how it all began...

This trip is half private and half obligatory. At the University of Dortmund, where I study English the study plan requires every student to spend at least five weeks abroad in an country where the English language is dominant. Furthermore the Education Department requires every student to spent four weeks at a school, which can be chosen world wide. So I decided to kill to birds with one stone and work in a school abroad. Well, I do not really like the USA (I hope this blog will not be shut down by No Such Agency) and think that the UK is to close to Germany so I decided to go Down Under. Well these were not the only reasons: I have already been to Perth (the capitol of Western Australia) in 1999 and so I thought I could be lazy just returning to my old host family and the High School I used to go to… But as the world turns things change, the good old Hollywood Senior High School was torn off and my host family is now spread all over Australia. But the idea of going to Perth was still alive. First I had to find a new school. The internet was a great help and I found the website of the Department of Education and Training of WA. Here I found a long list of just about every school in Perth. I picked out the High Schools close to the city centre and started writing emails to them about me and my plans about working at an High School for five weeks. I wrote about ten, got one reply, which was an invitation. The next point was the accommodation. It had to be affordable, close to school and nice so I asked my contact person at the School to put up a note for me. Again: one answer one invitation. A very nice woman, working at the school as a librarian offered a room at her house to me. All this took about two month. Now that everything for actually staying was organised I had to look for a flight, a passport, a visa, etc.
It all started off with the flight going to Perth but back from Sydney because I did not only want to work while in Down Under but also spend some time travelling. So after some searching I found Emirates. They fulfilled all the requirements I needed: lots of space between the seats of the economy class, a good entertainment system and even better food. But the most important fact was that they where the cheapest. On second position the visa came in to place. But you can only get an visa with a valid passport. That is why the passport had to come first. So I applied for one at the Bürgerbüro of Dortmund and it takes about six weeks till you can pick it up and the costs are € 36,70 when you are under twenty-six. I finally got the passport and applied online for a tourist visa on the “Australian Government's Electronic Travel Authority System” short ETA. The advantage of the tourist visa is, it only costs 20,00 AUS Dollars but the disadvantage is that you are not allowed to do any paid work. After that I got an international drivers license which is required in Australia and which you can also get at the Bürgerbüro for as much as €16,40 if you are a citizen of Dortmund. Last but not least I got an international student id for €10,00 at the STA-Travel right next to the Copyshop under the “Sonnendeck”.