Go 'tahs!!

Last night I went to my first Australian sporting event - a rugby union game in Sydney. I left campus with Chelsea, Laura, Alex and Ashley and we grabbed a bite to eat before getting on the ferry to go into the city. We took a quick train ride from Circular Quay to go to Bar Century to meet up with Chelsea's friend Joe and some of his mates. The drinks were cheap and the bar was decorated like an older style sports bar. After about an hour, Laura, Alex, Ashley and I left the bar and walked a few blocks down to Hyde Park where we picked up a bus to Moore Park. Unfortunately, while trying to get off at the right stop by following a man with a Waratah's jersey on, we got off a little early because the man in fact did not get off the bus like we thought he was going to. Whoops! Luckily a couple of nice old men walked by wearing jerseys and Ashley asked them for directions. It turns out we were not far at all rom the stadium.

We walked into the stadium and went to our seats, which were really close considering they were "category C" when we bought them. Laura and I went to the bathroom and to get a beer which was actually reasonably priced considering we were at a sporting venue. When we came back, a man was sitting in our seats next to Alex and Ashley, and it did not take long to realize how incredibly intoxicated he was. He turned out to be a friend of the guys who were sitting in front of us, and they told him to move. He did, but sat down right by Laura and became pretty distracting. The situation was a little uncomfortable, and there were plenty of empty seats in front of us, so we got up and went to the third row. We were a little sad to move because the guys in front of us had been very friendly and were explaining the different rules of rugby union to us.

There are two different types of rugby here: Rugby Union and Rugby League. Rugby union is a little slower paced with 15 men on the field per team whereas rugby league has seven men per team. Rugby union is what most of the world calls "rugby." When a player puts the ball down in the end field, it is called a "try" and the team scores 5 points. The extra points, or conversion play, is when the ball is kicked through the goal posts by the goal kicker (2 points). If a penalty is awarded to a team, they might get to take a kick which is 3 points. Also, during play the ball can be kicked through the posts (called a drop goal) which is also 3 points. Most of the plays are started through "scrums" which is where the two teams arrange themselves and push against each other for the ball. The ball cannot ever be passed forwards, just backwards, and only the player with the ball can be tackled (normally lower on the body). Also, after the ball goes out of bounds, the play where the ball comes back in is called a "lawn out" and the person who throws it back in is the "line hooker." This is pretty much all of the knowledge I picked up while at the game, or a little wikipedia searching beforehand :)

After moving seats, the game became very exciting and the lead kept changing. We were really close to the action! Also, some of our new mates came down to apologize for their friend and take our group picture in front of the field. The Waratahs ended up winning 39 - 32! We left the stadium and found a bus to Circular Quay for half price (game special.) The next ferry wasn't for another 45 minutes, so we ate at Hungry Jack's. A fun night overall!

This morning I got up and went to church with Mary and Heather for Palm Sunday. It was St. Mary's church, right here in Manly. There were a lot of older people attending, and the dress was definitely casual. It was a very pretty church, but like Mary, I wasn't that impressed with the homily. Oh well, that is where we will be going next week for Easter. I can't believe it's next week!! Another short school week of work and then a five day weekend. Cheers!!

another day in Sydney!

Last night Mike and I went to the Manly Italian Restaurant for dinner. It is hidden on the Corso, and it was delicious! The restaurant is BYO, so we bought a bottle of wine before getting there. I ordered the fettuccine alfredo which was actually orange in color and included mushrooms and ham. It seemed like authentic Italian food for sure! Mike had the spaghetti mariana which really was quite the seafood dish to my surprise! On top of his spaghetti noodles was shrimp, calamari, and even octopus! Mike bet me 10 dollars that I wouldn't eat it - so I did! Definitely not my favorite seafood - too chewy. Good meal away for the college overall! Afterwards we had a mini photo shoot in front of ICMS.





Today Mary, Olivia, Mike and I got up bright and early and rode the 8.15 ferry into Sydney. First stop was Starbucks for a delicious banana loaf and coffee. After filling up on food, we walked over to the Opera House for even more beautiful photos (this time the weather was bright, sunny, and 80 degrees!) Then we began the long walk into the Botanical Gardens. Hanging in the trees above our heads were hundreds of bats! They sleep in the trees during the day, and apparently are destroying the trees so the Botanical Gardens are trying to get rid of them. These bats are called "flying foxes," and it definitely didn't sound like they were sleeping - tons of noise was coming from them and some of there were even flying around.

