A letter from an exchange student in Australia
Hello friend,
I’ve been in Australia for about 2 months now and I’m still speechless. It’s such a beautiful country! The land, the people, the climate, everything is amazing! I’ve gotten to experience the most remarkable/wonderful things, things I never could have imagined.
As you know I went here as an exchange student and I’m living with a wonderful host family in Brisbane. They have been very welcoming and loving, the student exchange agency made such a good match. Brisbane is located in the east of Australia, in the state called Queensland. I’m attending the Brisbane State High School where I’m taking all the mandatory classes like English, math’s, science, social studies, art, health and physical education and so on. I’ve gotten to continue my French education as well, but everyone in that class is way better than me! Luckily they are all so nice and very patient with me, and that goes for all the classes! I had a hard time understanding the Australian accent at first, but it gets easier and easier every day. My host family taught me some Aussie-slang to help me out a bit, like “hoo roo” which means goodbye, “ripper” means something like fantastic or great, “sheila” is a girl and “dunny” is a toilet. A word that’s very confusing is “thongs”. It does not mean what you think it means! It’s another word for flip-flops, which can create quite an awkward situation. Fortunately I managed not to humiliate myself!
Anyway, like I said are there mandatory classes just like there is in Sweden. Australia has a national curriculum to make sure that they have the same educational standards in schools all over the country, which resembles our “Skolverket”. You asked a lot about the schools over here in your last letter, so I’ve asked my new friends in my classes and found out some basic info. Like, something that’s similar to Swedish schools is that you’re in kindergarten or pre-school when you’re 3-5 years old. In Australia you go to Primary School between the ages 6
I’ve been in Australia for about 2 months now and I’m still speechless. It’s such a beautiful country! The land, the people, the climate, everything is amazing! I’ve gotten to experience the most remarkable/wonderful things, things I never could have imagined.
As you know I went here as an exchange student and I’m living with a wonderful host family in Brisbane. They have been very welcoming and loving, the student exchange agency made such a good match. Brisbane is located in the east of Australia, in the state called Queensland. I’m attending the Brisbane State High School where I’m taking all the mandatory classes like English, math’s, science, social studies, art, health and physical education and so on. I’ve gotten to continue my French education as well, but everyone in that class is way better than me! Luckily they are all so nice and very patient with me, and that goes for all the classes! I had a hard time understanding the Australian accent at first, but it gets easier and easier every day. My host family taught me some Aussie-slang to help me out a bit, like “hoo roo” which means goodbye, “ripper” means something like fantastic or great, “sheila” is a girl and “dunny” is a toilet. A word that’s very confusing is “thongs”. It does not mean what you think it means! It’s another word for flip-flops, which can create quite an awkward situation. Fortunately I managed not to humiliate myself!
Anyway, like I said are there mandatory classes just like there is in Sweden. Australia has a national curriculum to make sure that they have the same educational standards in schools all over the country, which resembles our “Skolverket”. You asked a lot about the schools over here in your last letter, so I’ve asked my new friends in my classes and found out some basic info. Like, something that’s similar to Swedish schools is that you’re in kindergarten or pre-school when you’re 3-5 years old. In Australia you go to Primary School between the ages 6