FPET3 - Servacio on the Gold Coast

HOME – NEWS – ABOUT FPET – FUNDING – ACTIVITIES – EAST TIMOR – YOUTH – MORE – LINKS

SERVACIO STUDYING AT THE GOLD COAST

This article was written by Servacio Do Nascimento in August 2010 while studying English language in prepartion for studying Agricultural Science at the University of Queensland.

Living in Australia is changing me a lot and has great value

Being in Australia is the most wonderful experience that I have ever had in my entire life. I feel so blissful with this opportunity. A lot of people want this opportunity, however, just a few can make it comes true with hard work, prayer and help from other people.

As this is my first time travel outside of my country, I found it is a little bit difficult for my self to adapt with the real life here, yet everything is alright until now. I am experiencing this with patience and open minded.

To be honest it took me almost two months to adapt with food, weather and social life. It was a bit difficult for me to eat food here without any rice on my plate but as time goes on, I finally get used to it.

I also had difficulties to adapt with the temperature here when I first arrived. We just have two sea- sons in Timor, the wet and dry seasons. As a tropical country it is hotter than Australia. It is now getting better and I would like to say that in my whole life this is my first time to experience winter season. Even though I am not used to this weather, I am really happy because now I know how the weather looks in winter time. I have never experienced this before.

Moreover, I enjoy having multicultural friendship here. This is a great opportunity to know other people from different countries. I am now not only having friends from Australia but also from other countries such as Hungary, Russia, New Caledonia, Japan, China, Honkong, France, Thailand as well as Italy. Just amazing to have these friends. At English college we are also not only taught how to improve our English, we are also taught to be open minded with various information and the way how people in different countries live.

Furthermore, my confidence in English speaking is much better and I can now easily understand English people as I used to not. Having a lot of friends here gives me encouragement to improve my English. Skype, chatting with them on Face book as well as e~mail make me feel a lot better as I used to experience a lot of homesickness.

In the same way, I also now know how to manage my time to do different activities in my daily life. Not only that I can also realise that time is terribly important. I start not waste my time for something that is not worthwhile for my self.

Servacio at the Gold Coast

On the other hand, with all of this happiness I have to leave my family (my mother, brothers and sisters) who really need my support financially and ideas as I used to work and the only one that be able to look after them. They are everything for me. Sometimes I feel like I want to share what I have now even though I know it is impossible. I miss them very much especially my mother; I will give the best for them and will finalise my study as it should be and I will never ever make them disappointed. What I am pursuing now is getting my IELTS exam to certain point that is required for university here which I have to reach 6.5 overall to enter in Queensland University next year in Agriculture Science especially Food Production Major. I almost forget to tell that I am on a Sahariv scholarship with assistance from FPET.

With all of this history, I finally want to thank to all of people that have take a part in helping me and all of Timorese people. All support whether financially or ideas that has been giving to Timor is really useful and change a lot and it makes a lot better. Timorese people especially in Atabae now open minded to education and information and slowly improving in every aspect particularly in education.

At last but not least, on behalf of young people in Atabae I would like to say thanks to all for support that is given to us since we know each other. The support that has been given change us a lot. Thank you so much FPET and all Australians.