it's definitely international here.

First piece of mail came today!! How very exciting it is to get a valentine's day card from your dogs. Especially one that sings!

Two days ago I had my first presentation at ICMS. It wasn't graded and we only had one day to prepare. Mike was in my group, along with one other student who turned out to be not very helpful, seeing as he showed up late to our one group meeting and then didn't show up for the presentation. However, thanks to already taking business communications last summer and being a little bit older than everyone, Mike and I had a great presentation (or so everyone said!) Apparently we set the standards high for everyone since we went first. A couple of the groups were made up of Asians. I can't imagine coming to a country where you have to take classes in your second language and try to give presentations, but they are working really hard. Still, I had to laugh to myself when one slide read "Why Four seasons is so successful?"

Another funny encounter I had was when I met another Asian, Ryan. He asked my name and I said "Steph." Then he said "oh, so are you an RA or GA?" And I laughed and said no. Later he said (again) "I'm Ryan." And I thinking okay, okay I know what your name is. Later, I realized "Steph" to him was "staff" and he thought I worked there and that I never told him my name. They don't call this school international for nothin!

The other day I met one of my neighbors. My door was open, and a girl knocked and said hi. It was nice but another hard to understand situation because she was trying to ask me where I got my fan, but did not know the word for fan. Later, I sat with her at breakfast and found out her name is Alexandria, and she is from Sweden - a graduate student studying here for the next year.

Yesterday in Intro to Sport we did an activity where we made up a worldwide sporting event in Sydney and planned a four day itinerary for the athletes. It was a very fun activity and my group made a "Champions of Champions" soccer tournament. One of my group members heard I was from Chicago and asked if I knew "Naperville." I was so surprised that this Australian boy was asking me about Naperville!! Turns out he played basketball there for three months at Naperville North. So crazy having this connection all the way across the globe.

For my sport class our assignment is to write a report on a sports team or athlete. Because of having a couple connections through my dad, I am going to be able to interview a Sydney FC player on the phone! We need an interview as one of our resources for the paper, and so far this has worked out well. I am excited to research an Australian soccer team (or football as they call it here.)

In my Health Issues class yesterday we talked about health care systems. Needless to say, I'll be glad when this topic is over. We watched the "documentary" Sicko by Michael Moore in class. All of these young Australian university students only have that view of our healthcare. It's frustrating especially when I took business ethics this summer and wrote a 10 page paper on private vs government hospitals and have seen plenty of research on "government run hospitals" and how they are so poorly run in comparison to private hospitals. Although hospitals and healthcare are a bit different, I still wouldn't want the government running my healthcare. I'm looking forward to talking about sports related health issues in that class though, because our lecturer is very experienced in the health science field.

It's a beautiful day out, 75 degrees Fahrenheit and just partly cloudy - so I'm heading to the beach in a little bit!! Cheers!