Prelims

This week, year 11 started their prelimenary exams. They take it pretty seriously too, and they have a little bit of a different approach. At 9 am, the exam starts. You are advised to come 15 minutes earlier, to find your spot in the drama room. Volunteering ladies provide unbiased supervision and manage all the papers and places. On your spot, you find a paper with your name and student number and a writing booklet. You are allowed to bring a black pen, a pencil and a highlighter in a see-through bag. Water in a see-through bottle is allowed too and sometimes a calculater. You get reading time for 5 or 10 minutes and you can’t leave in the first hour or the last 15 minutes. If you have to use the bathroom, one of the supervisors will escort you and walk with you.
The ladies go around and hand out the booklets. Once the time starts you have to put your student number on every page. It is very common to have different exams for different students, which can make it complicated timing wise.
Once you are finished or when the time is up, you have to fill in the paper with your name and student number with your name again, your date of birth and your signature. Once a supervisor has signed it, you can leave.

It is a very chill period I reckon, after your exam you can hang around and have fun with friends. As long as you manage the studying time in between, there is a lot of space to just enjoy.

Swooped

I got swooped by a magpie while riding my bike! Multiple times by multiple birds even. The first one got in my hair 3 times, which was luckily covering my neck. The second one swooped my helmet and chased me for at least 2 blocks. And three times is the charm, because the final one gave me a nudge.

Final talk

This week, I was asked again to do a talk about Belgium and my Aussie experience, this time by Lions club Griffith. Of course I didn’t mind at all, since I could just use the presentation I had already prepared.
It was a lovely evening, with delicious food and wonderful people.

Hay

Friday after the exam, I left for Hay. That is an outback town about 2 hours away. The first night, we were advised by the tourist information centre to go and watch the sunset. It was absolutely beautiful. Imagine standing in the middle of nowhere with the only sound the wind and the only view the sun. It was stunning.

Our first aim the next day, was to check out the shear outback.
We learned all about sheep shearing and it was really interesting. I learned things I had never even thought about. Like how there are sheep shearing contests or how physically challenging the job is. How they used to use their bikes to go from farm to farm which takes a while and how the farmer’s wife had to provide food for all these hungry shearers. We got to see a demo of someone shearing and I loved it, very impressive!

We also visited some museums about the history of Hay and Italian refugees in the second World War. The Hay Gaol Museum was the old gaol that is now used for displaying all kinds of collections.

In the station was an exhibition on the history of the prisoners of war with a lot of interesting information.

And that was Hay and the outback.
I was lucky to see a wild emu on the way back, really cool!