbane that we went on safari with. new was also the tour leaderfrom brisbane called yvonne i won't be talking about her much though because she didn't really get along with us and nobody got along with her...from our district there eas john walton who is a very nice guy that has been on heaps of safaris so he was much more in control!also we met the rest of our district's exchange students who got on earlier on. the bus had started off in brisbane around 8 in the morning and we got on in port around 4 in the arvo so they had been travelling for a while already. we started off talking to everyone and getting to know each other. then around 11 we finally got to sydney and we even got to stay in cabins because it had been raining all day and we had never put up the tents and it was dark and raining. the cabins were great! we stayed as groups of five and we had 3 girls and 2 boys cabins.....anyways that night was rather quiet and we had a nice rest in our beds.

Day 2
on the second day of safari we went to check out some parts of sydney including some nice lookout points onto the harbour bridge and opera house. it was a very nice day overall but still the weather wasn't too great but at least it wasn't raining too badly anymore. we also went to bondi beach that day but there was hardly anyone there. very unlike the time i had been there in january where it had been crowded as. in the evening when we came back we met some other rotary exchange students from southern australia. we had a really nice evening singing and catching up with them.

Day 3
on the last day in sydney we went to town and we could make our own program. some people in our group decided to do the sydney harbour bridge climb. i didn't do it and went to darling harbour, paddy's market and queen victoria building with the others. also we went for a ride on the monorail which gave u a nice overview. and because it was still raining we made a few tours around the whole circle :-)
that day we also went on a boat ride in sydney harbour. not sightseeing but rather rollercoaster on water. 180° turns and all sorts of other manovers were included.
then we had another chilli evening with the other exchange students and sang some more songs and then said goodbye because early next morning we would head off to canberra. we had another night in cozy cabins :-)

Day 4
we got up at 6 and then headed off around 7.30.... we arrived in canberra around 2-3 i think. we were in cabins for one last time there :-(
we had lunch and then headed off to town where we went to parliament house first. it's a very nice building but the best part was definatley to sit in the gallery and watch a question session with all the high ranked politicians. questions not asked by us obviously but labour party to liberal party and the other way around. now also i have to say that this session is shown on tv so everyone acts up alot. here are my favourtie senteces that i remember, although u have to know that kevin rudd is australian prime minister:

“You have no friends Kevin!”
“You had too much coffe Kevin!”

there were heaps more but i can't remember them. senteces like these were just shouted to Kevin Rudd by the oppositiion whilst he was speaking on the microphone. very entertaining and also very new to me! imagine that in switzerland!
after parliament house we went to see all the embassies although i did not see a swiss one. later we went to go on top of telstra tower where we had a wonderful view over canberra. canberra is very nice but not that big. you can clearly notice that it was planned to be the capital city of australia. that night we had our last night in cabins...

Day 5
after spending only one day in canberra proceeded on our journey south and got to melbourne 5. we didn't do much that day except drive and then in the evening it was STATE OF ORIGIN time!!this is a series of footy games that are very important to every Aussie. in this game the best players born in queensland head off against the best of new south wales. we all gathered infront of the tv since we couldn't exactly go into town and watch it in a pub :-) this would have been great because the game was in melbourne.....anyways the evening ended with a rather clear loss of new south wales to queensland. this was a shame because this meant all the exchangies from the other district had a reason to pick on us :-)

Day 6
this day was free for us to explore the city. this was great! we started off at some market and then just headed inwards somewhere into the city nobody knowing exactly what was where and so on. i went in a group with Vini, JP, Carlos and Mika. we went to an outlet which was great! so many things and i ended up buying a nice jumper. later on we met again at the markets and headed off home for dinner.

okay well this is the first part of my safari adventures. i hope u enjoyed reading it and if u actually made it through the whole thing....wow....also feel free to coment and tell me what u wanna know more about from the specific cities/places!