The King's School (Australia): Furman Haynes

Furman Haynes: The King's School Exchange: May 27th - July 19th

The First Week

I arrived in Sydney, Australia around 6 A.M on May 27th. I was a little out of it, not being able to wrap my head around the fact that it was already Monday morning when it seemed like a few hours ago that it was Saturday morning and I was leaving that morning to head to the Nashville airport. It had technically been about 20 hours of traveling.

Chris Fraser, very excited and seemingly happy to see me, hugged me as I walked out of Customs. She kindly did not make me go to school and let me relax a little bit on my first day in Australia. She first took me to a get a quick breakfast at a little resteraunt with the Harbour Bridge off in the distance and a beautiful view of downtown Sydney. I bravely tried my first peice of toast with "vegemite" spread across it - a black spread with the texture of Nutella that was about as far from that taste as possible. It was salty and nasty, and Chris served it to me all the time. I politely took it anyways. For the rest of the day she took me to two separate parks and showed me around their neighborhood. One thing I noticed about Sydney was the focus on water - I've never been to a city with so many harbours and inlets. Maybe it was just Chris' love of water, but I was always seeing awesome ocean views, which I loved.

My first view of King's was when we went to pick up Scott, my host brother, on the first day. We pulled in and saw them doing "Corps", basically military marching they are required to do twice a week and wear funny hats. I never got to do it, but I always watched and thought it was funny.

The first week consisted of me getting used to things at King's, getting to know Scott (a little quirky but a really nice kid) and James King, the Year 10 (sophmore) who I "shadowed" and took classes with. James' classes were Maths, Physics, PAS (PE), Commerce, Geography, and a few others. One clear difference I noticed in the school was that there wasn't as much homework and more work in class as opposed to teachers sitting there lecturing them.

The first week of school was great because I got to know a lot of the really funny kids at the school - all who thought it was hilarious that I was American. They made me say certain things in a exaggerated American accent, asked me if I've ever been hillbilly hand-fishin' because I live in Tennessee, and got a kick out of everything I said.

Friday night Scott and I went to "Vivid" a lights festival in downtown Sydney which was really cool.

On Saturday, we got to go the "Firsts" (Varsity) Rugby game at Kings, which was pretty exciting. I had signed up for Rugby the day before and after seeing that game, I was pumped to play.

The Second Week

The Second Week was great just because I was relaxed enough to have fun at King's and make a lot of friends, without having to worry about leaving.

On Tuesday, there was something called "Cross-Country", a school wide race where every grade has to run a certain distance. This was the first time I really noticed the House system, where the House that did the best got certain awards, like food, etc. I mainly hung out at Waddy after lunch, just because that was James' house. Kevin also arrived Tuesday, which was fun to see him.

My first couple rugby practices got rained out the second week, and I didn't get to practice and play till the week after that. Other happenings of the second week include getting to see huge swells at Bondi Beach one night, getting to see the Transit of Venus before anyone else in the world because Australia is "ahead," and there was a huge bake sale that one House put on, similar to bake sales at MBA.

The second weekend was a long weekend, and we took Friday off and the Frasers took me to Kiama with them, a small beachtown two hours south of Sydney where their grandparents live. Alice, Scott's older sister, joined us. Alice was in medical school and I didn't see her as much, but she was always really nice. The weekend in Kiama consisted of great food from the grandparents and a lot of relaxing. Scott and I even swam in the ocean for a brief 2 minutes even though it was freezing.

My snazzy uniform

The Third Week (and a half)

The Third Week was awesome and definitely my favorite.

On Thursday of that week, Kevin's host mom took Kevin, Bradley and me to a reptile zoo north of the city. We saw basically every indigenous creature to Australia, including a huge croc, snakes, spiders and of course KANGAROOOS. I loved the Kangaroos. They might have been "trained" but they were really friendly and you could walk up and pet them:

I also got to play my one and only Rugby match that Saturday. It was perfect: raining really hard and muddy. They placed Bradley, Kevin and me on a lower level team because we'd never played before, so it was really fun because we could keep up. Although we got demolished, I had two of our team's three tries. It was a blast.

Post-Rugby

The day before we left, Kevin, Bradley and went into Sydney and toured the Opera House, ate lunch, then climbed the Harbour Bridge. It was a great way to end the trip.

Finally, I'd just like to thank Mrs. Warner, Mr. Gioia, the Fraser Family and everyone in Australia for making this trip possible. The Australians are an incredibly friendly people, and their country is one I wouldn't mind visiting again in the near future.