WORDPRESS

For those of you that still want to follow me and read my stories, I changed to Wordpress. I don't feel well deleting this blog with blogger, so I will leave it as it is, but from now on I will only blog on this site:

https://howibecameanaussiegirl.wordpress.com

See you there! :)

Make it a habit

There are a few things, that I have learned from being on exchange so far, which I promised myself to make a habit as soon as I am back in Austria:

1) It's now or never!

Somehow I have the feeling here that I need to go everywhere in Australia and that I need to constantly travel around the country - I feel restless. I really hope that I can come back to this beautiful country someday, but for now it feels like it's now or never. I just don't want to know how often I said to my dear friend Natalie in Vienna that I really wanna do a daytrip to Bratislava, or how many times I said to my boyfriend that I would love to do a weekentrip to Prague, but somehow we never managed to do that and up to now it never really bothered me. One thing that also comes to my mind when thinking about that is: Why are we always longing for distance? There are so many amazing places in Europe I have never been to and this is something that should bother me and not if I have made it to the Westcoast in Australia or not. I mean there are even so many places in Austria I have never managed to see, like the Green Lake and I really want to make my current curiosity and wanderlust a habit as soon as I am back, because we never know what will happen in the future and someday it might be too late.

2) Be kind!

Seriously? Why are Australians SO much more friendly than Austrians. They are so considerate and mindful in so many situations. Just a few examples: While I was in Sydney with Paul, we were just standing at the traffic lights, when I wanted to check on the map if we are on the right way to the museum and I was just about to flip the map open, when a man walked past, who was obviously in a hurry, but immediately asked "Can I give you a hand?". Or one day I was sitting at the tram station, when one of my few Australian friends got off the tram and hurried to his class, but as soon as he spotted me he slowed down, sat down next to me and wanted to know, how things were going. Also it is completely normal to wave the bus driver and say "Thank you!" when you get off the bus. Moreover, when you touch someone accidentally on the street, both say "Sorry" to each other. Just think of being on the subway in Vienna and you happen to touch someone unintentionally, then you apologise and either they would say "Passt scho!" and look grumpy, or they would responde nothing or you were lucky enough to have touched on of the 5 friendly people in Vienna that would responde a German kind of "No worries!" and smile at you. I know this example might be a bit oversubscribed, but right now that's how I feel about kindness in Austria. To me it seems that human interactions are much more valued in Australia than in Europe/Austria. I certainly won't start waving the 14A bus driver, which would be super weird, but I think you get an idea of what I am trying to say. 

3) Collect moments not things!

Since, I am here on exchange my shopping habits changed so much. I only buy the things I love a 100%, because I would rather spend the money on travelling around. I think one thing that helps me spending not that much money on clothes or other materialistic things is the fact, that the amount of money I can spend is very limited, so it does not make fun to splurge and the other thing is that I only have 2 suitcases and I simply can't take that much home with me. But back home, without these two limitations, I really don't want to fall back into old patterns, especially old shopping patterns. I really don't want to know HOW much money I have spent on clothes that I never enjoyed wearing in the last two years in Vienna and my boyfriend could take all pieces of clothing, which are still in the closet in our flat and just throw them away (except for my winter coat and boots - I really need them when I get back :D ). And guess what? - I would not mind it at all. Right now I can't even remember which pieces are in there, because they have just become so unimportant to me and it's just crazy how many things we collect over the years, which we really do not need in our lives, especially not to be happy. 

Morialta Falls

While I am busy procrastinating and pretending that the due date for my next assignment is not existing, I somehow totally forgot to tell you what we did last Friday - We went hiking in the Morialta Falls Conservation Park, which is a 40 min bus ride from the CBD. As it was Max birthday his mum also joined us for the hike and it was so nice to finally have a mummy around again. I mean she brought mandarins for all of us, had so much food in here backpack that we could make a nice picnic after the hike and even carried a birthday cake and candles with her - how cute is that? :D We did the Three Falls Grand Hike, where we were supposed to see 3 waterfalls as the name already tells you, but somehow we only saw two and even missed the main one, although we always sticked to the signs - Don't ask me how that could happen, but I think it's just too funny. The weather was supposed to be much better that day, but we ended up walking through the rain, which we did not mind at all, because it was so refreshing after the heat the previous days. 