We passed by many flowers and interesting trees, but the highlight of the gardens was the white birds! A group was feeding in the grass as we passed by, so we tried to see how close we could get to them. In fact we got really close to them! Mary picked up a stick to see if the bird would take it from her, and he jumped right onto the stick! Amazing! I was pretty afraid they would try to bite at us - one was really close to biting at my toes (maybe green nail polish isn't a good idea around them). Right after that Mike nearly got bird poop on his head. All of the sudden we saw something from from above and land between his feet - could have turned out a lot differently had he been standing a bit forward!! We sat on Mrs. Macquerie's chair and walked over to the Tropical Centre which is a greenhouse pyramid.

After hours in the gardens, we walked to Hyde Park. On the way we walked along Macquerie Street featuring many famous Sydney landmarks. One of them is right in front of Sydney Hospital - Il Porcellino - a bronze boar that is a copy of a 17th century fountain in Florence. It represents the strong relationship that Australia has with Italy. Apparently anyone who rubs the nose of the boar has good luck, so of course we all rubbed the snout and threw coins into the fountain. The Sydney Hospital was built by convicts and was originally called "Rum Hospital" because the convicts were paid for their work by receiving the rights to the rum import monopoly.

In Hyde Park we saw St. Mary's Cathedral, Archibald fountain, and watched the big game of chess. Mary and Olivia had a lunch date at the Sydney Tower, so Mike and I went to look for a small bistro for lunch. We stopped at the Sydney Mint which is now just offices of the Historic Houses Trust of NSW. We saw old coins, models of the original buildings, original sandstone columns, and a coin press machine. It was opened in the right wing of the "Rum Hospital" in the mid 1800s. Then we walked around Macquerie Street and found a small cafe where I ate a ham melt and Mike had beef stew. It was a good midday pick-me-up. Next up was the Hyde Park Barracks Museum. We did not go into the actual museum since that actually had a price, and we are just poor study abroad students. Walking around the grounds was good enough though! We saw an old fashioned courtroom and a watchguard station. The barracks were used for housing up to 600 convicts who came to Sydney. In the museum store we saw a rat cage - rats were crediting with "preservation" of the barracks and its history because they would steal items and store them in their nests which were later found in archeological digs.

We went back into Hyde Park and walked beyond Archibald Fountain to see Sandringham Garden and the Anzac Memorial. Sandringham Garden has many flowers and a pretty fountain in the middle and was dedicated to the English kings George V and George VI by Queen Elizabeth II. Beyond the garden, we found the Pool of Reflection in front of Anzec Memorial. The pool really did reflect the memorial and the skylike behind it which was pretty cool. We climbed the stairs to Anzec Memorial to see what it was all about. Anzac stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. The Memorial was opened in 1934 commemorating those who lost their lives in WWI. Now it is a memorial for all of those who were ever killed fighting for their country. When you walk in to the Memorial, you can look down and see the "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier." Looking up at the ceiling, I saw 120,000 tiny gold stars. These represented each person who enlisted during WWI. The Memorial was constructed during the Great Depression, and they ran out of funds to complete it. To help with the costs, the gold stars were sold for 2 dollars each to the public. It is a very impressive ceiling to say the least. Underneath the memorial was a tiny museum that we stopped in to have a look around that had some nice soldier artifacts such as uniforms and equipment.

It was time for a quick nap on the lawn while we waited for Olivia and Mary to finish their lunch at the Tower. Once we met up, we walked to Chinatown to venture into Paddy's markets. I wasn't sure what to expect, but there was a lot of items to take a look at! I tried to resist spending too much, but I did find a pretty handpainted boomerang for myself. The markets closed at 5, and we made our way back to Circular Quay for a quick frappaccino and the ferry ride home.

The trip into Sydney was full of fun times and lots of learning, as it always seems to be. It was also great exercise since we walked everywhere! The ferry ride had the most amazing view, a sunset behind clouds near the Opera House and Bridge - I couldn't ask for better pictures!!

Cheers!!!

functions department shadowing

This morning I went to the Functions Department to learn what Yvette, the Functions Manager, does on a daily basis. At first I wasn't sure how interesting the 1.5 hours would be, seeing different office work that she does, but Yvette has a lot of interesting work that she does! In Functions you can never be systematic, you always have to be ready for walk-ins and phone calls because those make up most of the revenue. Daily tasks include always checking email and voicemail and responding with wedding or conference packages to give the customer what they could choose from. Those should be sent out 24 hours or less after receiving the first enquiry. The next step is often negotiations (which Yvette said the Americans do the most! not surprising. Although she did say Americans were the best at negotiating as well.) Yvette explained two different event planning programs - Opera and Visio. Opera is where all event details are kept. Visio is a really cool program - it has all of the rooms in the school to scale, and all tables, chairs, dance floors, to scale as well. This is how they do the floor plans, by moving around the pictures of tables and chairs and seeing how it fits before organizing the room before the event. Another important aspect is keeping a functions folder for every event including every correspondence that you have with the client (basically to save yourself from any arguments with the client, because you will have exactly what they agreed to in the folder.) She showed us a recent client who had many "complaints" and yet she has come back to ICMS for events again and again. The morning was much more interesting than I expected, and Yvette told us we can come back to ask questions or shadow again.

