Exchange student in Australia

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Written by Maria Svensson, date 2005-12- 04


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1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….3

2. Body………………………………………………………...………………………….3
I. Making the exchange happen …………………………………………………………3
II. The nation of the Commonwealth of Australia ………………………………………4
III. The land of Australia ……………………………………………………………………5
IV. Every day life …… ………………………………………………………………………5
V. Every day life – School ………………………………………………………………7

3. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..8

4. References……………………………………………………………………………...9



Introduction
I left Sweden on the 6th of July 2004 and arrived in Perth, Western Australia, the next day to start my time as an exchange student. From then on Australia was my home for nearly the whole of 12 months. At the airport in Perth stood a family to greet me, they were the people I was placed to live with. At the time they were complete strangers to me, people I’d never met or barely knew anything about. It was a fantastic experience, and an unbelievably nervous and scary one!
In this essay I will give a personal view of Australia, how it became a home for me but also the cultural experience coming from Scandinavia to this far away country. I will also describe the country, the nation and the nature. I will make comparisons and descriptions from all kinds of aspects of my time abroad and about Australia in general. As an exchange student I was faced with a lot of great changes in my life. I had to adjust and fit into a family, I had to learn a new school system and follow its rules and I had to acclimatise to both cultural and geographic differences. Australia is a very large country and therefore this essay will be based on the side of the country where I lived, Western Australia and Perth.
I tried to do the journey there with light baggage, not just to minimize my suitcase to the extreme (I was only allowed a mere 20 kilos for a whole year!), but also to expect or presume nothing. There is close to nothing one can do to prepare oneself for a journey like this but to keep an open mind, which was exactly what I tried to do.

Making the exchange happen
I think I first seriously considered going abroad for this long when I went to America about five years ago. I went together with my parents to visit my older brother, who then was an exchange student in the state of Washington. We stayed with his host family and I got to experience just a tiny bit of all that he had done through his year away from us. It was powerful to see that my dear brother had learned and changed a lot during that year. I thought about going myself for a long time but didn’t know if or where I would like to go. My parents always supported the idea, although they were nervous of letting me go. I felt like I had to take the chance when it was offered to me and I think I just couldn’t resist going.
Once the decision was made I begun by establishing contact with all the organisations I knew of that have exchange programs. There are five well known organisations, available from Sweden, which take students to most places in the world. I compared prices, countries and policies between these five, as well as recommendations and reputations from friends and family before making my decision. I chose the one called STS (Student Travel Schools), my first choice was actually YFU (Youth For Understanding) but they only take students to Australia and New Zealand in January which wouldn’t suit my schooling in Sweden. It was a great comfort hiring STS to organise my exchange. All students don’t get just all the necessary insurances and visas and such, but also the security that the organisation will find a family for every student that will feed them, take care of them and put the student into a context, they are a direct link into the society of the host country. The organisation also finds and enrols the student into a school and is meant to keep in good contact all through the year to make sure that all is going well. Since everything went perfectly fine for me, all year through, I didn’t need my STS contact much at all.
The only really negative thing about travelling with these organisations is that it costs a lot, depending of course on what country you choose to study in. But I have no doubt in saying that it is completely worth it for all that a student gains on going on an exchange. Worth mentioning too is the fact that all the families care for students without compensation, which is what the whole system is built upon. If the families should charge, most people wouldn’t be able to afford these exchange programmes.

