Florian Hengartner

Hi folks,
I will write here in english - practice for me, and all the new people I meet here will also be able to understand this stuff.
So, if you don't understand it or have a question, just ask ;-).

I flew from zurich to paris, then over to singapure and from there directly to brisbane.
The flights were not bad. It's just that I could barely sleep in those seats.
At least you get always a sleep mask our you can watch some movies - there's a tv screen in the back of the seat in front of you - or listen to music.

On my first day I took a cab to drive to my homestay family - that was realy scary.
At every road cross I thought the driver is taking the wrong lane. Its the same if I drive by bus - but now its better, after two days I got used to that.

My guest family is very friendly. There are grant and teena dickson - the homestay parents, teena is a great cooker, and there's steve a classmate (he is from geneva). The house is very cool, it has a nice veranda and a pool :). I have a bus stop just at my house and about 20 minutes to drive into the city. Thats pretty good - the bad thing is, that the busses don't drive after 7pm during the week. Then I have to take the train and walk 30 minutes or take a taxi.

The school started this monday. First we did was a little test which included listening to a tape, answering some questions about that, fill out the gaps in a text and speaking to a teacher.
I made it into the advanced class - the highest one (but there's still a lot to learn).
We have a good teacher - he makes the classes funny and interesting. We are eleven people in my class, three of them finished this week. Thus we will be a very small class next week, even more as some students come only on the morning. My school day ends at 3:15pm.
I could make some friends in the school, so I have some mates to do all the funny stuff, that you can do here.
The students are mostly from korea, japan, brazil and switzerland.
There is an english only policy at the school. You are not allowed to speak your native language, only english! If a teacher catches you - he will send you home for the rest of the day.
A good thing - you barely hear someone speaking another language.

The weather is very good. Its allways possible to wear short clothes. As long as you do nothing, you are fine, but as soon as you begin to walk in the sun you start sweating. In Brisbane itself (the heart of the city) you can even wear long clothes. That's because of the big buildings. The sun does not reach the ground and you're always in the shadow with a fresh breeze.
Brisbane is not that big. I think its as big as St.Gallen. But you could drive through the suburbs for hours until you reach the end. There's one residential house after the other. I already got lost some times between all those houses. The houses are much simpler than in switzerland. Many of them are built using wood or bricks and the walls are not thicker than 15cm.

This wednesday was a public holiday. So I went to the australian zoo with a school mate.
You know crocodile hunter from tv? The one that died last year. Yeah, thats his zoo.
You could see some crocodiles, different birds, birds of prey, snakes, cangaroos, wombats, koalas, elephants, lions, etc.
Cangaroos in the zoo have an easy live, they doen't not need to make a move. The tourists come directly to them and feed them.
They had a show, with snakes, crocs and birds. It was a bit boring. They took the snakes out of a box, did nothing and put them back into the box. They tried to educate people about not throwing rubbish out into the green, not panik if you see a snake, and so on.. good intention, but not that interesting.
Besides of that we had a good and funny day in the zoo.

Could tell you much more, but have to get to an end now.
I have to say its really good down here. I'm curious what the next week will bring.

I'll try to upload some pictures next time.
Hope you have it good back in switzerland, I would be pleased to hear from you, bye.