Tonight I'm going out to an Italian restaurant in Manly with Mike. Tomorrow I'm going into Sydney to walk around the Botanical Gardens and stop by Chinatown. Saturday I'm going out in Sydney to the Sydney Waratahs Rugby Game (have to brush up on my rugby beforehand.) A lot to look forward to!

Cheers!

exploring the beaches

Yesterday afternoon Mike and I had a "quiz" in Hospitality. A quiz that is worth 20% of my grade! That is not a quiz, Australia, that is what we call a test! Since we got done with class an hour early, we decided to go on a long run/walk to explore the beaches. Looking out from some of the windows from ICMS, you can see not just the famous Manly beach, but also two other beaches beyond that. We ran along Manly beach, and into the town of Warringah. We ran along a path that went behind a neighborhood of houses and along a lagoon. There were many people walking dogs and strollers along the path. We turned back and went over a bridge, and up, up, up many stairs through homes!! I was tired at the top. Then we walked down some stairs and paths to get to a beach in Warringah. I'm not sure what it is called, but it was beautiful! It was pretty small and not very crowded. We walked along the water and watched many surfers out in the waves. From the beach you could see our pretty ICMS school from across the beach. It was a great evening to climb the rocks and take photos. Seeing as it is Wednesday, it is already my weekend! I'm looking forward to going to a Sydney rugby game on Saturday night with Laura, Ashley, and Alex! It should be a blast. :) More to come!!

Blue Mountains trip!

Quick recap of Saturday evening: A group of girls, Olivia, Laura, Mary, Heather, Ashley, Jessie, Ashley and I went to Four Pines Brewery across from the Manly Wharf. I had heard good things about their food and award winning beer (and we even had a coupon for a free beer) so we were really excited for another good dinner off campus. I ordered "Terri's pasta" pretty much in honor of my Aunt. The pasta was delicious with red sauce, sausage, and feta cheese, and it was really filling. I also tried their speciality cider which was very good as well :) After sitting around for a couple hours while sharing stories and laughs, we decided to get ice cream at McDonald's and walk along the beach for a nighttime photo shoot with Laura's camera. When done we walked along the Corso and beach to finish off the fun night.

Sunday: the Blue Mountains trip. A group of about 25 from ICMS went on the Blue Mountains trip. Our bus driver/tour guide picked us up at 8.15 and drove us through Sydney. We passed over not only the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but also the Anzec Bridge, also known as Madonna's Bra. Our first stop was Featherdale Wildlife park. After seeing wildlife a couple times in Cairns, I wasn't sure how exciting it would be, but as always the interesting animals made the visit worthwhile. When we got off of a bus one of the workers was holding a baby wallaby - sweetest little thing ever! We saw koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, dingos, wombats, and many different types of birds and reptiles. We saw bats as well - I'm not sure if I've mentioned this but bats fly over the city at night - kind of creepy to see when you aren't used to it!! Of course my favorite is the Little Penguins - Mike practically had to pull me away from their exhibit! But my favorite moment of the day was this little owl that was sitting by himself on a log. He was so cute and kept nodding his head at me! Adorable.




Our next stop was the village of Leura. Leura is located right outside of the Blue Mountains and really has that little town feel with a one street strip of small restaurants and shops. Most of us stopped at a little takeaway place for lunch. I ate the honey chicken with fried rice which made me crave sweet and sour chicken from home! We had time to walk along the shops for a little bit before getting back on the bus as well.



We arrived at the Three Sisters after lunch. This rock formation in the Blue Mountains has a few different legends behind it apparently. The original legend is that three sisters from the Katoomba tribe fell in love with three brothers of a different tribe. They wanted to marry, but their father, the chief, didn't allow it, so he had the witch doctor turn them into stone. The witch doctor died during a battle, and they couldn't find anyone to change the girls back. It's a nice legend, but those rocks are huge! No way were those rocks ever any ladies. The pictures cannot really describe how vast the area was.



