South Africa Exchange: Experiences & Perspectives

Posted on February 2, 2013 by admin

I made the U-15 St Stithians’ basketball team, which means that I can spend my afternoons playing basketball in the sun. There are really worse ways to spend one’s afternoons.

On Saturday, January 26, I play my first basketball game for St Stithians, against St. Peters. Saints win. Later on that day, Dirk, Rickus, Jessica, and I go camping and 4x4ing. It is amazing! We set up camp in a gorgeous site, and then, South African-style, I am handed a pellet gun, a .22, a shotgun, and a 234 hunting gun. We shoot cans, targets, and clay pigeons, known to us as clay disks. The Canadian in me cannot help but think of NRA debates. I am forced to reflect on the dangers of giving a gun to any boy. It is heady stuff, and I shamefully admit that it is regretfully easy to forget all my previous reservations about holding real guns when I hit my first clay pigeon with my first shot. If, as I suspect, my career in basketball is cut short, I’m going to the Olympics for shooting discs.

Later that night, we make a campfire and barbecue for supper. It is so cool. I cannot believe I’m on this exchange. The next day, we go to the stream and swim.

And then tomorrow back to school. –David Elbaz ’15

South Africa & Boarding: Feels Like Home

Posted on February 2, 2013 by admin

Hello again from beautiful South Africa. I say “beautiful” because it is astoundingly beautiful. I cannot get used to the beauty of the place. It makes me stop in my tracks and a dozen times a day, I have the urge to take out my- especially-bought-for-this-trip-camera. I don’t of course, partly because I’m lazy like that, and partly because I know that there is no way I can hope to reproduce in a picture what I see.

So I’m off to public school. Rickus and I have attended the welcoming tea for students and parents. We are the only two in uniform, and I hope that this is not a sign. People at the school are, extremely welcoming. We sit outside, and it looks more like botanical gardens than a school. I think I’m going to like it here.

I ‘m not going to lie. I’m a little nervous. Benjamin, exercising his right as older brother to torture me, has insisted that I watch, before my departure, every movie ever made about life in boarding school. I have watched them, a little like one watches horror movies, with a sick fascination. So really, I’m just a little apprehensive about this next stage of my South African experience. I really have wasted my time worrying however. Boarding school is so much better than I even hoped for. I hate calling it an experience (which of course it is), because it is so much more enjoyable than what the word “experience ”brings to mind.

In boarding school, there is not a moment in the day that is wasted. Lights are out at 9:30 but the day is so full that I don’t even mind. Of course, we are also woken up at what is for me the crack of dawn (6 am by a bell that makes me feel that I am in the army and that scares me every single time. It is nothing like the army (at least, what I imagine army life is).

Life at St. Stithians is structured, which I love, but it is also warm and relaxed, and I feel at home. There are two boarding houses. Mine is Mount Stephens, and I surprisingly feel an immediate propriety pride. There are sports in the afternoon, and a full 1.75 hours for prep, which just means that for a full hour and forty-five minutes, I have to do homework. No Facebook minutes allowed, no emails, no phones. It’s amazing what one can do with a little less than two hours of concentrated work. I have finished, in less than a week of school, six French and English books. In other words, I realize that back home, I am totally inefficient and less focused than I claim to be.

I am put in several grade 10 AP classes, which fills me with totally undeserved pride. I mean, I am taking AP Afrikaans and AP Accounting, as well as AP Physics, of course only courtesy of my overachiever friend, Rickus. I definitely feel some pressure to keep LCC’s side up. It’s enough that as a somewhat short Canadian in a land of giant and unbelievably athletic South Africans; I will have to work doubly hard on any athletic field. I really don’t want to embarrass LCC in the academic fields. I hold my own in math (thanks Ms. Saunders and Mr. George), but I am going to have to switch out of accounting. I have to choose between IT and French: either another class where I will once again be faced with my ignorance and a class which will no doubt be too easy, but where I can raise my stock a little. OK then, French it is.

