It has been a little over a month since I left America and settled into my new home. Every day of Australian Living here, I am learning something new about the culture of the people who live here and about my surrounding environment. My school is called The University of Newcastle, which is in New South Wales, or about two hours north of Sydney. Newcastle is known for its beaches. It is primarily a surf town and hosts the surfing competition 'Surfest' which is a part of the world surfing tour. This is a picture of me at Newcastle Beach, which is about a ten minute train ride from my campus.
These past few weeks have been a mixture of work and play. I started classes two weeks ago, and other than the fact that the teaching style is a little different than what I am used to at Saint Vincent, I really do enjoy what I have been learning. In my creative writing class we are constantly writing, and reading our work out loud to criticize each other in order to improve. However, my children's literature class we look at books such as Where the Wild Things Are and see how the underlying messages have affected children as they grow up reading books like this that may be portrayed as scary or frightening.
Beginning My Internship in Australia
This past Thursday was my first day at my internship in Australia. The University is currently reconstructing their entire website. For my internship, I will be working with the staff to create an entirely new website. The current site has around 40,000 pages and the new site will have about 20,000 pages. It is my job as an intern to help with editing images, rewriting content, and making sure all the information on the new site is up to date and accurate. This past week I have been checking and comparing the research profiles of professors on the current and new site to make sure each professor's research is correct.
Although I have spent many hours either in class or at my internship, I have also had some time for fun and exploring Australia. I was able to go to my first Rugby game, or as the Australians like to call it "footy." Our local team is called the Newcastle Knights. Even though I did not understand much of what was going on during the game, it was still a lot of fun. I had some help figuring out the rules by some of the other Australian students that live in my dorm, pictured below.
I also took a weekend trip to Sydney. It was about a two hour train ride from my campus. We spent the day seeing the Opera House, going to the Botanic Gardens, and exploring the shopping in downtown Sydney. The Opera House was beautiful, I never knew it was multiple buildings, I have always thought that it was one large Opera House. There is also not just one large theater. It is really a complex of theaters and halls all linked together under the famous shell of its architecture.
I hope you've enjoyed my first look at my Internship in Australia - I'll keep you updated over the next months!