eStudent Visa II
"Sorry, but you are not in the system." - "I know. This is because the money didn't get through in time even though I transfered it 4 days ago and therefore the application got canceled" - "I am sorry, but you are not in the system. You have to apply again." - "Ok, but I transfered the money already..." - "Mhm... I get someone from the eVisa section..."
"We finally found you in the system but there is an error message and we don't know exactly what it means. We have to phone Canberra to find out what it means. We will let you know."
GREAT! I love unknown error messages!! But at least they found me in the system!!

German and Arabic
My boyfriend Ian decided to do a German language course - I really don't know why he decided so... ;-)
In order to accompany him I decided to do a language course as well. I chose a course that runs at the same time as the German course - the Arabic language course.
Both courses run for 6 weeks, every Tuesday evening for 2,5h. We had our first lesson last Tuesday.
Ian is now able to say: Guten Tag, wie geht's? sehr gut, danke, nicht so gut, wie geht es ihnen?, Wie heißt du? Mein name ist Ian, eine schwarze Katze, ein brauner Hund,... and some more nouns and all main colours.
My Arabic course is surprisingly not as difficult as I thought. We learned the numbers from 0 to 10 (safer, wahed, egnee, talata, arba'ah, chumsa, setta, sab'ah, tamania, tesa'ah, aschrah) and the first 7 of 28 letters. And every letter looks different depending on his position in the word - beginning, middle or end. So far it is really good fun to learn the language as well as the Arabic culture!!
[I hope that I will not have trouble visiting the USA now that I am doing an Arabic course ;-)]

eStudent Visa
I handed in my application for a PhD at Curtin about 6 weeks ago. Last week I finally got the letter of Offer and after I accepted I also got a COE (Confirmation of Enrolement). This number is necessary to apply for a student visa.
So I applied for a student visa last Friday and choose to pay via PBAY (online banking for paying bills). So I transfered A$420 last Monday via BPAY over the internet. It usually takes one business day to be transfered... well... usually.... My money has still not yet arrived at the DIMA (Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs).
So went to the local office here in Perth and asked them what to do. They said that they can't do anything! So I left my last statement that confirmes that I transfered the money. I also called my bank and they confirmed that the money has been transfered. So I called the DIMA hotline and they just adviced me to send an email - what I did.
This morning I finally got an email saying that my payment period has expired and that my online application is therefore invalid...
So I will continue phoning everyone to find out where my money is and how I can get my student visa finally!! That really sucks!!!

Home Sweet Home
Just some pictures of the house where Ian and I live at the moment. The frontyard is pretty nice but the inside needs some renovation :-) There will be some renovations soon. Ian drew some planes and he wants to remove some walls and redesign the house a little bit ;-)

My Scooter
Me and Ian live quite far away from Curtin so I needed some kind of vehicle. The bus takes about 1h to get to the uni! So I decided to buy a scooter ;-)
I found one over the internet for just A$1700 including a helmet, a luggage box and licensed until December. It is a VMoto Milan (www.vmoto.com/au/milan) with 50cc full of power ;-) With my car license I am not allowed to drive a motor bike with more than 50cc. But this one does at least 60km/h which is fast enough to keep up with the traffic in the city.
It is really good fun to ride my scooter to the Uni everyday! Even though it is getting colder and colder now. It just takes me 35min to get to Curtin (20km).

The Bibbulmun Track (www.bibbulmuntrack.org.au) is a walking trail that runs from Perth to Albany about 963 km.
We (Ian and me, Mel and Jen) walked a small section of this trail and stayed overnight in one of the huts that are provided for free. These huts are open (3 walls) and you just put your sleeping bag on the ground. Next to each hut is a big water tank so you don't have to carry that much water.
It was really good fun! We cooked dinner on top of a rock and watched the sunset - very romantic :-)
They told me that it is very rare to spot the very venomous tiger snake and the trapdoor spider. Well, guess what we saw.... exactly! There was a tiger snake crossing our track just in front of us. And I also spotted the little hole in the ground of a trapdoor spider.

I finally confirmed that I wanted to accept the scholarship in the middle of April and handed in my application for enrolement in Curtin. They arranged a nice workplace in an office with another German guy Thorsten and a girl from UAE (United Arabian Emirates) called Amal and ordered a PC.
Actually I wanted to start my PhD on the first of May but then I got an email on the 24th of April saying that I won the NRW Undergraduate Science Award 2005 (www.undergraduate-awards.de)!! But I only get the price if I participate in the award ceremony on the 3rd of May in Düsseldorf.
And, well, on the 28th of April I was sitting in a plane back to Germany :-)
The plane from Perth to Dubai was overbooked so I was upgraded to business class!!! So I was sitting there in this big comfy chair and was as happy as a little kid on Christmas!
Back in Germany I visited a couple of friends - Andrea and Ossy in Frankfurt, Nicole in Stuttgart, Metzchen in Darmstadt and my sister in Frankfurt - all within 5 days!!
The award ceremony was very nice. Eveyone had to do a presentation presenting his paper. And guess what... they told my that I have an Aussie accent already!! Can you believe that?
But the very best thing about this trip was that my parents didn't have a clue that I was back in Germany! And it was my dad's birthday on the 4th of May. So I arrived on the 4th of May at home an surprised my whole family! My mum say you are crazy and screamed ;-) And my dad was standing motionless in the doorway for a minute saying nothing because he didn't believe his eyes! It was really great!!

Well, I went back to Perth in March 2006. My aim: finding a university that would pay for tuition fees (ca. A$20.000 per year) and living expenses to do a PhD in Computer Science.
So far everything was really frustating! Every single plan I came up with - and I was really quite inventive - didn't work out...
But just after 2 weeks in Australia I got a full time scholarship from Curtin University of Technology (www.curtin.edu.au) for a PhD (3 years)!!! This was one of my happiest days of my life! And it just came out of the blue!
I did some research on the internet to find possible universities in Perth. I found the homepage of Svetha Venkatesh (www.computing.edu.au/~svetha), send her my CV and got an appointment to meet her the day after. After we talked a bit and she showed me around in the School she offered me a scholarship right away!! It was pretty amazing!!

My first blog :-)