Being in a foreign country really means feeling ignorant a dozen times a day. I know very little about SA history or geography. On the other hand, I have just realized that Canadian history is NOT the history of the world, as I had somewhat vaguely thought. Here, no one “se souvient de la conquête,” and no one is familiar with the PQ, the language police, or even –imagine that- our 10 day war with the US back in 1812. It is all very humbling.

St. Stithians is FUN. There are competitions between houses, and games, war cries, and “kidnappings” of lowly grade 8s. There are friends, lots of friends, and St. Stithians is more diverse than I had thought. I made friends with two Columbian students.

Friday afternoon, Rickus and I go back home- and yes, that was a slip of the tongue, but really, it says it all. On Saturday, January 19, we visit the Maropeng and Sterfontein caves in Gauteng, which are called the cradle of Humankind and which are classified as World Heritage Sites. There are hominid and animal fossils, which date back more than 4-million years. I feel totally insignificant, and young. They force me to rethink my importance in the world. (I will have to call my parents very soon to restore my feeling that I matter tremendously). It is all very wonderful. Unfortunately, there will be no pictures to document my visit for posterity. Hannelie’s pictures got erased when uploading, and I, well, I did not take pictures.

Sunday. January 20. Rainy, and homework. Lots and lots and lots of homework. LCC and Saints homework. More homework. I have to tell you that homework in any country is just homework.

And so ends my first week at Saints. –David Elbaz ’15

Very “Lekker” South Africa

Posted on January 23, 2013 by admin

I am delighted to report that after two weeks in South Africa, I have accumulated remarkable vocabulary—at least a dozen words in Afrikaans, which rivals the vocabulary painstakingly learned during six years of Hebrew day school! I now know how to say dankie (thank you), baie (very), and lekker (a nice Dutch word which means nice). It is a word used verryyyyyy often. It is used to describe a beautiful place, food that tastes good, and anything enjoyable. For example, “My time in South Africa has been very lekker. Very lekker indeed.”

January 2, 2013

I arrived in South Africa after a 20-hour trip. I am not sure what I expected. I had dimly thought that, since I was arriving from sunny Florida and not from buried-under-metres-of-snow Montreal, I would not be disoriented. I was wrong. I right away noticed that the country- lush, green, HOT- was very different from any place I’d ever been before.

My host family, Hannelie, Dirk, Jessica and Rickus Van Biljon picked me up in Durban. I knew right away that the difference in height between Rickus and I would be an endless source of amusement for my family and friends. In spite of that, Rickus and I instantly got (and still get) along exceptionally well. The whole family was welcoming, warm, just lekker. It’s a funny thing, that. You travel half way across the world, farther than Timbuktu even, and you find that people are just people.

I spent the next few days getting acclimatized and spent the balance of my winter holiday in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. The Van Biljon’s summer beach house is just 30 km from Durban, in Zinkwazi beach. I went to the beach the very first day, swimming in an ocean at once refreshing and warm, lazily talking with Rickus. I enjoyed myself very much, especially when I paused to think about home and what I would have been doing in Montreal. Napping at the beach is the best way to get over jet lag. During that first day, I met the Van Biljon’s family friends, Gustav, Sanelle, and their children Emma and five-year-old Duncan. They say that you can know a person by the company that he keeps. Well, Gustav, Sanelle, Emma and Duncan are extremely nice, which confirmed my opinion that the Van Biljon are great people.

The next few days—still my vacation—were just as “taxing” as the first. We took long walks on the beach, swam at least three times a day, debated the relative merits of American football and South African rugby. Rickus and I are both fluent in sports talk. I was introduced to cricket when the family watched the South African-New Zealand game. I must have been in hockey withdrawal, because I totally enjoyed that.

