Diary of Student Tour - Hue Huynh from Australia

G'day,

Firstly, I would like to thank EI for giving myself and my fellow peers the opportunity to attend this student tour. I am honored to be representing my country but also being able to experience many new and exciting things along the way.

Day 1
The trip so far has been very crazy. Starting with the plane trip which was insanely crazy but also very energy draining, after waking up a billion times either to have lunch, snacks or dinner and/or from the noise of the aircraft I was exhausted from that amount of sleep.

Our first stop was to Jakata, we had to stay the night at the Jakata Airport Hotel which was nice. When we stepped off the plane, the hit of humidity got to me first, feeling sticky and sweaty was not to my liking but hey it doesn't matter now. I slept like a baby for a few hours before being woken up by the hotel wake-up call.

A few hours later, we packed our bags to go on another plane, next destination Banda Aceh. Whilst on the trip, we had lunch and snacks followed by a few billion naps haha. After this plane trip from Jakata, we met the other students' and teachers' from other countries. The weather was still very humid and HOT HOT HOT, however Australia's weather isn't that different from Banda Aceh.

We reached our hotel which we will now call home for the next week, my first room smelt pretty bad haha umm like a old mustard smell so I decided to change to another room which also had a unpleasant smell however was pretty much better than my first room. A few hours later I decided to stay in my sister's room since her room smelt better and cleaner, but also had a better view, the view from my room was.... just old building materials and garbage collecting dust which was not good for my hayfever.

We had heaps to eat but I feel that we're not doing as much exercise since we're travelling heaps by our personal bus. But the food is great, very similar to what I have at home in Australia but coming from an asian background I love spicy food, so the food here does it for me.

Day 2
Waking up about 7.oo am we got dressed and went to have breakie. The hotel toast is the bomb I tell ya, bloody awesome haha. Around 8.40am we headed off to the Media Centre BRR NAD-Nias which had a few speakers explain how their organisations work and also explained how they are rebuilding the areas which have been affected by the Tsunami in december 2004.

We also visited some of the schools which EI had recently built. One school was completed however the surrounding houses weren't completed yet, meaning that the school will not have any students until the homes are due for completion.

Note: daily blog is not completed, updates will follow very soon.

Cheers.