The nation of the Commonwealth of Australia
Australia has close to 20 million inhabitants. Being the world’s most urbanised country means that over 80 % of the population live in cities and towns, almost all of them within 2 hours of the ocean. The biggest city is Sydney, where about 4 million people live. Perth, the city where I lived, is the fourth biggest with about 1.5 million people. Perth is called the world’s most isolated big city, surrounded only by desert and farmland.
Australia is divided into six states, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, Western Australia and Queensland, and two territories, Northern Territory and ACT (Australia Capital Territory). The separate states have their own governments, while the territories belong to the federal government, and follow its laws and regulations. The law systems of the states can differ somewhat from each other and the federal laws.
Australia’s capital city is Canberra, which is located between Sydney and Melbourne. Canberra was chosen as the capital city before it even existed. When the Federation of the Commonwealth of Australia was established in 1901, one condition was that the National Government was to have a separate territory from the other united six states of the Commonwealth. The area around Canberra was chosen in 1908 and is today the Australian Capital Territory. The city was planned by a landscape architect to fill the needs of a government city. The government is based in the capital as are all opposition parties, which has made Canberra the centre of politics and media in Australia, and more so a centre for lawyers, journalists, and all federal workers. Australia’s Prime Minister is John Howard and he has had that post since the federal elections in 1996.
Australia is special for being such a young nation, the first settlers came in the late 18th century and therefore modern history only covers just over 200 years. The commonwealth of Australia was formed in 1901 as I mentioned before which was a result of the depression at the time. It was a necessity for the country to unite for economic stability. Before that the separate states had been more self ruling and independent. That the nation is so young means that the majority of the population is either first or second generation immigrants. The ones that are several generation Australians can probably easily trace back from where their forefathers immigrated from, maybe even if they were part of the first settlements with English inmates that were shipped over between about 1780 and 1870. The nation is a quite unique mixture of people from all over the world, from everywhere in Europe, though definitely mostly from Great Britain, people from the southeast of Asia, like Indonesia and China, and people from the south of Africa, like Zimbabwe and South Africa. To say the least, Australia has certainly become a multicultural country and the identity of the nation is much characterized by this mixture of people. In saying this I do not mean to say that Australia is in any way free from racism or has ever been. In fact I think it safe to say that the most exposed group is the Aborigines, to whom racism has taken brutal ways of expression throughout the history of Australia.
The Aborigines are the natives of Australia, scientists believe that they were nomads coming from Asia about 40 000 year ago. They probably walked from Asia to Australia when the continents still were connected. When James Cook first discovered and explored Australia during the 1770’s, the estimation is that there were about a million Aborigines living all over the land in thousands of tribes. In 1921 the number of Aborigines was down to a mere 62 000 because of the genocide that had continually been going on by the white settlers. This is what gave birth to the myth that Australia was supposed to have been an uninhibited continent before the English settlers came. Another main reason for the strongly decreasing number of aboriginal people was the introduction of alcohol and the spreading of European diseases. Today there are about 400 000 Aborigines, the population has slowly increased ever since the government started to protect their rights in 1921 and their situation is slowly recovering.
Australia is generally a very sport loving nation. It is most common to enjoy and practise surfing, swimming or scuba diving. There are other sports though which are fairly unfamiliar to us Swedes but are generally the biggest ones in Australia, for example the Australian football, rugby and cricket. Soccer, ice hockey or all the different varieties of snow sports that we treasure here in Scandinavia are given very little attention in media and they don’t arouse much interest.

The land of Australia
Australia covers a whole continent and is the world’s 6th biggest country. It is also considered to be the oldest continent in the world and since it wasn’t discovered by the Europeans until so recently it has been isolated for a great deal of time. Through this isolation nature has developed somewhat differently from other places in the world, which has resulted in an endemic flora and fauna in Australia today. The vegetation is dominated by the eucalyptus tree of which there are about 700 different species. The centre of the continent is commonly called the ‘outback’, and is mainly semi-desert with no heights and little to almost no vegetation, a place it is difficult to live in. The contrast to this red centre, or outback, is the tropical zone in the north, where the rainforests of Queensland are located. The kangaroo, wallabies and all the other pouch animals are significant for the endemic fauna, along with the koalas, wombats and dingoes.
Australia is famous for the beautiful weather and the high temperature, which makes it attractive in many ways in terms of sunbathing, swimming surfing etc. This climate however, also limits human existence. The absence of precipitation and the strong sun create a landscape in which it can be difficult to live, and more so, difficult for agriculture and farming. The ozone layer over Australia is also very thin which makes the strong sun even more dangerous, shirts, hats and sunscreen are necessities for all Australians in summer. This type of climate is one of the reasons that the majority of Australia’s population lives in a range of 100-200 kilometres along the east and southeast coast.