Dahoam is Dahoam

Heute gibt's zur Abwechslung mal einen Beitrag auf Deutsch, oder wie meine lieben deutschen Freunde sagen würden auf Ösi-Deutsch (mittlerweile können wir sogar schon ganz normal auf Deutsch miteinander kommunizieren - der österreichische Dialekt macht ihnen echt zu schaffen :D). Anlass dafür sind einige Beiträge, die ich in letzter Zeit so über Reisen, Auslandssemester und den sogennanten post-exchange-semester-blues auf deutschen Blogs gelesen hab. Ein weiterer Grund, diesen Beitrag mal ausnahmsweise auf Deutsch zu verfassen, ist, dass mir mittlerweile vorkommt mein Deutsch ist kurz vorm Einrosten und nicht nur einmal am Tag fallen mir bestimmte Wörter nicht mehr ein. Noch dazu kommt, dass es für Schweinsbraten einfach keinen englischen Begriff gibt. Aber kommen wir zum Thema: Anscheinend, zumindest hab ich das gelesen, leiden viele nach dem Auslandssemester an "Heimweh" - und zwar vermissen sie das Land, in dem sie ein halbes Jahr studiert haben oder besser gesagt die tolle Zeit, die sie in diesem Land verbracht haben. Irgendwie kann ich das ja verstehen, denn das Leben hier ist echt ziemlich unbeschwert - Montags & Freitags immer frei, der Strand nur 20 Minuten von der Wohnung entfernt, kein Nebenjob, Wochenendtrips und Reisen bis zum Umfallen, der Unistress hält sich sehr in Grenzen und jeder hat unendlich viel Zeit, um neue Dinge zu probieren, die er immer schon mal machen wollte - in meinem Fall: Surfen, Tauchen, Rudern, viiiiiiele Dokumentationen über Essen und Ernährung schauen und endlich mal an einem Kameraworkshop teilnehmen, um meine Fotoskills aufzubessern. ABER man muss auch mal realistisch bleiben, denn der Spaß kann nicht endlos so weiter gehen: Niemand kann sich so auf Dauer so viele Flüge und Trips leisten, geschweige denn so viel Freizeit, außer man bevorzugt es arbeitslos zu sein, wobei man sich dann auch kein schönes Leben "leisten" kann - long story short: Funktioniert nicht! Das Auslandssemester ist eine schöne Zeit, aber auch eine begrenzte Zeit und das ist auch gut so (time & money!). Ich genieße die Zeit hier wirklich in vollen Zügen, dennoch war ich rundum zufrieden, also ich Wien/Offenhausen bzw. Österreich verlassen habe und nach diesen 4 Monaten sammeln und stauen sich die Dinge, die ich so sehr vermisse schon ziemlich an. Allen voran Freund, Familie und Freunde ohne die das Leben nur halb so viel Spaß und Freude macht und mit denen ich so gern die Erlebnisse hier teilen würde - nicht nur über Facebook, Instagram, Skype und den Blog. Ich habs ja schon mal erwähnt aber in Bezug auf Essen, vermiss ich Österreich ziemlich stark und ich kanns wirklich nicht mehr erwarten endlich einen Schweinsbraten von meiner Mama serviert zu bekommen. Insgeheim hoff ich ja, dass sie einen zum Flughafen mitnimmt, wenn ich am 19. Dezember um 5 Uhr früh lande :D Es gibt auch hier viele Sachen, die ich wirklich gerne esse: lecker Burger, tolle Steaks, Kokosnusswasser und die besten Avocados allerzeiten. Dennoch bin ich wirklich überzeugt, dass man die Dinge am liebsten hat, mit denen man aufgewachsen ist und an die man sich einfach gewöhnt hat, denn der Mensch ist und bleibt ein Gewohnheitstier (das bezieht sich jetzt nicht nur aufs Essen, um das Ganze ein bisschen tiefgründiger erscheinen zu lassen). Ich hab wirklich keine Ahnung, wie es mir geht, wenn ich wieder zurück in meinem "alten" Leben und damit wieder im Alltag bin, aber eins ist jetzt schon fix: Ich freue mich auf zuhause! Dahoam is Dahoam! <3

