Chapter Three – The Exchange - School ***Incomplete***

December 31st 2004 through June 30th 2005 were the best six months of my life. They changed my life forever. During this time, I kept daily journals with more detail than I had ever kept journals before. While I had always kept a journal, at times it came sporadically, where I would do daily entries for a few weeks, then nothing for a several months. But my journals during my six months of student exchange have preserved my time impeccably. There are things I wrote about that, try as I may, I cannot recall now. These are mostly small day-to-day things, so they are not particularly important anyway. I do remember the important things, however.(***Note: Each chapter I will go back and add excerpts from my journals later. This is a draft and so I’m just getting my thoughts down for now.***)The flight from Sydney to Los Angeles I could not for the life of me sleep. I wriggled, got up and moved around, watched movies, played games, but sleep never came. This was the only time I haven’t been able to get even a little sleep while doing this long flight over the Pacific Ocean, and I have flown this route plenty of times since.When I arrived at L.A., I was exhausted and utterly alone. L.A. airport is not a hospitable place, and on New Year’s Eve, to an eighteen year old who had never left her home country, LAX felt like a nightmare come to life. People were rude, loud, pushy, and there were so many of them! While I waited in line for customs, a man just in front of me started yelling about something and being rude unlike anything I had ever witnessed before, and I thought, “What have I gotten myself into? Is what everyone believes about Americans true; that they’re loud and obnoxious?” This man and many more people in the airport seemed to support that notion, and, being as tired as I was as well, I began to freak out. LAX is, in my opinion, the worst airport in the world!Eventually, I climbed onto my plane for the short stint from LAX to Phoenix. After the fourteen hours from Sydney to L.A., the hour flight felt like I went straight up, and came right back down again.When I left Sydney, summer was in full swing, but as I gazed out the window, I caught glimpses of snow on mountains. Snow was never something I had much exposure to, so I found it, and the reversed seasons, fascinating.When I arrived in Phoenix, I was incredibly nervous. I had one way to go, forward, but my nerves made my body tremble. With my stuffed bear tucked under my arm, I headed out to meet my host family for the first time in person.They were super nice from that first moment. I’ve never been much of a hugger, or a touchy person, (I like my personal space) but my host mother greeted me with a hug. Since I hadn’t showered in twenty-four hours, I hoped I didn’t smell too bad. And I was so tired! My memories of my arrival are vague, and my journal entries didn’t give much detail either, so the whole moment in time has gone hazy in my mind.On the drive to their house, I watched the strange and foreign scenery go by. No trees, which was so weird to me, but open, brown spaces with giant Saguaro Cacti. Tempe Town Lake seemed odd to me with the buildings around a random slip of water and wrapped between little mountains.When we arrived at their home, the Christmas decorations were still hung, except the tree had gone. None of it mattered, because all I wanted was my bed. I crashed hard. I was out for hours. During my time asleep, I literally slept through a S.W.A.T. raid of the house behind them. The family told me later that they were stunned I’d slept through the yelling and pops from the smoke guns and so forth. I was disappointed I missed the action!That night, my host brother and sister took me to a New Year’s party. Age wise, I am closer in age to my host brother. He is born at the beginning of the same year as me, and me at the end, but my host sister would be going to school and sharing a room with me. My host brother would leave for his mission only a few weeks later, and I was more interested in building a friendship with my host sister anyway.The exchange foundation encouraged us to make friends different to that of our host siblings to help prevent feelings of rivalry. I didn’t want my host sister to feel bitterly toward me, so although I was willing to get to know her friends, I wanted her to have her friends for herself, while I could make my own. Although, at the party, it didn’t take me long to be separated from her.For the first time in an extremely long time, I was center of attention. I didn’t know what to do about it. It felt awkward, and people kept asking me weird questions and telling me to say something, which I never knew what to say even though it didn’t matter because the words I spoke were unimportant to them, but rather, my accent was what had them grinning like five year olds. I’d never thought about the way I spoke before, and I’d never considered having an accent either. I sounded normal to me, just like everyone else I’d ever known. Admittedly, I have always had a “softer” accent, not like the heavy “yobbo” accent many people I knew had. I think that had to do with my exposure to my English grandparents, and my mother’s more British upbringing and mannerisms in speech. Strangely enough, however, my sister has always had a heavier sound to me, so I think it’s because I spent a lot of time building a strong relationship with my grandparents.Anyway, since my body clock was still on Sydney time, I was wide awake for the party. I played games, sat on the roof to chat with new people, and had a ton of fun, even if everyone was obsessed with some Aussie guy I’d never heard of named Keith Urban, and were horrified that I didn’t like root beer. They all kept quoting this movie I didn’t know called Napoleon Dynamite, so while they laughed their heads off, I sat rather confused.That night, I fell asleep late, which was fine for the party, but I slept late the next morning. It took me quite some time to adjust to the jetlag, and most of that first week I woke up after midnight starving even though I’d eaten, because my body clock said it was dinner time. My host family may have thought they’d inherited a ghost as I crept out to snack on bananas and such at three in the morning.Not long after I stumbled out of bed, a band of boys around my age burst into the house. With blood on their arms and shirts, it took me only a moment of listening to their excited story about cutting off chicken heads and watching them run around headless for me to turn and head back to my room. Again, I wondered what I had gotten myself into! Despite this, I joined them to play tag football. Since American football is quite different to rugby and Aussie Rules, I had a ton of fun, plus I quite liked the scenery. In my journal I made note that the guys were, “very different from back in Aus…. Every time they ran into me by accident or pulled at my tag badly, they’d apologize, unlike the guys back at (Aus school) who give a sarcastic, “Oi, I’m running here!’” I also said, comically, “All the guys here are built, unlike in Aus where they are all tall and skinny. It’s so sweet to see guys with real bodies.” Yup, I was