The year I turned 15, I journeyed all alone to an exotic country and spent a full 12 months of my life in continual expectation and amazement...

In the summer of 2002, all anticipation and nerves and carrying two big suitcases, I said goodbye to my family at the airport. Because I didn't want them to worry about me, I pretended to be happy. Yet the smile was immediately replaced by overwhelming tears when I turned away. Suddenly, I had a thought: "What on earth am I doing here?" Fortunately, I had done a couple of months training for my new adventure at the Rotary Club, so I was psychologically quite well prepared. As for the future year, I was actually more excited than worried.

Although the eight-hour flight wasn't very long, I was exhausted by the time we arrived-besides being very excited, I had a large woman sitting behind me, so I couldn't recline my seat at all and had to sit upright for the whole trip. As I left customs, I was hoping that someone would be waiting to meet me. Suddenly, a group of people (at least ten) appeared from the crowd and surrounded me with friendly, smiling faces. They exclaimed: "Welcome to Australia!" and embraced me. My Australian adventure had begun with uncertainty and exhaustion, but also with surprise and delight.

I had been assigned to a small town called Boonah in southeastern Queensland, about an hour's drive from Brisbane and the Gold Coast. The population is only about 2,000 and it's a real country town surrounded by smallish mountains, just like in the movies. Because there had been a drought for some time, the farms looked rather arid, but I could imagine that as the rains came, there would be beautiful green everywhere.

On that first day, traveling from the airport to my new home, we passed through a city and then turned onto a highway. The landscape was becoming more open and less populated. When we arrived in the Boonah area, I had just one thought in my mind: "Am I in a movie?" as the only places I had ever seen like this were in movies. I was genuinely amazed. Unfortunately, I became carsick during the trip, but I tried to chat to the Rotary Club representative and his family with my inadequate English. It wasn't too bad because at least I could communicate with them. A few days later, I realized that an hour's drive is only a short distance in Australia.

During the year as an exchange student in Australia, I stayed in five homestays and got along very well with each family, especially numbers three and four.

In my first new home, I sometimes felt lonely and unhappy when nobody would chat with me. I thought perhaps we couldn't communicate well because of the language difficulty. In addition, my homestay brothers and sisters were quiet people and the parents were both very busy. But now I believe deeply that all these trials were good training for me, and overall it and was a good experience.

The sisters and brothers in my second homestay, on the other hand, were very young and every day I felt like a kindergarten teacher. Although looking after them was tiring, at the same time it was quite interesting. The father in this home, a huge policeman who rode a Harley Davidson motorbike to work, always looked very cool and fashionable.

There were twin sisters in the third homestay and we became very close to each other. In fact, the mother called me Kelly Draheim (their family name) instead of Kelly Chen. During the Christmas holiday break, we spent a month at the beach. Every day we swam and sunbathed, so our skin turned bronze-coloured. On Tuesday nights, I went to jazz dance classes with them, and in school we always stayed together as well. They were just like my family.

I also had very good relationship with my fourth family. The host brother and I were the same age, so we talked about everything together. Sometimes, the family would hold a debate after dinner and take turns in contributing to the discussion. These debates were usually impromptu and the topics ranged from politics to education and entertainment. I also had quite a lot of conversations with my homestay father. He liked to ask me questions about Taiwan's national identity and history. The whole family were quite extraordinary. The three sisters were all elected as student representatives in school, while both the brothers were at the top of their classes. I learned a lot from this family and established close relationships with them all.

In the next homestay, number five, because the children didn't live at home, I got to know the parents very well. However, in those last few months I was extremely busy and rarely spent much time at home. The mother and I often joked together, so I became quite close to her.