Wanderlust

Today is the 18th of October, which means there are exactly two months left until my flight back home departs from Melbourne. It's just crazy for me how the time in Australia has gone by so quickly and I just can't believe that I was able to experience SO much in such a short time. Up to now I have been to the Northern Territory and visited Uluru, I have been to North Queenland, Sydney, Melbourne, the Great Ocean Road, Kangaroo Island, Victor Harbor and many other places in South Australia. I did my diving license, tried surfing for the first time, cuddled with a koala, went diving and snorkelling in the Great Barrier Reef, walked around Uluru and Katja Tjuta, tried sandboarding in the little Sahara and last week even tried rowing on the Torrens River in Adelaide with the Riverside Rowing Club for the first time. All those events are just the ones I can recall right now, but if I would scroll through all my blog posts, I am sure the list would be much longer and there were many more 'first times' in the past few months. My last exam here in Adelaide is on the 20th of November, then I have to give back the keys for the apartment and will start travelling again, this time for a whole month. I am teaming up with Nici and we have not fixed yet where exactly we wanna spend our time from end of November until mid December, but I marked the spots we are planning to see on the map below. I also marked the spots I have already been to with red pins, which made me realize again that Australia is just unbelievable huge and there are still so many places to discover. I guess you could spend a lifetime travelling around Australia and still couldn't manage to see and experience 'everything'. I always loved travelling, but since I am on exchange the wanderlust really kicked in and I just can't wait for travelling around for the last month in OZ.

Keep calm and blow bubbles

Today Julia, Nicole, Valeska and I went diving with Diving Adelaide to search for some leafy seadragons, which are only found along the southern and western coast of Australia. We drove to Rapid Bay in the morning, all of us being a bit hungover from the Oktoberfest last night, but as soon as we jumped into the water we suddenly were all wide awake, because the water here is still pretty cold (16 degrees). We spent 45min under water, diving around the old jetty and just before we were about to ascend we spotted one leafy hiding in between some seaweed. After the dive we hung out on the beach to warm up again and had BBQ together later on. We had a really lovely Saturday at Rapid Bay and right now I am very tired, but very happy: It was the first time that I felt pretty confident while diving!

Can you spot the leafy seadragon?

Kangaroo Island

I spent the last weekend exploring Kangaroo Island with some of my international exchange friends (to be precise: Gitte, Jeppe, Rasmus, Tobias, Christian and Kris from Denmark, Max from Germany, Connor from the UK and Kelly from Lebanon). As we were a big group we booked a 2-day tour with Tom's Tours, which is a smaller local company run by Tom himself and I loved that he was actually part of the group and not only the 'guide'. On Saturday we had been to some great beaches on the North Coast of the island. The beaches are one of the best I have seen so far in Australia and I was amazed by how crazy blue the water is around the island. After hanging out on the beach, we headed to a Wildlife Park and I had the chance to finally hold a Koala, which was one of the best experiences here so far - they are so cute and fluffy, I would have loved to bring one with me back to Adelaide. Also it was pretty cheap, 15$ per person, which is half of the price that all the other wildlife parks in Australia charge. I also liked that the park was quite small and not that touristic, which I guess is also the reason that their kangaroos are so relaxed. Just check out the photo of the kangaroo with the sunglasses on and you will know what I mean. 

We spent the night on Kangaroo Island in a farmhouse on the western end of the island and ended the day with relaxing by a cozy bonfire while listening to the sheeps and koalas making weird noises. 

On Sunday we drove to the Flinders Chase National Park, where the Admirals Arch and the famous Remarkable Rocks are located. We enjoyed the coastal scenery there and took many awesome photos, before we drove to Vivonne Bay, which has one of the best beaches in Australia. Unfortunately, we could not go for a swim there, because it was way too chilly on that day, but at the same time this was also a bonus for the next stop of our trip: Little Sahara. The conditions for sandboarding where perfect on that day and sliding down the white dunes is so much fun - especially if you do it together with Gitte and go backwards - I have to admit that we were better at screaming than at boarding. After each of us had collected tons of sand in their pants, we headed to Seal Bay to watch the seals sleeping in the sun on the beach. When it comes to animals Kangaroo Island offers a range of typical Australian animals, so we also made a stop on the way to the ferry to watch a pelican feeding. To recover from this action-packed day, we had cider and beer in a Pub while we were waiting for the ferry.

The trip to Kangaroo Island was simply awesome, not only because the island has to offer so much, but moreover because of the good company. Gitte, Jeppe, Kris, Max, Rasmus, Christian, Tobias, Connor and Kelly - Thanks to all of you for joining this trip! I had so much fun and right now my abs are still hurting, because we were never running out of jokes :)

And now it's time for a serious photo overload (also included two short videos at the end of the post):

Pennington Bay

KI Wildlife Park

KI kangaroos are the cutest ones ...

... and the coolest ones

Stokes Bay

Remarkable Rocks

Admirals Arch

just one of those crazy endlessly seeming roads on KI

Vivonne Bay

Little Sahara

sandboarding race - team denmark won big times

Seal Bay