During my year I went to school at Hollywood High School, one of the fine non-private schools in the state. There were a few other exchangees there with me: Saika Kojima from Japan, Paul Miller from Toronto, Canada, Matt Zukosky from Long Island, and Mariann Gibbon from Germany. Dale Butler from South Africa also arrived halfway through my year. 
Hollywood was a good school for exchange students. I believe that we were supposed to wear uniforms, but I only saw one uniform which was kept in the drama department's costume closet, so I'm not so sure (many of my exchange friends, and all my host siblings, went to private schools, and all wore uniforms). None of my classes counted for any credit, so while I took classes like Geography, English, Chemistry, Calculus, Media, Drama, and Art, I really didn't care much about the actual class. The administration at Hollywood realized that the exchange students didn't worry about classes, so weren't surprised when every few weeks we took a day off to go shopping in the city or to go to the beach. We even managed to occasionally convince a classmate to join us in our little field trips (though they usually had to convince a parent to let them go).
Over the year I stayed with 6 different host families, the Lewis's, the Courtneys, the Chippers, the Houses, the Evans's, and the Leightons. All were wonderful people, and so were my Rotary counselor and family. One of my favorite families was my second one, the Courtney family. The second day I was there, one of their cats was hit by a car, and after about a week we all went out together to pick out another friend for Min, the remaining cat. Sam(antha), the silly grey tiger, is a complete opposite of Min, the delicate, monkey-like Siamese, and they fought a bit at first, but seem to get along better now. Sam really became my cat, and even brought me a wonderful, maggot-ridden rat as a gift one fine, summer day... just imagine the 
phone call to my host dad about that one- he offered to come home and remove it for me, but I got rid of it, and just asked that they vacuum when they get home, because I couldn't bear to deal with it after getting the rat itself out of the house. I forgave her for that one, and afterward thanked her when she brought me tailless geckos, which seemed much friendlier after that rat... Sam even helped me blow out my birthday candles!
My host brother in my fourth host family, Tony Evans, was on the West Coast Eagles, the West Australian football team. Actually, at the end of my year there, they added a team to Fremantle, which is just down the road from Perth, so it's no longer the only footy team from WA... but anyway,I try to keep up with the team through the web.
I've recently heard from a few of my Aussie friends over email- Ben, Paul, Jo, and Fiona... I hope that everyone else will soon get email access, and that I will hear from you soon!
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Last Updated: 2/27/2002