Fiona Reed - QLD to the USA

Fri 05 Sep 2008

Hi there. I'm Fiona from Cairns and I left for Porterville, California in January. I can't believe I now only have a little over three months left! I keep wondering where the time has gone!

I just started school again after summer vacation, last week. I'm already really busy. I'm in a choir, I work on our online newspaper, I do cross country, and I'm in ASB, this student leadership class. I leave the house at 6.45am and don't get back till about 6 in the evening every night. American high school is so full on! They take their sports so seriously; in Cairns sports practices were only ever once or twice a week, not every day. It's tiring, but I'm sure sooner or later it will pay off. When I go home I can show off my toned calves and abs of steel, at least.

Summer vacation was one of the highlights of my trip so far. I was lucky enough to go on a week long cruise to Mexico with my host family. That was great. The cruise itself was fairly amazing - it was like a floating luxury hotel. We rode horses on the beach, and visited some of the sites in Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada. Bartering is so, so strange. You never know whether you're getting a good deal or being seriously ripped off. There seems to be a fine art to it. I even tried a cactus taco, which by the way was fairly slimy and gross, but at least I tried it. The trip was a lot of fun.

I spent most of my summer volunteering at a summer camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, by Sequoia Lake. My host sister was working up there and I went up with her. I was only going to go up for a couple of weeks to see how I liked it, but in the end I just never really left. It was a really rewarding experience, and I learnt a lot. I worked in the nursery, which was a learning curve since I'd only held like three kids before this summer. I also did Kids Club, for 5-10 year olds, and went on a lot of hikes. The cool thing about Sequoia is it's only a ten minute drive from the giant sequoias, specifically the General Grant Tree in Kings Canyon National Park, which is the biggest tree in the world, so I got to see a bit more of America. The camp is a week long retreat for families, so I met people from all over the States, and a few who had visited Australia. I made a lot of good friends among the staff, including a girl who invited me to stay with her in her home in Malibu, and the boss is talking about a group trip to San Francisco, so I'm really excited about that.

I feel really lucky to get the host family I did. My host brother is 15, and we get on really well, and my host sister, who's 20, is more like a really good friend. We never spent much time together before this summer, since we were both so busy, but working together at Camp Sequoia we got a lot closer, which is awesome.

Have I mentioned how amazing it is I only have three-ish months left? There's a lot of exciting stuff coming up, like Thanksgiving and Halloween, so it's going to go by fast, too. I'm going to be really sad to leave, but really excited to come home, if that makes sense.

Here are a couple of photos so you can see what I've been up to. The first one is from the Grizz Games. I go to Granite Hills High School, and we are the Grizzlies. To generate school spirit they have a week of 'games' at lunchtime, where you form a team and compete against others. It's anything from having to catch a teddy bear first to completing an obstacle course on a slippery tarp. They were a lot of fun, and I was honoured that my team named themselves after me- 'Thunder From Down Under'. We won too, which was nice! The next one is from, wait for it, prom. That was a lot of fun, too! In the photo I'm with some friends from choir. The last one is from Sequoia Lake, where I worked this summer.

I'm really glad I decided to do it, it's a great experience!

Fiona