Meet Our Staff

Hello my name is Alina, I am 16 years old and I come from Germany. I’m here in Australia for five months now to spend the whole year as an exchange student from overseas.

In March, I decided to join the EF-camp for 10 days outback experiences with a lot of other exchange students. And I had a great time. We all met at the airport in Sydney and flow then together to Alice Springs. We camped nearly every night and visited every day different places in the outback. For example, we’ve been to the ‘Ayres Rock’ (‘Uluru’), to a place where some people teach children over a radio etc. because the distance to the next school is just too big for the families, to a town where some people have to live underground because it is just to warm to live in a ‘normal’ house, etc.

The second last day we spent in Melbourne. On the way back to the campground, one of my friends had the idea to catch up at her host family’s place a few weeks later. We got so excited but we actually thought that’s a great idea but for whatever reason it would not happen. And then, the time went by so fast. We all asked our parents in our home country, our host families and of course EF for permission for the trip to our friend at the Gold Coast. We were surprised that really everyone was happy with our idea. We booked our flights and we could not wait any longer to see each other again. Finally, the weekend came, we met at the airport at the Gold Coast and were just happy that everything was fine. We had a lot to catch up on, our friend showed us around at her place, we went shopping, the next day we went to a big shopping place and ‘experienced’ the town, the following day we cought the bus for nearly two hours to the Surfers Paradise and had finally our first surf lesson. At night we had a lovely dinner and everyone fell asleep very easily.. The last day our flights were all at different times because we all had to fly in another direction back home to our host families. We spent the whole day at the airport and we also went to the beach while we were waiting for the next plane to start. The second farewell by now was everything else than easy but we had to go home to spend the rest of our exchange with our lovely host families and new friends at school etc.

We all became very close friends, we already planned our next catch up and as you can see, short trips with an the exchange organisation, for example, can give you an amazing time during your exchange. It’s not easy to find immediately close friends at your new school, in a sport club or anywhere else. But once you’ve find good ones, the friendships will hopefully last forever..