always boy crazy.Monday, January 3rd 2005 was my first day in an American high school. Coyotes. Fear the howl. I described my first day as being, “one of the most intimidating days I have ever experienced.” I was thrown into my third hour class mid period and was immediately asked if I’d ever held a koala. The stereotypes had begun!I almost fell asleep during lunch because I still wasn’t sleeping well. The lack of sleep likely didn’t help at all with the hazy intimidated feeling.Seminary was the highlight of my day. I sat in the back while everyone made a fuss about me being Australian and Steve Irwin and trying to copy the way I spoke. But I remember a girl walking in. She was bubbly and bright and I thought, Wow, I want her to be my friend!The next morning, I attended my first hour for the first time, which was P.E. As many people probably know, I always loved P.E. and sports, so taking a P.E. class wasn’t a hard choice for me. When I walked into the changeroom, the girl I’d seen the day before in Seminary greeted me. She introduced herself and we sort of attached to one another during class. Then, during lunch, I sat with her again. Each day, this pattern repeated itself until suddenly, I realized this girl was quickly becoming one of the best friends I had ever had. As my time as an exchange student passed, we did many things together. We would talk constantly and even doubled for the Sadie Hawkins dance. She was fun and exciting and so trustworthy, and she was and is the answer to my prayer to find a true best friend. To this day she remains close to me and a support. We can still talk for hours and candidly. I flew over for her wedding, and she came to mine. She visited me in the hospital after both my girls, and I made it to the hospital for most of hers. (I was still in Australia when she had her first) She has kept me grounded and pushing forward more times than she probably knows, and I hope I have helped her in some ways over the years as well. To find a true friend in her has always made me so happy and I will never stop being grateful she was put in my path.Within the first week of my exchange, I wrote in my journal a list of random thoughts. They’re kind of funny, so I will share some here:I can be a good rambler when I get onto the right topic. (Hasn’t changed…)All footballers are hot, no questions asked, even if they aren’t.I am very lost in this world…Vending Machines and lockers are weird.Grades here are not separated.Americans really don’t like Vegemite.When everyone tries to imitate me, they sound British.Within that first week, I was bumped up into the show choir. Choir quickly became my favorite class. The choir director was awesome, and a newbie to the school like me! To this day I respect his work as a choir director and I still hold him as being one of the best choir directors I have ever had. And I had been in my fair share of choirs! I did school choirs, church choirs, School Spectacular choirs, and I even got into the Sydney Public School singers, which is basically like a state choir. My choir director sat on par with my choir director from the Sydney Singers. The choir director from the Sydney singers had a wide reaching reputation as excelling in his work with choirs. After I had graduated school, he was contracted by a television network to be a judge on a choir show they aired. I learned so much from him, and he seemed to like my voice. He was disappointed when I had to quit going into my eleventh and twelfth grades because rehearsals switched to Sundays. He was the choir director at the music camps as well which was where I got to know him and his incredible work ethic and talent for choir directing better than ever. My choir director as an exchange student had the same drive and talent.I looked forward to going to choir after lunch. In fact, with seminary right afterward, my afternoons rocked. I quickly became friends with the choir kids and would hover between them and my other friends during lunch. It helped that the choir kids meshed in with the other friends I had anyway. Also, many kids from choir had Seminary their last hour with me, so we would head over together. The choir kids became my people and I was happy.Seminary continued to be a major highlight of my day, just like back in Australia. The teacher was hilarious. He was goofy and clearly loved doing his job. We always had fun, and we also had many spiritual and powerful moments. Mostly, I am grateful to him for all he did to help me. He discovered I hadn’t finished Seminary, due to my issues in ninth grade with my health and such. He went out of his way to find what I needed to do to catch up and graduate with the rest of the seniors at the end of the school year. He then gave me assignments and I worked through them. I managed to get release time second hour which I used as a second period for Seminary. With his help, I pulled it off. I graduated Seminary and walked with my peers. I even earned Stake President’s Honors. I credit that achievement to him and his dedication. He made it possible because he cared about his students individually and made sure I could do it.My classes were all my choice. Since I had already graduated in Australia due to the school years running differently, I didn’t need specific classes for anything. My exchange company recommended American History and American Literature, so I signed up for them. The rest of my classes were all on me.My day consisted of starting in P.E. Having my friend in there made it the perfect start to the day. I had another friend in there too who was a junior. It was so strange to me to have students from other grades sharing a class with me. Since our classes back in Australia were always by grade level, the American way of doing it by credits needed baffled me. My school was tenth through twelfth grades at the time, so I often found myself in a classroom with Sophomores as well as Seniors and Juniors. Even now I have been in the U.S.A. for more than a decade, I still find this practice a bit odd.Back on topic, P.E. was always fun. Most of the girls in the class hated being there, but my friends and I always seemed to have fun. One time, we were doing aerobics with elastics. I had some trouble getting it on my foot right and it slipped off and smacked me in the face. My friend laughed at me, because, well, why not? It was pretty funny. Especially because I did it twice.It was after P.E. one time I started an epidemic. I needed a drink of water after getting changed, so when I saw the drinking fountain, I said, “Ohh! A bubbler!” and rushed over to it. Now, all Aussies know what a bubbler is. Apparently, Americans don’t. My friend followed me and asked me to repeat what I said. I was confused, but said, “A bubbler?” and motioned to the drinking fountain. She repeated, “A bubblah?” And I grinned. “Yeah, a bubbler.” She said, “You mean a drinking fountain?” I realized I had found an item I needed to translate into American. I also soon realized my Australianisms caused a stir among my friends. She had me repeating what I called a drinking fountain to everyone, so by the time I made it to Seminary last period, everyone was telling each other they needed a drink from the bubbler.