A raw update on my life

Hello everyone, Luka here.

It has been a very long time since I (or we) have posted anything on here. I stumbled onto the website a couple days ago and started reading some of the old post my family and I wrote. It really brought me back to Australia and that made me realize 3 things. One, I missed Australia, and 2 I missed writing these blog posts. I also realized that the posts on our website are a lot of my memories written down and shared with a bunch of strangers on the internet. My parents always told me growing up not to talk to strangers, but here I am, half of my life documented on this site for anyone to see. And to think my parents made this! I mean, if you are gonna tell me not to talk to strangers, at least think about how many people are actually able to read this.

The reason I wanted to come onto here and write another blog is because my family and I loved writing posts when we used to do it often. Seeing how many people we were able to reach is and will always be so shocking to me. I never fully realized until today, how many people from all across the world we were able to reach. When we(mostly my parents) were actively writing and keeping up with this I never understood much of it because I was so young. I think up until the last couple of days, I never fully realized how many people read what my family and I had to say. This blog started of just for our family in The Netherlands so they could see what we were up to without having to text or call but it ended up being so much bigger. Before I dive into the update of my life I just wanted to say a HUGE thank you to everyone that has read these posts and supported us. We really appreciate all of the support and we are so happy that people enjoy reading about our journeys and adventures. If it weren’t for you guys, I wouldn’t have a place to look back at the adventures I went on other than in my head. Seeing all this on here really brought back so many happy memories. Thank you all. Now for the part we have all been waiting for; The life update!

School

Lets just start from where we left off. The last post made about me was around 3-4 years ago about me having my first day of school. I was just going to the basis school (elementary school) into ‘year’ 7. The dutch school system is very different that the English one. So the years may confuse some people. Basically to cut it short, you have kindergarten (2-4 years old), basis school (elementary, 4-12 years old grade 1-8) and then middelbare school (high school, 12-16/17/18, grade 1-4/5/6 depending on your level of school) and of course uni and stuff after that if you decide to attend.

I am now in my fourth year of the middelbare school. I do a level called ‘havo’ so I have to attend school for 5 years (age 12-17). I started middelbare school in the beginning of the pandemic. I was very lucky to have been able to spend about 1/3 of the school year at school until we had to switch to fully online. Online school was something very different and weird to me in the beginning. Of course we were online for the last bit of basis school but that was something completely different. We didn’t have to attend a zoom or teams meeting, we only got assigned a bit of homework that usually only took about an hour-30 minutes. Then, I had to follow every single lesson (70 minutes long) behind my computer where we would have to do work and tests. At the end of the year we returned to school though luckily. Now, in my fourth year, everythimg is back to normal and I attend school daily. Last year I had to repeat a year and drop down a so called ‘level’ because my grades were not up to standard. Though this hurt a lot when I first found out, I am now way happier and my grades are way higher than they used to be. Next year will be my final year, in which I will have to do all the final exams. It makes me nervous to think about because the exams are on all the information you have learned for the 2 years prior! I, though do not have to do as many exams as my classmates have to because I am doing two this year. This definitely eliminates a bunch of stress and also adds that I know how the exams go and what I will have to expect for next year. Also, another added bonus is that next year, I don’t have to go to any german or english lessons, as I would have rounded everything up already.

Sport

So as you might have seen on past posts, I loved and still do, dancing. I did it for my school in Australia and took 1 class out of that. After about a year of living in the Netherlands, one of my friends asked me to join her in a gymnastics lesson. Since I liked gymnastics, I agreed. I liked it so much that I joined the club. After about a year of doing that though, I decided to stop because I didn’t like it that much anymore. About half a year had passed, my mom saw a flyer somewhere about a dance school in the same building I had done gymnastics in. She signed me up for a trial lesson and I attended it with a friend of mine. That friend didn’t like it so much, but I on the other hand did. I still remember coming home that day being so excited to tell my mom everything and from that day and loving the sport every single day since then. After dancing at that studio for about 6 months, our dance teacher informed my dance group that there was going to be an audition to join the (newly made) competition team. I was very interested as I had always wanted to dance in competitions. I signed up and a couple weeks later, it was time to go to the audition. My parents had received an e-mail about the time and the place but apparently there was another one sent out stating that the auditions were moved up by half an hour. Of course my parents didn’t receive it so I ended up being 30 mins late. Despite that, I was able to still join and pick up the taught choreography in the little amount of time we had left. A week later, every girl I knew had received the e-mail stating if they were in the team or not, yet I hadn’t. I told my teacher and she sent the e-mail again, this time I actually got it. I was waiting anxiously for the e-mail to arrive. When it did, I sped through it, finding out that I made it into the team! I was extremely happy.

These auditions were around 3 years ago now, and I am still in the same team. For the first two years of the team existing, there weren’t many competitions due to corona so we mainly focused on training and getting stronger. Now, one competition season is behind me and I absolutely loved it. In the first competition we ever went to as a team, we placed fourth out of 22 teams. We were not expecting anything close to that so we were extremely shocked! During the rest of the season we didn’t place well but we still had a lot of fun. Now, I am looking apon the next season with lots of excitement and nerves but I am certain we will do well and have fun.

Home

When my family and I moved back to the Netherlands, we moved to a completely new town. For the first year, we were living in a rental home very close to my school. Though, after a year, our rental period was done so we had to move into a different house. It was a bit of a process but eventually we found a house that we all liked. The house was pretty run down though as the previous owner had been a smoker and lived in a wheelchair. There wasn’t any heating in the house and all of the rooms upstairs were barely used. So there a long process of rebuilding the house began. To start off, we pushed down a few walls to make the kitchen, dining room and living room into one open space. I was very lucky and even got to kick down one of the walls. After all the walls were done, it was time to finish that, but it was also time to start doing my room. I got the biggest room of the house because I’m always in my room. We started off by putting an extra layer of white paint on to each of the walls and painting a blocked wall with blue and green. Five years later in this house and the wall is still painted the exact same way.

My dad has since moving here changed jobs a bunch, looking for one he enjoyed, which he did find luckily. My mom is still working part-time so that she can be home a lot and go with my brother to his different tennis competitions (yes he still plays tennis). Talking about my brother, he is planning on moving to Amerika next year, to play college tennis for four years. He is looking into schools and is also about to take the SAT’s.

I am still dancing a lot and school is, well, school. I love hanging with friends of course, but I also work now. I have a couple of jobs. I teach dance lessons now to little kids and sometimes to older ones when their teacher is sick or can’t be there. I babysit a lot of the kids I teach, as I had sent out an email a while back stating I could babysit their kids if needed (which a lot of them did). And lastly, I also work at a restaurant as a waitress. At least I used to in the summer. Now I am still employed there but I have a 0-hour contract which means I can fill in myself when I want to work. In the summer holidays this worked really well as I had all the time in the world, but now it’s not so easy. My weeks are filled with school and my weekends with dance, friends and family. The restaurant is also a bit far which makes it even more difficult. I am actively searching for a new place, but that is proving to be harder than I expected.

To end this already really long post, I want to thank you all again for reading about our lives and being so interested in it. We have since long settled back into our daily routines but we still miss our friends that have turned family in Australia. We think about it daily and I am so happy that so many of my childhood memories are stored here to look back on. I don’t doubt that I will look back on this website when I am way way older and laugh about all things Australia. Thank you for reading and giving us a voice as a family. I also want to thank you for giving me a voice and letting me write. I look back on old posts and laugh about my english which I love. I benifited greatly from writing here and now writing in english have given me many of my best graded works (let me know if you guys would like to read some of my stories, as I would love to share.

Thank you. We love you all.