Every day life
I was one of those truly lucky students, and I got placed in a family where I really fitted in. I had the chance to try all kinds of amazing things. They took me to places all around Perth and even on holidays ‘down south’ and ‘up north’. The role of the family was the most important part of my experiences in Australia. I bonded with them instantly and we got along so well during my whole stay. During my first and second month everyday was all at once exciting, nervous and tough. That first period of time was the most emotional for me and the hardest. It took me a good 3 months or so to get over the worst homesickness and to feel completely comfortable in my new day-to-day life.
What struck me at first, believe it or not, was the cold. I arrived in early July which is right in the middle of winter in the southern hemisphere. I have never experienced anything like it, in Perth it can get down to only a couple of degrees above zero but the house had barely any heating! During the days the temperature was like that of a regular Swedish summer, but at night it got very dark and absolutely freezing, outdoors as well as indoors. I remember sleeping with pyjamas, socks, and three blankets, still being cold! Summertime, and most other times of the year, however, easily made up for that. I felt the complete opposite during my summer holidays in December and January, when it was almost too hot to even go out at all some days. If I would go anywhere on those extremely hot summer days, it would have been straight to the beach or a shopping centre. Being so close to the beach and being able to walk down there everyday made my stay a little different I believe. I absolutely adore the ocean (along with every one else), and seeing it every day was just wonderful. I also had a lot of fun at the beach, we went down swimming a few times every week during the warm times of the year and I tried surfing quite a few times. The beach was also my favourite place to just walk on and have time for myself, and it was important for me to have a place like that, especially when the house just felt too crammed. Shopping and being at the various shopping centres was also something I did frequently. Often it was hard to be able to get to my friends’ houses. The public transport is quite troublesome to use, and because I went to a private school, the range of where the pupils live stretches over a big area. Unfortunately most of my friends from school and church lived a fair bit away from me. Therefore, it was often a lot easier to meet at one of the nearby shopping centres, walk around and have a coffee or go to see a movie at the cinemas. Perth is a city built to suit the needs of its heavy traffic because everybody drives everywhere. In my family, where all five family members had a drivers licence, we had five cars. In Western Australia you can take your drivers licence when you have turned 17, which a lot of people do, and then it is quite common that you get your own car from your parents. I thought this was hard to get used to, coming from Sandviken where I just take my pushbike wherever I need to go, because in Perth I was so dependent on people giving me lifts and driving me around. My host parents were just real gems when it came to that, they drove me to school and to my friends, picked me up when I wanted, even in the middle of the night at weekends.
Unfortunately I never got around to joining any typical Australian sport. At school they had teams of football, netball, cricket, rugby, golf, soccer and swimming but I think I just had too many new things to deal with to join any of them. One of my Out Door Ed. classmates and I started in a fitness class at the gym across the road from the school which was perfect, both for the exercise and because the two of us became great mates.
Just as I thought I was settled and really had begun to know the place I was staying in, I went on an Australian Safari for one month, starting in September. It was STS who organised it, for all the students they had in Australia at the time. All together we were a group of about 40 exchange student from around the world. We met up in Sydney and then travelled for almost a full month on a bus in a wide circle around the east half of the country. We drove in to the middle of Australia, to Ayers Rock and Alice Springs, and up to the far north of the rainforest in Queensland and all the way down the east coast back to Sydney. It was an amazing trip, we all got to see so much of Australia, so much more than most of my friends and family in Perth had ever done. I saw the red nothingness of the outback of Australia, the deep and lush forests in the tropics, I snorkelled and scuba dived at the Great Barrier Reef, sunbathed on the Whitsunday islands, met other Swedish people at the tourist magnet of the Gold Coast and made friends with other exchange students from all over the world. The group shared experiences and learned about each other’s cultures. It was an unforgettable experience.
I have kept in contact with a few of the other exchange students; three of them lived in Perth, one even going to my school. We talked a lot about what we were experiencing, comparing with home and with each other’s situations. You really feel you have a special bond to other “exchangers” when you are one yourself, no one can understand what you are going through better than them.


The Family
I lived with a very average Australian family, average although extraordinary. My host dad, David, is a general practitioner with his own practice, my host mum, Jen, an educated teacher although she’s now working as an associate pastor for the church the whole family attended. I had three host siblings; Andrew (23), Karen (21) and Stephen (19). Andrew still lives at home and works as a primary school chaplain and an assistant sports teacher for the same school. Karen got married about 6 moths ago, just before my stay was over (and I even got to be a bridesmaid!), and moved into her own house with her husband. She now works as a kindergarten teacher but is thinking of going to university some time soon. Stephen is the youngest of the kids and also the one I didn’t get to know so well. He’s a very quiet person and very independent and he moved out in April to live with a bunch of his friends. The family are real animal lovers and, even though they live in an ordinary suburb to the city of Joondalup which is just north of Perth, their big dream is to own, and live, on a farm. They have two dogs, one completely adorable and the other one wild, dingo-like and slightly less adorable; Jade and Jack. To enhance the farm feeling they have two bunny rabbits, five chickens and one duck, all crammed into the already plant-overloaded backyard. The house is typical middle class Australian, one storey, quite dark to keep the sunshine out, made of bricks with a low ceiling. It’s not very big but can fit 6 people and all those animals, although it was hard sometimes living so close together. The house is located about a 20 minute walk from the beach, a 10 minute drive to Joondalup city centre, where my school and the church is located, and about half an hours drive into the city of Perth.