January 5, 2013

We went to Crocodile Creek, where the welcoming sign “ Nice to eat you” has been thoughtfully corrected to read “ nice to meet you,” no doubt to soothe the tender sensibilities of tourists like me. The crocodile farm was la lot of fun (and instructive too). When our tour guide wanted to introduce us to a crocodile that was hiding in the water, he would tap the crocodile in the face until the crocodile would try to bite him and in effect leap out of the water. South African crocodile tour guides are a different breed. I was able to hold a newly hatched crocodile, and a four-year-old crocodile. It was a little scary, but pretty cool too. The bottom of crocodiles is unbelievably soft, which, as the guide thoughtfully pointed out, explains why people want shoes, handbags, and belts made of alligator skin. We then went to check out the snakes, a definite highlight for me. Snakes are just soooooooo cool. My favourites were the black and green mambas. The inside of their mouths is black, and when they attack, it is truly scary. When they move, a full third of their body is off the ground. Just the stuff nightmares are made of. Another favourite is the vine snake, the most poisonous snake in South Africa. The vine snake is so good at camouflage that it took me a full five minutes to spot it. I had a fantastic time, but then I thought of all the times that I visited zoos in Montreal. I’d always think, “ thank goodness those snakes and animals are not indigenous to Montreal. Thank goodness they live in far away places like South Africa.” Of course, my very next thought was “Um. But right now, I’m in South Africa”… Like I said, just the stuff nightmares are made of.

I am so comfortable here, so happy, that I am always a little surprised when I realize that there are endless differences, some subtle, some not so subtle between South Africa and Canada. This is the coolest thing about this trip, the way I at once feel adventurous, disoriented, foreign and comfortable and familiar. It sounds like an oxymoron, but it is not. It is just great. But definitely, not every cultural reference that we take for granted in Montreal is a reference here. Les Miserables is not a classic here, but is simply a very new movie, and To Kill A Mockingbird is unknown. Robert Munsch does not exist here. Imagine that! As for me, well, I cannot tell you all the things I don’t understand. I very smoothly try to pass my ignorance for jet lag.

Right after the crocodile farm, we went to see The Life of Pi (very, very good). Just when I think that there are too many cultural differences between our two countries, I see something that reminds me that there are plenty of universal interests, like any Hollywood movie.

I also saw a movie called Spud, which is also a story about a kid going to a boarding school in SA

On one of our last days on the coast, we went to Ushaka Marine Land and Water Park in Durban. That was extremely fun. The aquarium was a vast shipwreck, very original. The fish were fantastic. We went to see a seal show, which was good, and a dolphin show, which was really VERY cool. The dolphins threw balls, and even played basketball under water. Very impressive. I heard that from the Van Biljon’s deck in Zinkwazi, you could catch dolphins swimming. There are things like that, which make me so happy to have chosen South Africa for my exchange.

January 9, 2013

Back in Jo’burg. I met Rickus’ friends from St. Stithians, explored the neighbourhood, and went on a hiking trail in the botanical gardens around the estate. I had a really amazing time on the hike. The scenery on the hike was amazing. I went with Rickus and on of his friends Kyle who is also extremely nice and with whom I get along very well.

January 14
Going to pre-tea at St. Stithians before the first full day of school starts. Definitely an adventure. Tomorrow, I’ll be sleeping at the Mount Stephens boarding house, and Wednesday, I’ll actually start school. It is all a little surreal, very exciting, and a little daunting. I’ll keep you posted.—David Elbaz ’15

Australia: My Exchange Experience @ Radford College

Posted on November 21, 2012 by admin

My Australian exchange trip was a big step for my parents and myself. My scariest thought was not knowing what to expect during my time in Australia. My friends warned me that I’d miss them, and that I was going to have a hard time catching up on all the drama, gossip and school work. The 24 hours of flying across the world felt like an endless amount of time to think such thoughts.

As we finally came close to landing in Sydney, the beautiful view was astonishing. The tension built up as I passed through customs. It was official: I was finally in Australia! Within the first few hours of landing, we had begun the journey. The next three days were spent doing numerous activities. We stayed on the edges of city centre, the perfect distance between Bondi Beach and the Westfield mall!

