Home away from home

After a little over a week of traveling on our own, Susan and I have finally reached our destination, Diamond Creek Australia. We left the states early so that we would have some time to explore Australia on our own and see some places that we may have not gone to because of time. We made it safely into Sydney on the 17th and explored the city for two days and then headed up to Cairns where we explored one of the rain forests and spent a day on the Great Barrier Reef. We took over 500 pictures of these two sights and I cannot wait to show everyone how beautiful it is!

We are now settled into our home for the next two or so months and could not be happier. We flew from Cairns to Melbourne on the 24th and met Mr. Fairweather, who insisted that we no longer call him that, but instead Alan. We had a bit of a problem with the weight of our bags leaving Cairns and it was frustrating, but we made it through and paid the fees. Nothing was lost so that is always a good thing. Our "home" is about a forty minute train ride from the city of Melbourne, in a small town called Diamond Creek. We are teaching about five minutes from our house in a bigger town called Greensbourough. Alan took us to the school first to look at our classrooms and I could not be more excited to get started. The new school is beautiful and so colorful. My classroom is on the top floor and has lots of room. It has a Smart board and air conditioning which is going to be very nice because it is supposed to get up to about forty degrees Celsius by the end of this week. After looking at the school and our classrooms we headed to the house to meet Caroline, his wife and get our things settled. We both have our own room and are sharing a bathroom. I feel so at home already and we have only been here for three days.

Our house is in a beautiful neighborhood and about one to two km up the road is a dirt path that goes along a "bush" area which is like our countryside at home. Our first night here they took us on a nice walk and we saw a family of kangaroos in the wild. I never realized how abundant they are in the wild. They are sort of like deer in Wisconsin, numbers wise. We also enjoyed a nice "family" dinner together and got to know one another. They are a wonderful host family and I am looking forward to my time spent here. We are already planning our weekend adventures with them and were able to go to our first "barbie" with their family yesterday. We met their son Mark and his wife, Bethany, and also their daughter Jane. Everyone is so welcoming and is so interested in why we are here and what life is like in America.

We start Professional Development days tomorrow at Greenhills and have that through Friday and the kids start on Monday. I am very excited to meet my teacher and also the staff at Greenhills. I am really hoping to get more information about the school year in the next few days and start learning more about the curriculum that I will be using during my time here. It has been a very relaxing start to our time in Australia, but I am definitely ready to start "work".