Lessons Get Started

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2 July

Monday. Another sunny day but a chiily morning. Lowest temp 5°C.

The first day of study for the students. The students were allocated into 2 groups 6 classes. In the two weeks from 2/7 to 13/7, there are more than one hundreds students taking English lessons at different levels. The majority of students come from China and Tiawan. There are also students from Russia and Indonesia. According to the school's official, there will be more than 300 students from Japan and other countries arriving after we depart. At that time the school will be packed with people.

Our students were drove to school in the morning by respective host families. Since it was the first re-union of them after arrival in Brisbane, they were all eagered to shared what they had done the previous day. There were students who joined the BBQ lunch with the host family and the family's relatives, brought to the Gold Coast by the host family or taken for a shopping at supermarkets. Luckily, no one complained about the food.

Lessons for lower form students started at 8:30am while senior form students had lessons at nine. All of them had a break of 15 mins. after 2 hours and continued to study for another hour before lunch break. All students were provided with lunch prepared by their respective host families.

After lunch, the first day's activity began. The group was led by a teacher of Shafston College to the city tour of Brisbane. We first walked to a pier near the school and took a ferry (City Cat) to the city centre. When we got ashore, we strolled through the streets. A number of historic buildings, churches and parks were introduced for the students.

At about 4:00pm, the group returned to the school and ended the day's programme.



3 July

Still cold in the morning (7°C) but with liberal sunshine. Same as yesterday, there were classes in the morning and activity in the afternoon.

Today's programme was visiting the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. It took about 25 mins. to drive from the school to the destination.

The sanctuary is claimed to be the largest base for breeding koalas in the world. Besides koalas, there are also other animals to see: kangaroos (lots of them), wombats (quite a lot), emus (I saw only 2), and .....

The students were so excited when they saw the koalas and kangaroos. They hand feeded the kangaroos and a few of them even paid AUD16 for taking individual photos of them holding a koala in the arms.

There were also dog sheep show and shearing of a sheep show. The students enjoyed the shows and the activities very much.

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