Hi, my name is Joey Stasiak and I'm a 15 year old sophmore at Grayslake North highschool. I love to be outside doing things like fishing, hiking, and biking. Although I like to be outside, I also enjoy the occasional video game.
I signed up for this course because of many things. First off, I love traveling and I have been doing it ever since I was born and I'm planning on doing it for the rest of my life. Ever since I was a baby, I was traveling to either California or Illinois to visit family, and when we moved to Illinois, we would be traveling to all corners of this great country. Although going all around my own home country is fine and all, I would still love to take it one step further and go where many Americans have never been before. In Australia, I plan on learning as much as I can about their rich history and culture and then then bringing all of that knowledge back to the States with me and telling others of their culture so they can understand the country better. Also, when I'm in Australia, I plan on telling many people over there about our culture back home so we can both drop stereotypes and get along and a single human race.
While traveling abroad, I hope I will learn many important life skills. I want to see if I can live off of very few items for an extended period of time and learn to roll with the blows. Never before have I been away from my house for longer than a week or so and always I have had access to luxeries. While in Australia, I know I will encounter setbacks that might ruin my trip for me and others if I'm not prepared for them. I'm usually the guy that if things don't go exactly as planned, I get disappointed and discouraged. I hope to change that and learn other skills that will help me farther down the road to make me a better person.
Many things interest me about Australia and New Zealand than many other countries. First off, I know relatively little about the countries histories than I do about other countries. I do know that they started as prisons for the English in the early 1800's and that alone is very interesting. I'm very interested in the world and how it works, that's just me though, and I love learning things that many other people don't know. I also want to learn a alot about the Great Barrier Reef. I know many people claim to be interested in it but I think just seeing it will be a very eye- opening expierience that I am looking forward to.
I think that learning about where you are going before actually going can help in a bunch of aspects. First off, we will only be in Australia for 12 days or so before we have to head back. That gives us only so much time to explore the enormous country. I know that a lot of Australia is a desert "Outback" and so that would eliminate as much space as possible in order to hit the major landmarks. Also, we want to be able to see as much of the countries cultural aspects as possible so we should go visit tribes and other ethnic places.