After taking tons of pictures of the same rock formation, we went to Katoomba falls to walk down the mountain. We began at 1000 meters above sea level. The walk was pretty much all down manmade stairs, and at some points I was a little nervous to look below me! It was a beautiful walk though, and we could continuously see the Katoomba falls waterfall. Once at the bottom we learned about the mining that went on in the mountain area in the early 1900's. To get back up the mountain, we had to go on the world's steepest railway that used to carry coal up the mountain. Not only is it the steepest, but that train went pretty fast too! I was pretty nervous seeing as we were not strapped in at all, and it felt like a roller coaster which I am not very fond of.



After leaving Katoomba falls, we went to Wentworth falls. There were three original explorers of the Blue Mountains, and one of them was Wentworth. Lucky guy - got an awesome waterfall named after him! On our walk down to the lookout point at Wentworth falls, you could really look out through the trees and see the "Blue" Mountains. They are called the Blue Mountains not because they are blue, but because the Eucalyptus trees give off a blue vapor - so when you look through them out at the mountains they look blue in color!




Overall, I was incredibly glad I went to the Blue Mountains to learn more about Australia and see some beautiful sights! Now onto a hectic week with actual schoolwork... sometimes I forget that the word "study" is in "study abroad!" Whoops!!

Cheers :)

lady gaga & beyond!

before the main event wednesday: I had my follow up dentist appointment. I got right into the dentist, and Dr. Kim was pleased to hear that my tooth had not been hurting, and he did a quick test to make sure the nerve was still alive in the tooth. After that was done he numbed up my mouth and put in a permanent filling so that the filling does not become loose from my tooth. He thinks that the filling should last until I get home or even longer, but if something happens I will eventually have to get a root canal. Knock on wood that my tooth stays nice and healthy until I go home at least!

I came back to school and quickly got ready before walking to the wharf and getting on the ferry with Mary, Olivia, Jessa, Kaleigh, and Chelsea. After what seemed like a very quick ferry ride, we were in Sydney and walking to Darling Harbour. We stopped there to have subway for dinner, which was delicious! There are wooden steps that people sit on surrounding the harbour, so we sat there to eat our sandwiches. Unfortunately, the seagulls swarm the area when people feed them, and at one point a seagull flew by and hit my sandwich!! Tried to take it right out of my hand. They are very brave and annoying birds, but luckily I won out that time. (picture 1: on the ferry - picture 2: outside of Sydney Entertainment Centre)

Soon our group made our way over to the Sydney Entertainment Centre, where the concert was held. We made a few friends along the way, and Mary, Olivia and I even got interviewed by Novatel, a local broadcasting company. Mary may have said that we came all the way from the U.S. just to see Lady Gaga... we are great people to interview!! Mary, Olivia and I soon found out seats which were pretty high up, but we still had a great view of the stage. The theater was really big and very clean. I bought a couple of drinks and they were not that expensive, unlike some venues in the US where drinks are priced much more than normal.

The opening band was "Semi Precious Weapons." Apparently, Lady Gaga used to open for them in New York before she became famous. Also, one of the members of the band is my dad's lawn guy's son. Small world! The lead singer was wearing a dress and heels (and he was a guy). Also, he changed his outfits on stage, right behind a speaker! He was nuts! Overall, they were pretty good and definitely excited for Lady Gaga and pumped up the crowd as well. (picture 3 - Semi Precious Weapons)

Lady Gaga took the show for sure! Costumes, tons of stage props, many back up dancers, crazy lights and decorations - I would definitely describe the event as more of a show than a concert for sure. (pictures 4 &5: Lady Gaga) Her songs definitely make me want to dance and dance we did! My absolute favorite song (even though they were all great!) was "Bad Romance" which was the final song she performed. It definitely reminded me of my best friend at home, Katelyn, and how we had sang the song in the car together over winter break! What was different from US concerts was that as soon as the last song was performed, everyone just started pouring out of the exits, and no one really tried to request an encore. All three of us were pretty surprised by that! We hurried back to the ferry (but also managed to stop at McDonald's for cheeseburgers and mcflurries first) and took a late night ferry ride home.

What a day I had yesterday! Just a typical Friday, no classes as usual. After a delicious lunch of fish and chips at the CYC, I headed down to the beach with a few friends to lay out and soak up the sun. We were there for a few hours. At one point Mary and I ventured into the water - the waves were great yesterday and there were a good amount of surfers out and about! At one point creepy hairy man in a yellow speedo approached me to tell me that I needed to stay inside the flags - which I basically was!! Sigh - creepers. Scary moment of the day.