Every day life - School
I went to a very different school to what we have here in Sweden, and even in Australia a bit of an extreme, although definitely more common there than here. It is a private school, owned and driven by a Baptist church. This means that all the teachers are Christians and that the school policy is founded within the Christian values. Most significant for these private schools are the conservative school uniforms and the rule system they apply. The winter uniform for girls consists of black, laced up shoes, black stockings, blue checked knee long skirt, yellow shirt, blue tie, blue jumper and blue blazer, as you can see on the photo to the right. In summer we wore the same shoes, white socks and a blue checked knee long dress. For sports there is a special uniform too, of course. All hair had to be tied back from the face, no make-up was allowed, no technical things, such as mobiles or mP3 players, no jewellery or unnatural hair-colours either. To get used to all this, and more to it, took me quite some time, but once I learned all the rules it wasn’t that hard to comprehend the system and blend in. By the end of the year I didn’t even mind that much; the system they practise has both its good and bad sides. The worst bit I think is that they make such a big ordeal about following these rules. If one of the boys, for example, doesn’t have his shirt tucked in properly or accidentally swears in class, he will get a stamp in his school diary for bad behaviour. Too many of these stamps results in a meeting with the Deputy Principal and too many of those meetings could finally result in the student being kicked out of the school. Detentions over recess and lunch and even after school are given out daily. I got to choose my subjects when I arrived, I had to do English and maths but the other four were my free choice. Therefore I tried to choose things I’d never done before such as Drama, Art, Food Production and Out Door Education. At the school everyone had one compulsory class which was Christian Education. This subject was to teach students what Christianity is, but also to discuss ethics, moral and other religions. The most exciting subject was definitely Out Door Ed., where we learned about the Australian nature and about nature sports, such as sailing and abseiling. We went on several excursions and two camps.
I won’t deny that this school has money, mostly through the student fees but also some through government allowance. The money contributes to an extraordinary curriculum such as the excursions and field trips we had the chance to participate in. In addition to that the equipment at school was outstanding. As an exchange student I was an exception to the fees, the school has a kind of policy of taking in foreign students every year without charge.
The school is, as I mentioned before, founded by a Baptist church, Lake Joondalup Baptist Church. This church is where my host mum is an associate pastor. The church is connected to the school and they are integrated a lot. The church office lies on the school grounds and the school auditorium is where the church has their services on Sundays. Since I am a Christian it was natural for me to join the church as well. The whole family went on Sunday mornings, except Steve, and I often went at night too for the youth service. Being a lot at church was a great way of making friends, it was an environment that I felt so much more secure and comfortable in than I did at school the first few months. In school it wasn’t just hard to learn the rules in dress code and behaviour but worse to learn the social spider web of who sits with who and what “group” everyone belongs to. Since there is no canteen where you can sit and eat, all students are scattered around the school grounds in various groups. It was hard to know where to go and where to sit in the beginning, even harder because everyone just looked the same to me in their uniforms. I felt incredibly uncomfortable at first and moved around among groups and people just making friends with as many as I could. By the end of the year, however, I had a great bunch of friends, people from different groups and being at school was simply great. It took me a while but finally I felt like I belonged there.

Attending this school was everything but what I had expected of my school-year in Australia but an incredible experience and it also gave me a completely different perspective on my schooling in Sweden.



Conclusion:
I found that when you travel like this, all on your own, you just have to try so many new things and really be open for both change and adaptation to cultural differences. It was important to know before I left home that it is impossible to expect anything, because nothing will be like you thought. As I wrote in the introduction, I tried to be prepared for almost anything on arrival. Nothing was like I thought it would be even though I had that in mind.
What I consider to be the absolutely most rewarding thing, ...