Ballarat & Daylesford-March 15

This weekend we went to Ballarat to meet up with the other exchange teachers from Canada and Xenia and her family from Hamburg, Germany.
We met at Sovereign Hill a re-creation of a village of the goldrush era of Ballarat
and then met for dinner at our hosts Helen and Ian's home.
The wonderful Australian teachers who had travelled all over the world on these exchanges were our hosts at a bbq dinner. It was so nice to spend time with like-minded colleagues. They are all inspiring. We learned so much from both the Canadian teachers and the well travelled, adventurous and experienced Aussie educators and their spouses. Attention our Matthew; one couple did two exchanges in Alberta, one in Calgary and one in Grand Prairie!! Others exchanged with teachers in B.C. and Ontario.  Many had been to Colorado, one went to Texas. They all said it was one of the best years of their lives, career wise and personally. They mentioned that we were the smallest group of international exchange teachers. We are nine in total...in past years, there were up to 36. We heard they had matched 6 teachers for 2015...I had a moment of jealousy of the next group coming to Australia.

We then went to Joan's beautiful home in the country for our night stay.
We got up early to look for wildlife. Joan told us that a koala had once peeked into her living room. I will post a photo with this entry. Our walk was fruitless in regards to wildlife except some beautiful parrots and we did enjoy a refreshing walk amongst the eucalyptus (gum trees) and wild grass bushes.
After a lovely chat with our well traveled  hostess over toast, vegemite, cheese and coffee bag coffee, we drove towards Daylesford, in hopes of checking off some of the recommendations on our list of sites to see.
We loved Daylesford!! It's a trendy/hippyish/spa town. We also managed to visit the market and took a walk around the convent gallery grounds.
Eventhough it was a cooler day, it was still so beautiful!