Jason - Day 17 (22.3.)

Today the mainly and most interesting thing happened in the evening.

After waking up at 7:30 in the morning some German exchange students (me included) and Mr. Eicker caught the train at the train station “Watergardens”, which is located next to the shopping mall “Watergardens”, at 8:53 for being at the arranged meeting point (state library) at ten o’clock. 

We had to take out sheets for the scavenger hunt with us for answering the remaining questions. One of our exercises was finding the two guards of the clock. In the first moment we didn’t know what that means but what we found then was a big clock in a shopping mall surrounded by giants GOG and MAGOG. 

GOG and MAGOG

A British legend says that the giants GOG and MAGOG are the guards of London.

That is actually what I did the whole morning until 12:20pm. That was the point when the working time changed into free time. Some boys of our group and I went shopping and we had to catch the train at central station at two o’clock. 

Some of us stayed in the city until the house performances. In this time I stayed together with Bjarne and Nikita and we had lots of fun.

House Performances 

In the evening the house performances took place in a big building at Southbank.

The students of the Overnewton Anglican Community Collage are assigned to one of the four houses. The four houses are:

- Curie (red)

- Newton (blue)

- Edison (yellow)

- Pasteur (green)

The House Performances are a competition, in which the the students have to present what they developed the weeks before (dancing, singing, acting, …). After the students of the houses present their work, judges evaluate the performances. 

This year the red house (Curie) won the house performances which was good for me because my exchange student Ethan is part of Curie.

This night was very interesting because I haven’t ever experienced something like that before. I was very impressive because what I saw this evening is comparable to performances in German theatres.

I think this evening is one of the things of the time in Australia I won’t forget.

In Australia I learned many new words. Three of them are:

Insomnia: describes the feature not being able to sleep. I learned the word in one of the German lessons in school. In that lesson we talked about what the student want to be or to do in the future.

Billabong: “Billabong” is a typical Australian Word. It describes something like a waters and has its origin in the aboriginal culture. I heard this word first time in the song “Waltzing Matilda” and wanted to find out what it means.

Arachnophobia: is the technical word for fear of spiders. When we went to Sydney zoo,  Ethan used this word because I told him that I don’t like spiders.