Because I had checked the menu for dinner, and it was some Indonesian dish I could not even pronounce, I suggested getting dinner at the Corso. After walking around the shops for a little while, we went to a pizza place across from the wharf called "La Casa." Definitely reminded me of La Casa from Albion - and miss the margaritas a little! Mary and I ordered a pepperoni pizza and garlic bread. We only had to wait ten minutes before the pizza was ready. Kaleigh, Olivia, Mary and I walked over to the wharf area and put our towels on the grass to have a pizza picnic! It was so relaxing just looking out at the wharf, eating pizza and chatting. I got a cookies and creme shake from copenhagen and we walked back through the Corso, along Manly beach where we found a man doing karate/tae bo in a speedo. We stopped to watch for a few minutes of course. Then we walked back to campus. I love it here, being able to just walk along the beach at night with friends. It was one of those very content afternoons that make me really appreciate being here in Manly.



Tomorrow the school is sponsoring a trip to the Blue Mountains. I'm really excited to go - I hear they are beautiful! As for today, I'll be writing a paper and staring longingly at the Beach. Don't feel bad for me (haha, as if anyone in the midwest would) but I've been to the beach the past two days! Cheers for now.

it's all about who you know

I recently got off of the phone with John Aloisi (pronounced like "aloe-easy"). He is a famous soccer player in Australia, currently playing for Sydney FC, which my sport paper is on. And how did I get to talk to him on the phone? Luckily I've got connections! Or rather, my dad had a connection, who had a connection, who I contacted and then got connected with John Aloisi. He was incredibly friendly on the phone and answered every question I had. He seemed in good spirits considering his team is playing in the Hyundai A-League final Saturday night and he will not be able to play due to a hamstring injury. Talking to him on the phone reminded me of when I was about 10 and some of my friends and I got to meet Kristine Lilly, U.S. women's player, at a Hyundai function my dad had. I was so nervous to meet her that I had nothing to say!! Luckily I had questions prepared for John and he was very easy to talk to. Good thing, he has really helped me with my paper!

Tomorrow I turn in this paper (thank goodness!), go to the dentist for the final time I believe since my tooth has not been bothering me at all (success!), and then I will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day in Sydney with Mary and Olivia at the Lady Gaga concert! Apparently my dad's lawn guy's son is in one of the opening bands if I remember correctly. Maybe I should try to find him and get a backstage pass?? :)

Happy St. Patty's day!!!!

a day in Sydney

Yesterday was an amazing and long day! Mike and I went into Sydney, and we really saw a lot! We started the day at 730 in the morning, walking down to Manly to catch the 8.15 ferry. We were unaware that there was an 8 oclock ferry, but as soon as we got close to the wharf I saw that there was a ferry already there, and people began to run past us - so we started walking faster. It was right at 8 oclock and the ferry worker let us through the gates without paying (which was nice, but we have ferry passes that we already paid for, so now we just have an uneven amount of rides left!) It was a beautiful morning, and there were not many people on the ferry. Once we arrived into Sydney, we went to Starbucks for breakfast where I got myself a grande white chocolate mocha and a banana loaf to start the day off right.

After a quick breakfast, we walked to Darling Harbour to our first stop - the IMAX theater to see Avatar 3D! On our walk there, we encountered some interesting people. One of these people was an old man who did not appear homeless but was looking in the trash. I looked back and saw him pull out an almost empty beer bottle and drink from it! Disturbing to say the least and I had to contain my gag reflex for the next few minutes. Once we got to the IMAX theater, we had to wait for it to open. I was glad that I ordered the tickets online, because once the doors opened to the theater the lines were really long to buy tickets, luckily we were able to go right to the theater and sit down in our seats. The IMAX theater in Darling Harbour has the biggest screen in the entire world!! I was in awe of how big the screen was. Our seats were pretty much right in the middle and we had a great view. At first with the screen being so big and everything being 3D I got a little dizzy, but soon I was just enjoying the movie! It was great seeing Avatar a third time.

When we walked out of the theater the bright light was blinding! Mike and I walked over to the Sydney Tower. We took an elevator up to a gallery area where we checked in for our lunch reservation, and then we took another elevator up to the top! there are four different floors at the top. The restaurant was buffet style with really good food. I had two plates full! I even tried and liked fried calamari - I think that's because I forgot what calamari really was, and later Mike reminded me it is squid... oh well. Even though the food was so good and much better than the food at school, the best part of the experience was the view!! The floor on which the dining tables are set on rotates very slowly so we could see a 360 degree view. We could see Darling Harbour, Sydney Olympic Park, the Bridge, the Opera House, the city of Manly, and even tiny ICMS! Lots of pictures were taken and once we were stuffed with delicious food we took the elevators back to ground level. What an experience!

