My time in Adelaide is unfortunately coming to an end, after 5 weeks have flown by! I met Auntie Mouse and Uncle Keith at the gate at Sydney Airport and we flew together to Adelaide, where my cousin Emma picked us all up. My first experience in Adelaide was at Myers, the department store, where Auntie Mouse and I went round the shop testing out pillows! We headed back to the house with 2 new pillows, one for me and one for Emma. Anyway, after that, I can’t really remember when anything else really happened, so here is a rundown of the things that I got up to during my time in Adelaide.
Auntie Mouse took Anne (my cousin Alex’s girlfriend, who is from Germany) and I to Mount Lofty, where we got an amazing view of Adelaide. Unfortunately it was a bit foggy up in the hills! On one of my first nights in Adelaide, Alex took Anne and I to a small house party, where there was a bonfire outside and the Eurovision on the tv inside. It was good fun, then afterwards we met Emma and her friend Victoria at the Robin Hood pub. Victoria told us some funny but gross stories about her day at work. Both Victoria and Emma are midwives, so you can imagine these stories were quite explicit!
On another night out, I joined Emma and her midwife friends for dinner in Glenelg – where the beach is. We had a really nice Indian and then Emma and I went to a few bars. The first one was the Jetty Bar, which I really liked because of the live band. Emma bumped into an old friend, so we went to a club called the Palais with him and his friend. It was a fun night, they came to hang out round Emma’s house after but Emma’s friend’s friend started freaking out (no idea why) and kept saying he had to get out of the house, so Emma drove them both into the town, but when she pulled up to the traffic lights, the guy who was freaking out, opened the door and legged it down the road lol. So weird! Anyway, Emma left them to it and came back home. It was a pretty interesting night!
On another night out, Alex, Anne and I met up with some of Alex’s football friends and we were at a bar in town and everyone in this bar was planking. It was pretty funny. They’re trying to ban planking in Australia because some guy died trying to plank on his hotel balcony. Anyway, we didn’t stay at this bar long. We all got a mini bus to a bar called the Ed Castle. I loved this place! There was a heated outdoor area where everyone goes to chat, there was a room with bands performing in it and another room with a dance floor. There was a band called Oliver’s Army that were playing that were really good!!
Emma and I had a girls night in one evening, we bought loads of crap food like crips, sweets and tim tams (chocolate biscuits, a bit like penguin bars). Emma invited some old school friends over, who were all married! They were all around my age too! One of them had even been married for 5 years! Crazzzzzy! Most of the people ive met in Adelaide have been with their partners since school and most of them are married or engaged! No chance of finding a nice aussie guy here!! Im past the sell by date!
I spent the majority of my time at Eden Hills Primary School, doing some work experience (3 and a half weeks!). I really enjoyed it at the school, everyone was really nice! I re-learnt how to play the recorder (pretty embarrassing!), I learnt a bit of German for the first time ever, so my German vocab has expanded to these few words: Viel Gluck = good luck, Lebekuchenmann = Gingerbread man, and Schneewittchen = Snow White. I was mostly with year 6 and 7’s, which is the final year of primary school, which I didn’t mind too much, the children were all really nice and well behaved! I had to give them an art lesson, which was fun!
I went a few school trips, one was to Colebrook, which was walking distance from the school. We went to Colebrook for ‘Sorry Day’ in Australia, which is a time where to country says sorry to the Aboriginals for the stolen generation. This was a time where the Australian government created a law that meant they had the right to take all half-cast children away from their Aboriginal families and were put into ‘missionaries’ where they were given a proper education. They did this until the 1970’s, and its horrific! Only a few years ago did the Prime Minister apologise for these events, therefore the beginning of Sorry Day. You should YouTube the trailer for the film ‘Rabbit-proof Fence’, it’s a really interesting film about this time in Australia.
Anyway, the 2nd excursion was to Shephards Hill Reserve, which again was walking distance from the school. We went there for ‘World Environment Day’, where we learnt about the forests and all the different types of trees. I learnt that only the imported trees lose their leaves during autumn in Australia, all the native trees stay green all year round. So there you go! Lol.
My 3rd school trip was to Oakbank race course, where I watched a selection of children from our school compete in the Cross Country race against all the other schools in South Australia. It was really good fun! 2 of the children from our school qualified into the semi-finals, where they’ll get to compete with the rest of the schools in Australia! They must have been pretty speedy because they had to pass the finish line in 20th position or above out of about 200 other runners per race!
I found that I had to adjust my vocab at the school a bit, so that the kids would stop laughing at me lol. When I was teaching the children art, one of the kids asked if he could use ‘texters’…I had no idea what he was talking about until he showed me it was a felt-tip pen, they definitely thought I was retarded. I also got in trouble during the German lesson because I was in charge of handing out stationary…so I stood at the front of the class and announced that I had a box of rubbers if anyone wanted one. Big mistake. The teacher corrected me and told me to say ‘eraser’ from now on, as you can guess ‘rubbers’ means something else. Soooo embarrassing!
Ive had to start saying ‘high school’, ‘principal’, ‘recess’, and ‘white out’ instead of tip-ex. They call a duvet a doona, flip-flops are called thongs, and sweets are called lollies. Plus they say the word ‘heaps’ in almost every sentence lol.
So after a busy 3 and a half weeks at the school, I finally had a week off to do a few other things in Adelaide. I went to the museum of South Australia, which was huge! I think I was in there for about 2 hours! It was pretty good; I even got to play in the sandpit and pretend to discover a fossil with a paintbrush. (I did this when no one was looking).
I walked down to Witunga botanic gardens a few times to sit in the sunshine. This was my favourite part of Adelaide. It was so pretty and so relaxing and full of exotic looking birds.
Alex took Anne and I to Hahndorf, the german village in South Australia. It was really nice. We then went to see Alex’s friend Nick at the Hahndorf winery before meeting up with Auntie Mouse, Uncle Keith, Bardy (Keith’s mum) and Mary (Kieth’s sister). We had lunch by the sea and then went to Victor Harbour and walked around Granite Island, where we saw wild penguins!!
On another day, Auntie Mouse and Uncle Keith took Anne, Alex and I to Barossa Valley. We did some wine tasting and the only wine I liked was the Moscato. It tasted like lemonade lol. We saw some kangaroos and passed the Jacob’s Creek vineyard.
Last weekend was a bank holiday weekend, so Alex, Anne and I met up with Alex and Anne’s friend Lindsay, her boyfriend Jack and his friend Welly. Lindsay’s sister Lara and her finance met up with us for a bit too and we all went to the McLaren Vale. On this bank holiday weekend, it’s become a tradition to go to McLaren Vale to go wine tasting, so the roads were pretty busy and police were pulling everyone over to be breathalysed. It was a really good day out though, and then in the evening we had dinner at Jack’s house. Lindsay made us all carrot soup and Alex, Anne, Jack, Welly and I played a board game, which we called Trains. It was so much fun!
Anyway, it’s time for me to say goodbye to Adelaide and head off to Melbourne. I’ve had loads of fun in Adelaide, it’s been so different to Sydney. Everyone told me there was nothing to do in Adelaide, but there was ‘heaps’!
See you in Melbourne!
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