My First Week

So my first week is coming to an end and there are a few things to report. Actually already on the first day I went to the beach. The beach I went to is one of the many thousand around here, but it's the closest, being only a 3 minute walk from where I live. It's not really good for swimming, since the waves are quite big, but since I enjoy watching people surf more than swimming myself that's no problem. Here are some pictures from that beach:

the view to the south

it's really windy at the beach

the view to the north

On Saturday we went to Mooloolaba (weird name, right?) and went to the beach there. It was really nice, because it had a mix of sand and rock beach and had tidle pools. Here are some pictures from that beach:

this is a really weird kind of bird that walks around everywhere

the Watts family

Jed looking for crabs in the tidle pool (there actually were a lot of crabs)

on my way to the edge to get a cool picture 

cool picture number 1

cool picture number 2

 

On Sunday I went to the church near by (about a 10-15 minute drive) and it was really cool. After the morning service we went to the beach in Cotton Tree. And for lunch we had fish and chips. The first time I've ever eaten it, so of course I had to take pictures :)

This was after we had finished, so the fish is already gone, however we couldn't finish the chips. One thing that was cool about the meal was that you are supposed to eat with your hands, a thing that I haven't been able to do often, since it's not really culturally accepted in germany, where people even eat pizza with a fork and knife :D

 

At 5 I went to the church again for a free meal and the evening service. (Guess what there was to eat: fish and chips!). The evening service was also really great. The people at the church are really friendly and one young woman invited me to go to coffee with her, her husband and another young woman. I of course accepted and it turned out that it's kind of an unofficial meet-up place for the young adults and youth after the evening service. It's a cafe in Mooloolaba and there's quite a bit of seating outside. Anyways I had a great time hanging out with them all and this upcoming weekend I'll be going on a young adults retreat at the beach, which should be really cool :D

I also hope that it will be warm enough for actual swimming, for even though I have already been at four beaches, I haven't gone farther in than up to my knees, since it isn't quite warm enough to go swimming.

 

Today I had my first "work day". It wasn't really a day, and it was only really the beginning. The real work starts once the office is opened on the 1st of October. Right now it's home office and rather chilled. But I did get some stuff done. My main job for the next time will be organising, since with the opening of an office a lot of that kind of work has to be done. But they said (or better said, Dan (Mr. Watts), the person who I'll be working together with the most) that I won't have to do organising the whole day, so that my brain cells don't totally die off ;)

But I don't mind work like that too much so that's no problem.

 

All in all I am doing well. Adjusting to everything here is hard, but I'm doing better every day.

 

Greetings from Down-Under,

Susan DeTroy

 

 

P.S.(Any comments, tipps, etc about the blog are appreciated :D )





 

Pictures For The Last Post

In Singapore after being in the swimmingpool and eating my supper

The national meal of Singpore: Chicken Rice

Jed, doing his weird face

Jed, grinning in my nicely cleaned and organised room

Preparation, Travel and Arrival

Welcome to my blog, in the next 10 months I will be writing from the sunshine coast in Australia. For all those that know what I am doing there, you can skip to the next paragraph, for all those that don't and want to know, keep on reading: I will spend the next 10 months volunteering in the organization called Metamorphic International. This is a christian organization that does community development and church planting mostly in south-east Asia and Africa (even though they did start their first church planting project in Poland this past summer). They have their main office at the sunshine coast and that is where I will be working. Next to normal office work I will have the opportunity to look into the different areas of the organization and help where I am needed the most. The cool thing is that the German government supports it and I will get a nice certificate at the end saying that I didn't just spend 10 months at the beach, but actually did something useful, which always looks good in your resume. :)

The Preparation

Since it is all official I was at 2 preparation seminars, each 10 days long, in August. So in some ways my volunteer year already began in August. In short the seminars were totally awesooooome, even though that word is far from enough to fully describe how great the time was :) Anyways, I've basically been preparing for 1 and half months and now I'm finally on my way (or actually I'm almost there, since I am currently 40 minutes away from Brisbane).

The Travel

Saying goodbye to my parents was really, really hard. Not that the other goodbyes weren't hard, but this was the final one and it was starting to sink in that I really was going to be gone for 10 months. The first leg of the trip (Frankfurt to Singapore) went well and I actually got a lot of sleep, or at least I had my sleeping mask on for a long time, altogether I probably was asleep for only half of that time. I had a nice person sitting next to me, enough food, a good pillow and my own TV screen.

In Singapore, which we reached 30-40 minutes late, I first tried to find out from which gate my next flight would be leaving from in 4 hours. That alone was a bit of a challenge, but mostly, because I thought I could figure it out by myself and wouldn't have to ask anybody (I did though in the end). After that I started the hunt for the swimming pool, which took around 30 minutes or more. There again I should have asked somebody earlier, but I'm usually quite good with maps and finding my way around, so I thought I would manage finding the swimming pool. However the Singapore Airport is horridly confusing. The swimming pool is on Level 3, I arrived on Level 2. So normally one would think that one could just take some escalator up to the third Level and then walk to the place where the swimming pool is, right? WRONG, because there are 10000 Level 3 that are kind of like little islands floating over Level 2, so you can't walk from one island to the other, but have to take the correct escalator. Added to that the maps are really confusing and there are not enough signs. But in the end I did get there and it was totally worth it, since I was also able to take a shower and relax for a bit (it's amazing how good a shower feels after a long trip). After that I decided to get the national dish which is chicken rice. However in the process of it my tray almost hit the deck, since I was only holding it with one hand and there was a rolling bottle on it. A very nice worker came to my rescue and took it from me and put it on a table for me. After I had payed another one showed me where the table was and kindly reminded me that I still needed my silver ware. I must say, I'm usually a quite together person, but on this trip I've felt more spaced out than I have felt for quite a while, thank God for the nice and understanding people out there :)

On another note: I've been looking out of my window and I'm getting first glimpse of Australia. Below me is a really hilly region, who knows, maybe it will be a little bit like the hilly region where I live (but I kind of doubt it). But it sure looks cool.

Arrival:

So I arrived well. I got through border and customs control quickly and they didn't arrest me or question me or any thing like that which was very nice :) I also got my bag really quickly and Dan was waiting in front of the gate with Jed when I came out. I have a small, but nice room with enough drawer space for my clothes, which is great. I'm a little bit overwhelmed with the thought that I'll be staying here for 10 months, but I think I'll get used to it.

Well that's about it for now, I apologize for all the wrong spelling and grammar mistakes (if there are any), but I wrote all of this after sleeping waaaaay too little.

Greetings from the other end of the world,

Susan

P.S.(pictures will follow sometime soon, I'm just too lazy to get up from the couch to get my camera and cable, plus I promised Jed (Dan and Ines 4 year old son) that I would play with him in 10-15 minutes, so I have to hurry up and finish :) )