It was definitely time to take a walk after eating all of that food. We went from the Sydney Tower to Hyde Park. There was a game of giant chess going on - the pieces were about 2 feet big or so and the board was designed right on the ground. We walked to the centre of Hyde Park - Archibald Fountain. It was beautiful and behind it was St. Mary's Cathedral which chimed it's bells at the hour. The building's construction started in 1821 and it was opened in 1882. It would be nice to go to mass there sometime.. since I haven't been to church here yet (oops.) I've been too busy, right?!

From Hyde Park we walked to the Botanical Gardens. There we walked on "Mrs. Macquerie's Bushwalk" which was beautiful and went along a harbour. We passed by many flowers as well as the Art Museum of New South Wales and Andrew (Boy) Charlton Pool which is a pool right on the water's edge. At one point we were looking out at the Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf and Mike pointed out something in the water. Penguins!! It was definitely one of the highlights of my day to see two little penguins swimming in the bay. I tried to get pictures, but they kept bobbing up and down in the water. Very exciting nonetheless. We reached Mrs. Macquerie's Chair which is a famous lookout point. Elizabeth Macquerie was the governor's wife in 1816, and everyday she would watch the harbor from the stone bench. Soon we reached a beautiful area that looked across to the Opera House and Bridge. There, it started raining. We still had a great walk - but we saw many wedding parties along the way taking pictures, and even one actual wedding where they were saying their vows under umbrellas! We came across a pretty pond and a couple of great climbing trees. The Gardens are really big and we only saw a portion - I want to go back and walk around more (preferably on a non rainy day!)

Soon we reached the Sydney Opera House. It is a great piece of architecture and we explored all around it. There is a gift shop inside so we walked around a little bit inside as well. Something that I didn't realize was that it is really three separate structures, not just one! Mike's great idea of the day was to lick the Opera House ("because who can say that they have done that before?") so for some reason I did that as well. Check one off of the weird things to do while in Sydney list! We went around behind the Opera House and took pictures of the Bridge before we continued on our walk along the Harbour. I'm on a hunt for Australian UGGs since Leila decided I needed a new pair right before I left (or she chewed one of my shoes up) but we went in a few different souvenir stores along the way so I could compare prices. We were back at Circular Quay before we knew it, but we weren't done for the day!

We walked to the Rocks and down George and Hickson Streets to get to "Pancakes on the Rocks." I heard about this Pancake place a couple of weeks ago, and I had been dying to go there ever since. We had to wait a few minutes to get a table at this two level pancake restaurant that also offered salads, pizzas, etc. Why would you get pizza from a pancake place?? I'll never know. We had a little bit of confusion with the wait staff because they don't pair a waiter with a table there, they all just run around taking orders and then other members of the staff bring out the meal. Soon enough we ordered (while enjoying nice cold beers to relax from the day!). Our food came our quickly - I ordered "Devil's Delight" which was two chocolate pancakes, cream, chocolate ice cream, strawberries and chocolate sauce topping! It was beyond delicious!

The ferry ride back at night was really pretty - seeing the skyline all lighted was amazing!! Overall, we saw and accomplished a lot. Cheers from the other side of the world!!

functions department meeting

I just got back from the functions department meeting. It started at 9 am and only lasted about 45 minutes. They are weekly meetings, and they consist of going over the functions for the next week or so. Those present were Yvette (head of functions), Nina (works in functions), two chefs (one being the head operations chef), Head of maintenance, Daneill and Tim (event supervisors), and Sandra (I wasn't quite sure what department she was from). Basically, Yvette ran the meeting and went through the packet of events throughout the next week, who was running them, how much food, and reminding everyone of the details. This next Tuesday is going to be really busy with two different events, one of the first and one on the second floor - both have bands but they have made it very clear that they don't want to hear outside noise... that'll be tough to manage! Also, one of those events on Tuesday has "singing waiters" where they dress up like ICMS staff for the beginning of the event, and then break out into song later on. Overall, it was really interesting to see the other side of the event, how they are planned and who is behind everything.


A side note: I have a balcony outside of my window. My first question when my RA showed me my room at the beginning of the semester was "Can I go out there?" The answer is no - it is out of bounds and we will get "infringed" if we go out there. Well, fine, but then why do the tourists get to go out there? I sit at my desk working and skyping and I look up and see the backs of many people all taking pictures off of my balcony. Occasionally they turn and look at me - it's quite a caged animal feeling! The first time that it happened a couple people took pictures. Caption "girl hard at work?" or maybe "girl talking to herself" since I was skyping my mom at the time.

