Hello everyone how are you? We have only 2weeks to head off (some have more than them though)! and only 1 week to go to your internship. How are you feeling now? I'm a bit sad to leave here Brisbane. I love this beautiful weather, nature, people, food... everything! especially food and nature:) Let me introduce some of my favorite food and nature here in Brisbane.

This is my favorite cream cheese, sweet chilli cream cheese <3 This is absolutely yummy. If you dip some crackers... you can imagine what I want to say, don't you?haha If you like cream cheese, you MUST try this.

 

And this is my favorite nature in Brisbane (actually it's not in Brisbane but it's still cross to Brisbane...). Can you guess where this is? This is North Stradbrooke Island where is only 40 minutes travel by ferry from Brisbane. I just went there yesterday and today, but I LOVED IT. The ocean view was spectacular! I've never seen such beautiful ocean before.

The second my favorite thing related to nature is camping which is one of the features of Australia! I've been camping twice during these 9months. When I go to camping, I can feel free from everything. Putting up the tent, cooking and playing with my host family or friends were so fun. I love camping.

These 9 months, I had a lot of problems but I really enjoyed life in Brisbane with my friends and host family. I can still remember the day when we left Japan that I felt like going back there at Inchon airport since I had so much anxious, but now, I really don't go back to Japan. I've learned many things that I can't do in Japan, The time in Brisbane is the best period in my life. My friends from Kansai University who always supported me (or each other), if you guys were not here, I might not have managed to stay here until December, thank you and love you.

 

 Enjoy the rest of your time in Brisbane, have a safe flight and see you in February at 'Kikoku houkoku kai'! ;)

Hi everyone, how's it going? I'm taking my last session at ICTE. Time does fly! These 3 weeks were quite busy because I've been working for a project, which is sharing my ICTE life by being filmed (I just finished my filming yesterday) every after school. I had my birthday last week and bbq today and tomorrow, I'm going to a halloween event called 'truck or treat' with my host family, I'm so excited :)

Something related to culture... well, my oldest host brother (6-year old) goes to bilingual school and he studies Japanese half of a day at school. A few weeks ago, his school had an autumn school festival ' bunkasai' which is quite famous in Japanese schools. There were some Japanese food trucks like yakisoba or okonomiyaki, long slides and activities for kids such as fish scooping. It was actually like a real Japanese bunkasai and I really enjoyed it. Oh, students who are the same age with my host brother sung songs in Japanese! It was amazing... At this festival, I realized that more people than I expected are interested in our culture not only in terms of food but the language. It's obviously that the school is bilingual school so only students (or sometimes parents) want to study Japanese come to this school, so it's not surprising that there were lots of people who likes Japanese culture, but not only at this school, there are many Japanese restaurants or people studying Japanese around Brisbane. I think we should be proud of our unique culture and the language and keep this beautiful culture forever, even if immigrants are popular in the future.

Camping with my lovely host famly

Good afternoon! Today's blog is about the first camping in my whole life. The beginning of this month, I went camping with my host family and host daddy's whole family (may be around 40 people...) near gold coast. It was the first time for me to go camping, so I was so excited! On the first day, we arrived there around 11 am, so first, we built our tents, which was a bit hard for me. After that, we made lunch, played in the river (actually, it was freezing) and played cricket! It was harder than I expected, but I enjoyed it. At night time, we had camp fire and roasted marshmallow. Roasted marshmallows...just amazing, this is just my favorite! Also, the stars were awesome!!! I've never seen such beautiful stars ever! It was like planetarium, or more than it.  On the second day, in the morning, I just talked with my host mother and roommate with eating snack;) In the afternoon, we had played some games with whole family. For diner, my host mother, my roommate and I had hotpot. Some of the relatives said that was weird because Aussie don't eat row eggs but we ate it. As well as the first night, we had camp fire and roasted marshmallows at night. At night, inside of the tent was so cold but it was the best weekend since I came to Australia! I found camping is really fun :) Oh, I won't forget that I found 2 kangaroos' dead body on the way to camping! I wanna way thank you to my host family for taking me such awesome camping! Hopefully, I'll come back to Brisbane next September and join this 'family camp' again.