I don't know why all homestay mothers have such good cooking skills, but I gained seven kilos during this trip to Australia. Putting on weight seems to be the normal thing for exchange students-I've even heard of an exchange student in Australia who managed to add 20 kilos in only a year. The reason for this phenomenon might be the high-calorie food and the delicious homemade desserts after every meal. Sometimes I thought that I should try to control my eating, but then I remembered that this trip was the chance of a lifetime, so why shouldn't I make the most of it and try all the food? Strangely, after ten months in Australia, whenever I had the chance to eat Chinese food, I got a bad stomachache. Even a few days after returning to Taiwan, I still had the same problem. It took a while to readjust to my old lifestyle-especially where food was concerned.

After one month in Australia, one day after school I suddenly missed my family in Taiwan very much. At home, I turned on the computer and there was an email from my mother. My mother had addressed it to "her sweetheart," and as soon as I saw this, I started crying. However, about ten minutes later, I felt better because I remembered that there would be a school party the following night.

On New Year's Eve, we were at the beach and we counted down: Five-Four-Three-Two-One, and suddenly it was midnight and everyone embraced each other. Although I was with people that I loved and was very happy, I suddenly felt empty and missed my own family in Taiwan very much. I simply had to call my family. I knew that it would probably be the same at Chinese New Year, so that night I went out to a restaurant with a group of friends. My homestay mother had heard me talking about the red envelope (pocket money given to children at Chinese New Year), so she presented me with a necklace and AU$2 wrapped in red. I was very grateful and deeply moved.

Life in school was very interesting. The schools are from year eight to year 12, similar to junior high school year two to senior high school year three in Taiwan. My school was quite small, only about 600 students, and because of this and the fact that I was the only Asian student in the town, everyone knew me, and naturally it was the perfect environment for learning English. Even though it was only a tiny school, it often hosted some interesting activities. Every year, about 20 Japanese short-term exchange students visited for about three weeks, so in the early days, almost everyone thought I was Japanese. Often I was greeted with "konnichiwa"-"how are you?" in Japanese. I didn't know what to say at first, but eventually I managed to just smile and say: "Oh... I'm Taiwanese!"

School was a breeze. Depending on how far from school I was living, I would either take the school bus, walk, or sometimes my homestay father or mother would drive me. Classes finished at 3:10 p.m., and each lesson was 35 minutes long. We also had periods for morning tea and lunch. Math was very simple. It was divided into A, B, and C grades (C grade was the hardest) from year 11 on, but I found that even grade C was easy as I had studied it in junior high school in Taiwan. All the students used calculators, sometimes very advanced ones that could be used for geometry. They were all amazed when I did calculations in my head. A couple of times, we had a math competition and I could use mental calculation faster than they could calculate on paper. I also joined the school band on flute. Because I can play Chinese flute, I improved very quickly and enjoyed playing with the other musicians in the band.

Students and teachers in school were all very friendly. In the beginning, when people met me, everyone gave me a smile. Later on, a number of people started using my Chinese name, I-ching. They couldn't understand why I used the name Kelly. In fact, in the beginning a lot of people thought Kelly was my real name. Often I used to write the other students' names in Chinese, which caused a lot of excitement, so a number of students brought me their notebooks wanting to see their names in Chinese.

I made a lot of good friends amongst the students, so school was not difficult for me and formed the core of my life. In the beginning, my classmates reassured me that my English was quite good because I could communicate with them, and by the end of the year, my English was near enough to perfect. They called me the "Taiwanese Aussie." One of the Japanese students and I became good friends as well, and when the Aussie students said a dog's bark is "woof-woof," she and I both disagreed and told them it was "wang-wang."

The school often held some great activities. One of these was wearing crazy socks and ties to class. A lot of students really dressed up strangely. For example, not only students but also teachers wore shorts with long socks of all the colors of the rainbow or strongly contrasting colors. Sometimes there were special performances such as plays at lunchtime, and occasionally there would be a "social" (school party) held in the specially decorated stadium, for which everyone made up and dressed beautifully, especially some of the girls who looked very cool and sexy.