On the very first day, I was immediately impressed with what Sydney had to offer in the way of views and architecture. We made our way up to the top of the Harbor Bridge. The spectacular view from the bridge walk was as surreal as this whole experience. In my opinion there could not have been a better activity to bond with the family and break the ice.

On day two, since it had been stormy, we decided to spend the day at Westfield shopping centre in Sydney. There I discovered Australian and American styles aren’t all that different. While walking around, I was introduced to sausage rolls (didn’t quite enjoy those), boost juice (fell in love), and Hawaiian pizza (surprisingly eatable).

Day three was rather wet. We started off the day with a jet boat ride viewing the city, which was magnificent. After drying off and changing, I was ready to experience Australian culture. We saw street shows, ate at Australian restaurants, and took Sydney transport. Then on to the best part of the day, SURFING LESSONS! Taking a two-hour surfing lesson was the highlight of my day. I was actually able to stand up, which was surprising, but left me ultra sore the next day. Bondi Beach was GORGEOUS! I’d love to go there again one day.

After driving back to Canberra and having a picnic with Lauren’s friends, I thought I was prepared to face Radford the following morning. However, I was wrong. I felt very welcome by the school, but stressed about making the right first impression, and making friends.

Day two at Radford was much better, as I felt more confident and began to communicate with some of the other students. Speaking at the assembly on my third day of school was not my favourite part as I’m not fond of public speaking but everything went well.

A week later, Radford asked me to say hello and introduce myself at assembly, which consisted of 1000 students in the hall. Thinking back to the previous week where I had to stand in front of the year group, I felt this was going to be much more difficult. After I spoke, I was happy that I’d done it early on in the trip when I barely knew anybody rather than towards the end when I’d recognize everybody’s faces.

Now being close to the end of my exchange, I realize I could not have had a better experience. I’ve had the most amazing involvement with the school and students and I would do it all over again if I could. I’ve formed bonds with people that I’ll keep in touch with for as long as possible. I’m truly sad that this trip is coming to an end, and looking forward to getting more involved with Round Square. –Chelsea Silva-Martin ’14

Australia Exchange: Adventure of a Lifetime!

Posted on May 16, 2012 by admin

I’m about halfway through my exchange trip to Ballarat, Australia and it has been great. The family I’m staying with are so nice and welcoming, and it really feels like home now. I’ve been to many cool, beautiful and different places so far. The school, Ballarat Grammar, is also different. The first class only starts at around 9:00 and finishes at 3:25.The campus is very spread out with lots of different buildings.We bring our own lunch to school and eat outside. There are lots of green spaces with indigenous plants of Australia, such as eucalyptus trees, which smell really good. I am taking global studies and ceramics for my two choice subjects and they are both fun classes. I bike to school everyday. The weather has been pretty cold and rainy since I have been here because it’s going into winter since the seasons are opposite.

On my first weekend here, I went with Jack and his father, to Sydney. We took a ferry ride through the harbour and saw the famous Sydney landmarks such as the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. We also went up the Sydney Eye Tower, where we got a great a view of the city, and to Bondi and Bronte Beach. I found that Sydney was like a lot of different cities mixed together.

Wednesday, the 25^th of April was ANZAC day, which is like Remembrance Day for Australia and New Zealand. It has been a tradition for about 15 years now that two rival AFL teams (Australian Rules Football), Collingwood and Essendon, play each other on ANZAC day. It was a public holiday, so we drove down to Melbourne for the game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The stadium was filled to the brim and just under 100, 000 people showed up. The ceremony before it started was really well done and very touching. Jack’s family cheers for Collingwood, so I did the same. It ended being one of the most exciting matches of the year, finishing in a 80-79 Collingwood win.

Jack’s family has a really nice property with an awesome garden with all sorts of stuff in it. They grow celery, peppers, passion fruit, quinces, walnuts and many other fruits and vegetables. I have yet to go surfing but we are probably going this weekend. It has been a great trip so far and I’m excited for what’s to come.–Becket Osterland ’14