Studying English at ICTE

Good evening! Today, I'm talking about my study abroad life at ICTE-UQ.
In the first session, I was in level 5 and I studied grammar mainly, but also conversation or listening. Also, we had a lot of activities during the classes. In Japan, I've never had such fun activities during English classes, so they were so exciting and I could study English with fun.

 From last session, I've been studying in EAP1. EAP's  classes are based on studying for IELTS or universities' lectures, so for me, it's a little bit stressful. I usually have a lot of homework especially reading and writing. (I'm not good at reading and writing, so homework is always killing me before I go to bed...) EAP's classes are very different from General English, so at first, it was tiring, but now, I'm getting used to the classes and homework, so I enjoy the classes.

For me, taking English classes in English-speaking country is very interesting, because there are many students from different countries and teachers' native language is English, I can learn collect pronunciation.  I think there are a lot of differences between English classes in Japan and Australia. In terms of school, the time schedule is totally different from last year. When I was in Japan, the first class started at 9:00 a.m. and the last class finished around 6:00 p.m. (Actually, some times the first class started around 10:30 and the last class finished around 2:30 p.m.) However, now in Australia, the first lesson starts at 8:15 (too early for me :p) and finishes at 12:45 ! It's very short, but I have much much time after school, so I can enjoy some activities, go home and play with my host kids, or do homework. This is new for me and I really like this time schedule.  

Anyway, I want to enjoy last 5 months in Brisbane!

Australia and Japan

Good afternoon:) Today, I'm talking about the most interesting and surprising differences between Australia and Japan.

 I found some surprising differences at super markets. Chocolates are so cheap!!!!! Actually this picture's chocolates aren't super markets' ones, but it was only $16 for 72 Lindt chocolate! If I buy Lindt chocolate in Japan, it would cost about $12 for 10 chocolates. I think I should buy as mane as Lindt chocolate before I go back to Japan... Next surprising difference is about veges. Look at this picture! Have you ever seen such as big eggplants and capsicums in Japan? Their sizes are almost same as my face...... so big...

The most interesting difference which I found in Australia is living habit.  In Japan, many restaurants or shops are open until 9 or 10 p.m. even on weekend, but in Australia, most of them are closed around 6 p.m! And, many people (I'm not sure I can say this for all of Aussies) wake up early morning. My host family wake up around 6:30 even on weekend. In Japan, my family usually get up around 8 o'clock on weekend. This is big difference for me!

I think I can find more differences between Australia and Japan by December. I'm looking forward to find new ones!

Trip to Sydney

 Hi everyone, it's me, Chigusa. Welcome to my blog! Are you ready to read my blog? Here we go.


I went to Sydney with Harukyan for three days. It was the first time for me to go there, so I was really excited. On the first day, we went to Circular Quay to see lighting up Opera House and Harbor Bridge. They were so beautiful and I was impressed.

On the third day, we went to Circular Quay again in the morning by walking from our hotel. It took more than 30min to get there,  but we could see state library of NSW, big hospital ,cute cafe and so on, so it was good walking. The Opera House in the morning was good aw well.

 On the second day, we went to Three Sisters echo point and Scenic world in the Blue Mountain. It took about 2 hours from Sydney city by train. The view from Three Sisters echo point was awesome. The air was clean so I took deep breath for many times. We ate bananas under the beautiful sun in the echo point :) If you break up with your boy friend or feel stressful for studying, I recommend you to go there. Your heart might be relaxed when you see the wonderful view from the echo point. In Scenic world, there was a souvenir shop and small restaurant. This is a picture of the souvenir shop... Many koalas were hanged... poor koalas...
After we came back to Sydney City, we went to Darling Harbor and China town. The night view
from there was so beautiful! It was like Kobe's night view. 

 In China town, there were many Chinese and Korean restaurants, actually I thought it was real town in China(I've never been to China but just guessing haha)

I really enjoyed this trip! I hope I go there one more time in my life.