I will start my very first blog regarding the Gap Year program by using a quote, as the professor did today in the Pre-Orientation meeting:
The best journeys in life are those that answer questions you never thought to ask. ~Rick Ridgeway
As a passionate Traveller, I couldn’t agree more, but let’s talk about what happened today: I woke up, already excited because it is the 1st of December, which means I got to open the first door of my Advent calender. That put me in a really good mood and it got even better during the day!
Minutes later, I set off to Salish Hall, where all the students participating in the Australia/New Zealand program met for an Orientation meeting. I was, as so often, way too early there but it wasn’t a problem because I checked in, got a name tag, an information booklet, a cute little Koala and a coffee.
Then I sat down in the classroom, waiting for the other students to arrive. Plenty of them brought their parents with them. After some time, a man with four stick-like things entered the room and I kind of had a feeling what this was: different Didgeridoos. So we heard him playing some rhythms and he also gave us a brief introduction of how to play that instrument. That was a great warm-up for the upcoming presentations. We received all the information we need to start our adventure: the travel times, the schedules, the classes we have to take there and also suggestions for what we could do during our travel weeks.
Before we had a delicious Pizza-lunch, we chatted with students who did this program last year in order to ask questions that came to our minds, while the professor invited the parents to follow him to another room where they did almost the same thing, I guess. In the afternoon, when everyone gathered together again, Dr. Haulman and another instructor provided us with a closer look into the program:
-) Australia and New Zealand Biology, Australia and New Zealand History and Intercultural Communication are the classes we will take there
-) in Melbourne each of us will have a room for himself/herself while in Auckland 3-4 students will share a dorm (with a pool in the yard)
-) We will have one travel week in Australia and one travel week in New Zealand, where we will be able to discover the countries by ourselves
After this meeting, I wished we would start with this program tomorrow, because everything they told us, the pictures they showed us were just so amazing that I can’t wait to finally fly to Melbourne!! But no- I have to finish my finals first and wait for Christmas and New Year’s Eve to pass by. *sigh*
So I will focus on studying whilst silently counting the days until the 8th of January, that’s the day when we will meet at Sea-Tac Airport.
Stay tuned for more!
Let the memories begin 