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Thursday, June 10, 2004
It's been almost 2 weeks since I've arrived at Melbourne and started school at Camberwell Girls' Grammar School, and there's been a lot of events happening. So here's just an account of Week 2 (this week), so far.
Tuesday, the school took us to this Electoral Education CEntre during Politics class. Here we learnt about the voting system, how it works, the political history of Australia, and the government (a representative democracy). It was a very enlightening and enriching excursion. On Wednesday, for the Drama elective, the teacher took us to the ABC (Australian Broadcast COmpany) TV Studios to see how tv shows are made. We participated as an audience in this quiz show called "The Einstein Factor". It was rather long but I think I learnt quite a lot about what goes on behind TV shows. It isn't as smooth as it seems on the TV screen. Yesterday (Thursday) we went to the Penguin Parade at Philip Island. It was really interesting! Firstly, the bus ride to Philip Island was a scenic one. We passed by large expanses of farmlands, pastures, and gently rolling grassy hills. Though I don't think I'll be able to visit the farmlands in outer Melbourne, given the limited time I still have left, I think viewing the stretches of farms from the bus should be enough. There was a large variety of farms I saw: cows, bulls, horses and even sheep sometimes. I took some nice photographs from the bus, courtesy of the digicam's fast aperture / shutter time. Finally we arrived at Penguin Parade at Philip Island. The beach was quaint and lovely, and the waves were furious and strong, with the waves in Singapore paling greatly in comparison. When night set, little spots of white and black could be spotted popping out from the covers of the ocean -- the fairy penguins. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I only got to catch sight of a few dozens of penguins waddling from the ocean onto the beach, instead of the hundreds I expected. Finally it was time to go. The experience was an enjoyable one though. Today was another schoolday. I woke up to find a foggy morning greeting me. It was colder than usual (maybe around 10 deg C?), but the foggy atmosphere was beautiful, and it was the first time I've seen fog I think. I took quite a few snapshots of the foggy streets near school. I had French class today -- I believe it was the most fantastic lesson I've had! We baked a cake looking at a recipe written in French! (I think the cake was called a co-coz or something like that -- honey and milk cakes) Of course I didn't know how to read French (though I could figure out the ingredients from the recipe), my partner translated it to English for me. At the end, I baked a lovely cake! It was really delicious and sweet to eat. I gave quite a few slices to Jen and other friends here, and am going to give the rest to Carolyn. Hopefully the cake will still be warm by the time I get back. It's a wonderful experience, baking! We also made some lovely mint tea. I'm not sure what we're going to do this weekends, but I think Jen's taking me to watch a movie. We're also going to Melbourne CBD again and we're going to catch a game of AFL (Australian Football League) at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Grounds). So far, money-wise, I've spent about $40. I've bought some fudge (famous delicious Australian choc / sweet). I'm planning to give some away and bring the remaining bars back. I'm also planning to buy some Vegemite (a very famous Australian breadspread, it's actually concentrated yeast extract, very healthy, and has lots of Vitamin B's.) back home. I've bought some postcards too. Ah! Life here sure is good.
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