Fall Semester 2007

I have just started to kick into super experience mode in the last week. My school holidays have begun and I find myself with so much more time. There was a heat wave of 35°C, which I found like the outback: dry and oven-like. I have started to connect with my Aussie friends as well. I invited them over to my house and we had lots of fun. We didn't need a game plan, we just had so many things that we wanted to do that we just flowed into one after the other. Some activities, like dancing for a half hour after eating homemade sushi, were not planned at all.

My host-brother German Johannes is at the Gold Coast and Sydney with most of the other exchange students. My parents, and I can understand them perfectly well in this decision, did not want me traveling to a strange city for the first time with a group of teenagers as my guides. So, I am left maneuvering the radius of Adelaide. I went to the free art gallery and saw the most amazing painting of Circe poisoning a lagoon. I stared at its crisp and green imagery for several minutes (and even returned later). I am also going to give blood on Thursday, which will be an experience. One of my friends (an Aussie at the sleepover) is a Blood Ambassador because she was in England for the mad cow disease period, so she cannot donate herself.

 I am thinking more about home and it does scare me. I kind of want to return, but the thought of leaving this new and wonderful place scares me so I avoid it. Some time soon I will have to face the reality. Also, foreign cultures do not fascinate me like zoo animals. I love the personalities of the people and relish who they are and where they came from. There is no time where I gape at their accent and forget the words that emerge. I noticed that when I met some Brits and Scots in the city. I have come to love the area and feel perfectly at home here. But, to be sure, this is only the beginning of my traveling. I know for a concrete fact now that I will come back to Australia and also visit other countries.

Heaps Good!

Elena Nardozzi