My timetable

Today has been the hardest day so far.  I wasn't even feeling homesick, I was just really frustrated and annoyed.  I'm happy that the feeling is disappearing, and tomorrow will probably be way better day.  Phew.

I've been saying all the time that life here is so different than in home, so you may think that my weeks are really special and full of cool events. That's why I decided to make a little timetable about my week, so you can see that my life here is actually really simple and normal, only differences are the language and new family.

MONDAY - FRIDAY

I wake up at half past seven, so I have enough time to put my school uniform on and eat breakfast with my family.  Here school starts always at nine o'clock, and we get there either by school bus or my host parents drive us.  Bus drives in front of our house quarter past eight, but if we go by car, we can leave a bit later, maybe half past.  In my school lessons are really short, they last only 45 minutes! On the morning we have three lessons, and after them is recess.  It lasts twenty minutes, and during it we just talk and eat a bit.  Before our forty-minute lunch break we usually have two more lessons.  I always take my own lunch, but we have a little canteen where it's possible to buy food if you want to do so.  It's quite expensive, but it's easier that carry your lunch box the whole day. Our school day ends after three o'clock, and it ends at the same time with everybody.  If you want to leave earlier, you have to go to the office and ask a permission for that.  I have permission to leave at lunchtime on Wednesdays and Thursdays, because I don't want to wait many hours at school.  After three o'clock there's a rush in front of the school, because there's a lot of school buses, and parents picking up their children.  

SATURDAY

Saturday is my only sleep in day in the whole week.  On Saturdays we usually do nice things if my host parents are not working.  

SUNDAY

On Sundays I wake up at half past eight, because we go to church.  I've been told that I don't have to go there every week, but I feel really stupid to stay alone in the home when I know that everyone else is together somewhere. That's why I've been in church on both Sundays I've spent here, and I think I'll go tomorrow, too.  Going to church here is a bit different, because we go to schools hall, where someone is speaking and singing.  The whole thing takes maybe hour and fifteen minutes.  After church we usually drive around Hunter Valley, and go to have a lunch somewhere.  On my first Sunday here we went to Hunter Valley gardens, and last Sunday we drove to Cessnock, which is a other little city in Hunter Valley.

I think that's pretty much all.  Really basic, isn't it.  Tomorrow after church we are going to Newcastle which is a bigger city one and half hour drive away.  We're going to have a lunch there, and my host family will show me Newcastle's beautiful beaches.  I'm really looking forward that!

Feeling better again,

Liisa