14.09.2018 day 5 koala sanctuary

Day 5 koala sanctuary

                 Welcome to the barn

Today I was selected to help in the barn, again together with susan, or sorry, "susi." At the barn I met Leah, who is the most friendly, happy, thoughtfull and open keeper I have met so far. She loves her work and has no problem taking some time to just talk and answer about anything we want. 

At the barn were guinea pigs, chicken, sheep, miniature pigs(there still pretty big), goats and baby chickens(we all know what happens to them🙁👼) first it started with the usuall cleaning and preparing everything for the day. Which was still interesting because of all the different enclosures.

A school trip arrived and started to cause a little chaos. One of the kids just ran into the barn an catched one of the chickens holding it up like a trophy and screaming: I GOT A CHICKEN!!! So me and susi had our hands full with lecturing children for the next 30minutes.

Later we had to gather the chicks and guinea pigs for the "barn encounter". Catching the chicks was a little challenging. But there enclosure was open and easy to reach. The guinea pigs however ran everywhere. It was really difficult to catch the 4 we needed of the allover 8. Kids could now hold the animals and pet them. It started really fun, but with every time I took the guinea pigs from one child to another and the more that came, the more I started to notice how the animals were getting more and more nervous and aggressiv. They tried to run and bit and scratched my hand with all their might, which wasnt very mighty, but it hurt very much on an emotional level😢. Thankfully the encounter only took 10minutes then we could put them back. 

Breaktime and lunch arrived way too fast. After that we watched the kangaroos but the school trip already went home, thank god.

In the afternoon we moved all the animals from their normal enclosure to their sleeping enclosure. I had to handle the guinea pigs but guess what, leah told me she never had anyone catch all the guinea pigs that fast. How do you ask? Well instead of chasing them around the enclosure I went in very silent and calm. The guinea pigs were still running but they just didnt want to get catched, instead of running for their lives like last time. Same goes for the chicks. When I just slowly lowered my hand into the cage they would even walk towards it and look what it is.

Them we moved the sheep, pigs and goats who werent really a challenge. They were already really excited to move into their night enclosures and basically ran towards it all by themselfes.

After that we did some cleaning, closed of the section and thanked leah for this fantastic day. It was probably my favorite section so far. 

Tonight I am not going to vault games to keep winning against dennis, instead I got invited by a volunteer with a few others to come to her host family. 

I hate australian buses. Here, you have to "signal" the bus driver so he stops at the bus stop. If not he just drives past you. The bus I had to catch was going by so fast I couldnt even raise my hand. So I tried another bus, though that one got me just kind of into the right direction. Google said that if I walked from here it would be around 42mins. So I thought instead of trying yet another bus lets just walk.

While google let me I past a football field, a few drive ways until I was infront of a forest. That was not on google's map but it did tell me to walk through it......so I did. When I got to the other side, mind you it was late so it was pitch dark, I heard something. There were showering noises, I thought thats weird, who would shower next to a forest. Then I noticed a house with an open window showing a bathroom where there was a women, showering.... When I looked around I noticed that I was probably in her backyard and that "forest" was just a sort of fence around her land.

Very quietly I sneaked back amd just went back to the bus stop, and waited there for the next one. I still had to walk 30mins but at least there was a street there this time, that I was able to follow.

I finally arrived with a huge delay but they still let me in and welcomed me.

It was a fun evening, Me, oliver(america) and sarah, luisa and Mady from germany. The host mother was really cool and had no problem with us being there. Except for me and sarah they all had their fancy drinks and after a lot of talk we got intooooooooo The Hottub. Yes this host family has a hottub. I was very wrong with choosing hostel over host family. 

So we were just sitting there with our drinks, bubbles and massage water streams, listening to loud but good music. Just as I imagined volunteering in australia.

When we started to leave I noticed that no more busses were driving. So I had to call an uber or walk 2h 15min according to google, and I, for reasons, dont trust google anymore. So I called "eric" he got 4.9 stars and "Is always here to have a good talk" and really just after 5mins eric showed up. Without problems and just a fun, short conversation we got to the hostel. It wasnt even as expensive as the rest in australia. Though I am not really sure how much because I payed online cause I did not have any of my creditcards with me. But it worked out just fine.