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(they're still pretty big), goats and baby chickens(we all know what happens to them🙁👼) first it started with the usual 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 and caught 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 30 minutes.

Later we had to gather the chicks and guinea pigs for the 'barn encounter'. Catching the chicks was a little challenging. But their enclosure was open and easy to reach. The guinea pigs, however, ran everywhere. It was really difficult to catch the 4 we needed out of the total 8. Kids could now hold the animals and pet them. It started off 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 aggressive. They tried to run, bite, and scratch my hand with all their might, which wasn't very mighty, but it hurt emotionally. Thankfully the encounter only lasted 10 minutes and then we could put them back. 

Breaktime and lunch arrived way too fast. After that, we watched the kangaroos but the school trip had already gone 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 had 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 silently and calmly. The guinea pigs were still running, but they just didn't want to get caught, 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 see what it is.

Then we moved the sheep, pigs, and goats, who weren't really a challenge. They were already really excited to move into their night enclosures and basically ran towards it all by themselves.

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

Tonight, I am not going to the 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 couldn't even raise my hand. So I tried another bus, though that one got me just kind of in the right direction. Google said that if I walked from here it would be around 42 minutes. So I thought instead of trying yet another bus, let's just walk.

While Google let me pass a football field and a few driveways until I was in front 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 that's weird, who would shower next to a forest. Then I noticed a house with an open window showing a bathroom where there was a woman 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 and just went back to the bus stop and waited there for the next one. I still had to walk 30 minutes 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 into the Hottub. Yes, this host family has a hottub. I was very wrong with choosing a hostel over a 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 buses were driving. So I had to call an Uber or walk 2 hours and 15 minutes, according to Google, and I, for reasons, don't 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 5 minutes, Eric showed up. Without problems and just a fun, short conversation, we got to the hostel. It wasn't even as expensive as the rest in Australia. Though I am not really sure how much because I paid online because I did not have any of my credit cards with me. But it worked out just fine.