Carol Stream girl gets turned around in visit to Austrailia

There is nothing more disorienting than walking out of an airport after 24 hours of traveling into a time zone that's 15 hours ahead and a lot full of vehicles with steering wheels on the wrong side.

That's how I started my exchange year.

On July 28, my first host parents, Alan and Heather, along with their granddaughter, Alana, helped me lug my two 50-pound suitcases into the back of their very backward car. Then we drove off on the very wrong side of the road.

Through my half-asleep daze, I finally got used to Heather sitting on the left side of the car with no steering wheel just in time for my second clear sign of being in Australia.

Roadkill. Not a skunk or a squirrel or anything normal like that.

No, a dead, full-sized and much-squashed kangaroo welcomed me to my new home.

I was quickly told not to feel sorry for the big guy on the road side. They're considered full-fledged pests here. And I shouldn't be fooled by pictures of them in magazines and on television. Kangaroos can be vicious. They eat farmers' crops, damage property (especially cars), and if you make them angry enough, they won't hesitate to attack.

In fact, from what I've learned so far, there really isn't anything fuzzy and cuddly in the wilds of Australia.

Deadly spiders and snakes are my next adventure. Koalas have sharp, ripping claws. Even the sleepy wombat can cause heaps of damage to a moving car without it feeling a thing.

And if the animals don't get you, the heat will. I haven't been fortunate enough to experience a real Aussie summer yet. Because the country is in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are opposite the ones back home. So when I showed up at the airport wearing nothing but my three-quarter length pants, a T-shirt, and "thongs," I was struck by the surprising chill of a Victoria winter.

No, it isn't beach parties and surfing all year long in Australia. The southern parts of Victoria can get as low as 35 or 40 degrees. That may seem tame compared to Chicago winters, but Australian homes aren't built for the cold -- they're built to tolerate extreme heat.

Most houses only have space heaters in bedrooms and the occasional under-floor heater. For my first month or so here, everyone kept telling me to wait until summer. Apparently, it's not uncommon here to have New Year's Eve in 105-degree heat. At least the spiders and snakes like it.

I'm living in St. Arnaud, a town of 2,800 people, which is about the same as my high school, Glenbard North.

During that first ride home from the airport, I remember looking out the window and seeing the houses get farther apart and the sheep getting closer together. At what I thought was the end of civilization, we drove into "downtown" St. Arnaud.

It takes five minutes to walk from one end to the other of the shopping district on main street.

There are a few banks, a post office, library, town hall, grocery store, news agent, butcher, a few other small shops and several places to get that Aussie favorite, "meat pies" (the name is self explanatory).

After being here for just under two months, I've found it's pretty much impossible to walk down the street without seeing at least five people I know well.

I'm currently taking classes in year 11 at St. Arnaud Secondary College. Our school day includes recess and goes from 9 a.m. to 3:20 p.m. The college includes years seven through 12 and has just under than 300 students. In addition to core subjects, I'm taking studio art, food and technologies, and learning about the Aussie legal system.

I've met just about everyone in my year. My smallest class has four students: food and tech. English is the largest with around 15 kids.

It's a small place. You probably get that by now -- but there's more to country Victoria towns than just their size.

Australia is in its fifth year of drought. Water supply level percentages are down into single digits. St. Arnaud is currently on Stage 4 water restrictions. That means short showers, no water-operated children's toys and tight controls on watering plants.

It also means high levels of stress for a community where many residents earn a living off of their quickly-dying farms. Crops are dangerously small, grasses are brown, even now in spring, and it's increasingly difficult to keep livestock alive and healthy. Everyone is trying to conserve water -- even in the way they wash dishes. Because of global warming, this crisis isn't going to end any time soon.

From what I've seen, stress hasn't destroyed the community. Because the Rotary Club in St. Arnaud is hosting my exchange year, I am getting to know each member, many of them farmers, by attending weekly meetings.

Being that the school is so small, there aren't enough students for a successful sports team. Therefore, the teams are community-wide.

Anyone who wants can play footy (aka Australian football). My psychology teacher, Ms. McCarthy, plays netball (similar to basketball) with the other girls and a large community group turns up to watch every Saturday. There's just an extreme sense of togetherness between everyone here.

Then there's professional sports. Footy and rugby rule, but unlike at home, it's not mainly for the boys. Everyone loves and supports a team whether they're 5-years-old or 50. There's bottom-of-the-ladder Richmond (which reminds me of some Chicago teams I know), or the popular Collingwood. There's also the Kangaroos, the Sydney Swans, the Magpies and, my personal favorite, Geelong.

The sport, though, is very different from football back in the States. While I'm used to seeing players with thick padding and helmets to protect them from injuries, under Aussie Rules Football, players wear short shorts that would put 1950s basketball players to shame, long striped socks and tank tops.

They've got no helmets and no padding.

While watching my first local footy match, the ambulance was called for an 18-year-old with a possible broken jaw. While he was being helped off the field he broke away from the people carrying him to run back onto the field to fight with his opponent -- and that was just a local game. These Aussie boys are tough.

My last host family owned a farm. I had to tag along with them during lamb "marking," where the young lambs are vaccinated, tagged and castrated. For a suburban girl raised in Carol Stream, that was quite an experience.

In a few months I'll move to another farm where I'll taste my first Christmas pudding in about 100 degree heat. In May I'll travel around the country to see uninhabited parts of central Australia and all of the east coast areas. I'll get the chance to scuba dive, see the scenery from a helicopter and see more of the country's culture.

Life is different here, but if all goes well, when I come back up from Down Under next July, I'll be a "fair dinkum" Aussie Sheila.