New kid in town!
We have a really new student here at UVS. Her name is Emily Gobbert, she is from a place called Inverell (also called the Sapphire City), in Northern New South Wales, Australia. Inverell has 12000 inhabitants.
Emily has three younger siblings (2 sisters and 1 brother) who miss her a lot, but according to Emily she is doing fine so far, and not too homesick yet.
How she ended up in Norway? She wanted to go to Scandinavia, and she had to do a lot of tests. The results of these tests showed that her personality would fit in in Norway. She is laid-back, she says, and knowing a couple of Norwegian students, I would say she will fit in just fine ;)
It is a bit cold in Norway now, compared to Inverell, the difference being approximately 40ºC . The temperature in Inverell nowadays is around 30 ºC... So leaving the plane on Vigra was quite a shock! Temperatures can rise to 45 ºC, which is a bit warmer than the Norwegian summers.
In addition she had not quite adjusted to the time difference when we spoke to her just before the winter holidays. She suffered from a slight jet lag...
She came here on a Friday a couple of weeks ago, and she has already started in 2SS1. It is a bit difficult to understand the teachers and the students, but her class mate, Birgitte, translates what the teachers/students say.
She will be staying with three different families during her visit here. She is a Rotary student and has a few chores which have to be done during her stay. Every day she has to write a diary, every month she has three reports to write and send in: One family report on how “her” family is treating her, if everything is OK or not; one travel report if she goes somewhere, like Geiranger or Oslo for the FIS Nordic World Ski Championship; and last, but not least: one monthly report on what she has done since her last report. These monthly reports from Australian rotarians are open for Rotary clubs around Australia to read.