Working for the weekend today by writing my sport management paper!! :) more soon, as always!!

"no worries"

tuesday.

I am looking at my window right now, and I can see the beautiful city lights of Manly while enjoying a glass of wine. I can see all of this because my blinds broke and will not come down. I reported the problem today to reception, and I was told that the problem will be fixed "straight away", but I wonder how quick it will be here since everything seems slower due to the "no worries" motto.

Today I had my first graded assessment. It was a group reading presentation for my Service Management class. Originally the group consisted of five students, but somehow it ended up only being three of us presenting on an article about internal and external customer theory (very thrilling.) It is interesting working with people from other countries. One girl in my group is from Sweden, and she was very persistent about getting the project done. The boy is from Australia, and he seemed very serious about the presentation, but then he showed up to class 45 minutes late stating that he was tired. Luckily this week the group presentation was in the middle of the tutorial. At least our powerpoint looked pretty, because its obvious that students here have not had near the amount of public speaking experience that we have from Albion. That's fine though - the presentation was only 10% of my overall grade.

Tonight a group of US students ate in the Grand Dining Room which is right on our campus. I've eaten there once before, so I knew what to expect. All on campus students are allowed to eat in there for free. We get a choice of entre, main course, and dessert. I had the asparagus and tomato salad, rosemary chicken with grilled zucchini, and chocolate mousse for dessert. The food is so delicious! We are served by term 1 hospitality students who are being watched by their professors, so they are all pretty nervous at first. There was a group of 7 of us, and the bill came to around $330. Luckily it's free for us!!


wednesday.

I decided to not work at any more events for the functions department. I liked most of the people that I worked with and learned a lot from the experience, but it doesn't really pertain to work that I want to do later in my life. It doesn't help that I didn't get paid for the work that I did, and that most events are on the weekends when my friends are having fun! However, I do want to get experience in the functions department office, so I will be shadowing in there occasionally to see how the office is run and see how functions are planned from behind the scenes. Tomorrow morning I will be shadowing at a functions department meeting, something that they have once a week.

My Intro to Sport Management class has been interesting. Not really the topics, but the change of lecturers. The very first day of class we had Elizabeth, who we thought was our lecturer and she told us Stuart would be with us for tutorial. Then, we had Stuart for the next few classes and no Elizabeth. We saw Elizabeth once last week for class, and then this Monday she came in with a different man and said that Stuart got a job on some island and John will be our new lecturer. First, Mary and I are still confused if Elizabeth is really our lecturer at all. Second, we go from Stuart, who was very calm, told good stories, but was overall not too exciting of a lecturer, to John, who could potentially be on uppers. John is incredibly energized and wants us all to be empowered people (probably through his technique of thinking which is a combination of buddhism and western psychology.) And you think I am kidding? No, he really has developed his own way of thinking over the past 20 years apparently, and he has three degrees and a PhD or something like that. He is a bit too peppy for me, but at least I will be awake throughout the class!

The awaited moment: I had my dentist appointment this afternoon. Mary walked down into Manly with me. The dentist's office was located across from where you pick up the ferry. It was a very clean office and Natalie, the receptionist/dental hygienist had me fill out paperwork. While waiting, Mary and I discovered an Australian music artist, Jessica Mauboy on TV. Soon, I was sitting in the dental chair and Dr. Danny Kim was taking a look at my tooth. He was very kind and thorough in all of his explanations, and after taking a couple of x-rays (22 dollars each) he determined the problem was an even bigger cavity than what had been filled in my tooth. Within a half an hour he put in a temporary filling and was incredibly gentle, especially with the numbing shot which I barely felt. While Dr. Kim and Natalie were fixing me up, I was able to watch a TV that was placed overhead of me. It was a show like ER though, so it wasn't really that comforting to see lots of blood while they worked on my mouth. Afterwards, Dr. Kim explained that I will come back in a week to either get a more permanent filling if the tooth has calmed down, or begin a root canal like procedure if it hasn't. I obviously am hoping it will have calmed down, not only because who wants a root canal in Australia, but also because dental care over here is incredibly expensive! Overall I'm glad I went to get it checked out and that I found a very caring dentist.

In better news: For St. Patty's Day, I'm going to see Lady Gaga in concert with Mary and Olivia! I'm really excited because I hear her concerts are pretty crazy. I can't believe it's only a week away!!