There was once an activity called "rent a friend" in school. People were able to hire year-12 students by auction, and the next day, the "rented" students had to accompany their buyers and do everything their hosts wanted them to do. Surprisingly, one boy went for NT$925! (All the proceeds were donated to cancer research.)

Christianity is the main religion in Australia. I went to the local church with my friends, but this church wasn't anything like I had ever seen or even imagined before. There was no cross on the roof and no stained-glass windows. This church had a wonderful, happy atmosphere. They sang hymns accompanied by musical instruments such as electric guitars, drums, piano, flute and a bongo drum. It was so fantastic and I will never forget it. Then, they prayed and read the Bible. Finally, there were more hymns at the end. It really opened my eyes to the variety of churches in the Christian religion. Later on, I discovered that my friend's church was especially active, and that the traditional churches of my memory still exist in many places.

A lot of people in Boonah had a strong belief in religion. I often discussed this topic with exchange students from other countries, and they said that although they were Christian, they did nothing special and didn't often go to church. Nevertheless, a lot of young people in Boonah go to church with their family on Sunday and pray before every meal. I have seen people crying almost hysterically after confession and needing people to hold them up. Many people are very devout.

On the other hand, rather surprisingly, some people told me that if they could have chosen, they would have preferred to be Buddhist. (Most people were baptized into the Christian church when they were babies.) They thought that Buddhism could really solve the world's problems. By contrast, such answers couldn't be found in the Bible. My host brother studied Confucius for a while in school and we had a lot of discussions about Confucius and philosophy. He told me that when he is older, he will probably become a Buddhist!

People were generally surprised to discover that I was a Buddhist. I tried to explain the concepts of reincarnation and karma to them, and although I'm not strictly religious, at that moment I was very proud of my own religion.

A number of people were very interested in the relationship between mainland China and Taiwan. I didn't try to avoid talking about this sensitive topic with them, but some people didn't even know where Taiwan is! During that year in Australia, I became very proud of being a Taiwanese and always very confident in telling people: "Yes, I come from Taiwan!" even though some classmates sometimes made jokes about me being Japanese (There were really a lot of Japanese in Australia.)

All exchange students know that cultural differences are probably the most difficult part of living in a new country, apart from the language. Australian culture is so amazingly diverse and fascinating. Even after a year down under, every day I was still discovering some aspect of the culture so different from my own, and I feel that now I have blended the two cultures into one in my mind.

At the beginning, my English was a constant source of problems. I had to concentrate very hard to understand what someone was saying to me. If I was able to understand only a few words from a sentence, I could usually guess what the meaning was, but everyone had to speak slowly for me. Despite this, I actively tried to find opportunities to talk to people and also asked questions all the time. If I couldn't understand the answer, I just repeated the questions until I could. When you listen to something several times, eventually the meaning becomes clear. Especially because I was the only Chinese speaker in this small town, it was a wonderful environment for learning, so my English improved quickly, to the extent that just before I came back to Taiwan, I was thinking in English all the time.

When Australians greet someone, they often embrace and sometimes kiss each other. The first time this happened to me, I felt strange: "Why did you embrace me when we have only just met?" But, later on, I really enjoyed it. Whenever exchange students met, we all embraced. It was a great feeling, cutting down the distance between each other.

The average Australian's life is very relaxed and everyone knows how to enjoy their life. "Take it easy" is a common phrase. Every family I met had their different customs and lifestyles. Once I had discovered how to adjust to life in Australia, I learned more than I could possibly have imagined.

Note to readers: This is a fascinating story written by a young Taiwanese schoolgirl about her experiences studying overseas. Because it is quite long, we are will publish it in two parts. The author is now a first-year student at Taipei Municipal Chunglun Senior High School.

During the Christmas holiday, I went to the Gold Coast with my homestay family and had this photo taken outside the caravan with the twin sisters and their cousin.

Not long after I arrived in Australia, the school held a painting exhibition to show the students' art works. This photo shows two real people who had their whole bodies sprayed with gold paint, as "human sculptures."