The Oxford dictionary defines Incredible as ‘too improbable to believe, or beyond credence or understanding’. I define it as my exchange at The Scots College in Sydney Australia in the third term of 2007. It’s difficult to try and describe my experience in a short report, simply because so much happens at such an alarming rate while you’re on exchange that it’s hard to believe it all occurred in a few short months.

I still clearly remember sitting in Oliver Tambo International Airport all by myself, feeling not scared, but undecided about what I was feeling. Out of all the boys selected for exchange, I was the first to leave, and I hadn’t been given that long notice either. A few weeks after the being told I was lucky enough to be going to Scots, I had already found myself on an airplane, alone, having absolutely no inkling of what to expect. One would imagine that on a flight that exceeds the 17 hour mark you would catch a good couple of hours of sleep, but this didn’t prove to be as easy as I had imagined! The old cliché of a million thoughts stampeding through my brain was kicking in, and it became apparent to me that exchange was no longer simply a goal of mine, or something that was to happen in the future; I was living it, it was the ‘now’. I was on my way to the most incredible journey I had yet to embark on.

I arrived in Sydney in the early afternoon, and was greeted by pleasant weather and of course Mr. Brett Cranfield, the MIC of exchange at Scots. The first thing he said to me was “Klyne, you’re going to love the rugby at Scots!” That afternoon, before I had even taken my luggage out of his car, he took me straight down to the main oval and introduced me to the U16 rugby coach and team, which was quite an intimidating first meeting of Scots boys. There I stood, jet lagged and feigning some sort of energy, while I was being introduced to 15 rather scary looking rugby players. After that I was shown to the house that I would be staying at over the term: Aspinall House. Originally Aspinall was a mansion belonging to a resident in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, and then later on converted to a boarding establishment for 30 or so Scots boys. It sits high up on a hill and overlooks Scots, but more specifically it has a spectacular view of Sydney harbor, and at night we would go up the tower and look over to the Opera House and Sydney Harbor Bridge, marveling over one of the most dazzling skylines in the world. The day of my arrival I met the boys who lived in my dorm, and it’s strange because I realized something that evening: everyone always describes their first encounter with the boys of their exchange schools as something daunting, but the year 10 Aspinall boys were incredibly friendly and I found that instantly they had accepted me into the house. I was paired up with a (responsible!) boy in my dorm to show me around for the first couple of days, and just like that, I was a Scots boy.

The Scots College is a very different school to Hilton in many respects. Firstly, Scots is located in a buzzing conurbation, some 15 minutes away from the Central Business District of Sydney and of course 10 minutes away from the famous Bondi Beach, where I ended up spending most of my school-day afternoons. Its position was considerably different to ours here at Hilton which is more secluded and further away from any major cities. Scots is located in Bellevue Hill, which is in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, the most affluent suburb in the whole of Australia. The position of the school had a huge impact on the type of boys that were enrolled at Scots. Being mostly a day boy school (roughly 600, with only 230 boarders) the majority of the Scots’ pupils came from extremely wealthy homes in the Eastern Suburbs. The boarders were mostly made up of Scots’ numerous Asian students who came from countries such as Korea, Indonesia, China and Japan, and other boys who lived outside of New South Wales who were mostly farmers or came from the ‘country’. This extreme multiculturalism allows for an incredibly diverse learning experience, where you are interacting with people from all across the globe quite frequently. Scots location also has to do with why it was established in the first place. When the Scottish settlers first began sailing to Australia, they would dock at Double Bay, and needed a place for their young boys to go to school, thus The Scots College’s establishment, and name of course!

Scots is a considerably smaller school than Hilton and has only 2 main rugby playing fields, which meant a lot of bus trips to nearby public fields for Rugby practice. It is noticeably modern and technologically advanced, with the entire school being equipped with wireless internet and everything being done on laptops, from text books to tests. This however also proved as a distraction to a lot of the boys! The subjects Scots offered were quite different to that at Hilton. They did of course have all the basic subjects such as Math, English, Science, Geography and Art, but they also offered subjects like Technology, Photography and Digital Media, Sports Science, Economics, Commerce, Philosophy and Indonesian. I personally chose Photography and Digital Media as well as Sports Science as my two electives. I would say Sports Science was by far by the most exciting academic aspect of my exchange. During the term our Sports Science class learned how to surf, and would head out to Bondi Beach 3 times a week for 2 weeks to engage in 2 hour surf lessons, all with the goal of educating us about technology in surfing in mind , which was the theme of the term's work.

Unlike at Hilton, the afternoons at Scots were often left free for the boys to do what they wanted, so more often than not we’d find ourselves either milling about on Red Leaf or Bondi Beach, simply cruising around Bondi Junction, or perhaps even catching a bus- one of the many fantastic forms of public transport in Sydney- to the city. While I was in Sydney I got the chance to see a lot of the city, including the bravura Opera House and Sydney Harbor Bridge. Sydney is such a safe city with so much to do that one could quite simply just walk around the entire day! NRL- which is Rugby League- is incredibly popular in Sydney, especially amongst the Western Oriental community, and I was lucky enough to catch a few games at Telstra stadium. The atmosphere fades in comparison to that of Absa, however it was still an experience none the less.

One of the highlights of my exchange was my very first weekend at Scots. I was lucky enough to have been able to represent the u16A rugby team, and our first match was against Sydney High, who were considered quite a weak team. As we marched onto the main paddock from the change room through the tunnel, I heard the bagpipes begin to play ‘O flower of Scotland’, which if course has the same tune as ‘O Boys’. At that moment I realized that although Hilton and Scots were schools from 2 entirely different ends of the world, we still shared something universal: passion. I was running on the field not to represent the black and white, but rather another proud school, donning the blue and gold. It was this kind of sentiment that makes Hilton and Scots so similar. They are a school engaged deeply in tradition, and that shows in the way Scots boys carry themselves.

For me the richest aspect of my experience came from the people I met throughout my exchange. From Scots boys and staff to cab drivers, every conversation I engaged in with another person showed me a different facet of what life is like for other people, thus opening my eyes to the world around me. I firmly believe that exchange has helped me become a worldlier person, and has taught me through numerous instances how to deal with situations you don’t know how to handle with a sense of maturity and independence. I can whole heartedly say I’ve never experienced anything of the like, and it has most certainly been the most valuable experience of my life. Exchange has helped me mature in ways most people my age wouldn’t normally have, and has exposed a whole new set of possibilities for me to pursue. I have formed bonds with people that I plan never to break, and have learned a great deal in such a short time. I hope to take all the experience and knowledge that I have gained on exchange and return it to the Hilton, the place that gave me the opportunity in the first place. I would like to thank Mr. Guthrie for organizing and affording me this incredible experience; without him my exchange wouldn’t have been possible.