Until next time.. Cheers!

A day in Manly

Yesterday Mike and I went into Manly for the afternoon. Our first stop was Oceanworld, the local Manly aquarium. It's a lot smaller than the one in Sydney, and the top level was under construction. The first room is full of 8 tanks with different fish in each one, and one of the tanks holds a crocodile. I included a picture of a sea turtle. Her name is Sea Biscuit, and she was washed ashore during stormy weather. Oceanworld rescued her, but sadly she lost one of her front fins so they have helped her adapt to swimming with three! Like the Sydney Aquarium, the lower level is a tunnel that you walk through and see different sea life. The manta ray that is above Mike in the picture is the size of a queen mattress!! Also, they have eight grey nurse sharks in the tank. These sharks are endangered because of their scary appearance made them a big hunting target. In fact, they are not dangerous to humans. Overall, Oceanworld was really fun because it was not very crowded except for a lot of little kids running around with their families!

After Oceanworld, we found the "Manly scenic walkway." This trail goes along the harbour, and you can see a lot from it. There are a few different beaches along the way as well. We only walked a little way because I was tired with my cold. I'd like to walk the whole thing at one point because it had awesome views!

For an hour or so we walked along the Corso. I needed to find cold medicine, but at the first pharmacy they didn't have any out... very strange. At the next one a worker helped me pick out something. I'm glad he helped because I really didn't know which Australian medicine would work best, although I did see Benadryl. I also bought a hoodie that I had seen a couple of times and really liked. I figured I should at least have one in case I get cold here!! At one point there was a Brazilian drum and dance show which was interesting. One of the dancers tried to get Mike to dance, and he pretty much freaked out - hilarious!

We went to dinner at the Manly Phoenix, a Chinese restaurant on the Wharf. I had heard that the restaurant had good service, but that is not what I thought! We had a reservation at 5:30, and we showed up at 5:15 and asked if we could sit down. They told us they were closed at the moment so we would have to come back - but there were other people sitting down, and in their open hours it says 11 am until late! That seemed strange, and when we showed up at 5:30 they seated us, but asked if we could be done by 7. We had a table at the front which had a great view of the harbor, but right as we sat down, they begun to put down the black screens. An older Australian couple at the table next to us began complaining. They didn't want the screen down; they wanted to see the view and the sun was not a problem for them. They even talked to the manager and he still had the screen put down, so the couple left! It took them awhile to take our order, I tried duck for the first time - deep fried duck with sweet and sour sauce, and Mike ordered chicken with shallots and black beans pot. Both meals were really good! It was strange, they charge 3 dollars a person for steamed rice! We had to wait about 20 minutes after we were done eating to get our check (which put us close to not being done by 7! gasp.) I think they had forgotten about us. Overall, great food, but poor service.

For dessert we went to Max Brenner's chocolate shop. It is a little pricey, but it was delicious! We got a chocolate frappe which was basically a chocolate milk shake and the chocolate dip - strawberries with chocolate to dip in. So good!! I'll definitely be stopping there again for any of my chocolate needs.

Overall, it was a great day, and I was incredibly tired so I had no problem sleeping last night. Today it looks beautiful out, even though rain was forecasted... typical! Time to do work. Why do Sundays sneak up so quickly??

Cheers!

"right and wrong"

Last night I helped with the functions department. We set up for a wedding of 85 people in the Great Hall. Tim was the supervisor, and I worked with a girl named Pia for the majority of the night. She was really nice and taught me a lot even though she didn't have to. Most of the night we spent polishing all kinds of cutlery, water glasses, and wine glasses. We talked about our home countries and school - she is from Sweden and one of the things she misses most is the changing of seasons since she has been here about two years! I didn't really think about that since I think it is so nice here, getting away from the winter weather of the midwest. Emre helped us polish after awhile because there were so many glasses to get done, and he constantly was saying "right and wrong!' We asked him why, and he said his uncle would always say that, and we needed to compliment ourselves. He was quite funny and then continually told us what a great job we were doing. I vacuumed the dancefloor as well, which was a nice change from the three and a half hours of polishing. Because we finished within four and a half hours, we each got a bottle of wine - except each worker gets that as a "bonus" except for me, that is my only payment! Oh well, at least it's something.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the coordinator of USA students, Amy, to find a dentist I could go to. I walk to her office, and no one was to be found. As I walked away, I ran into her. I said "Oh I was just looking for you!" And she said "Oh, you didn't look for me this morning did you? I had an emergency dental appointment." I told her that's why I was coming to find her. She then told me that the day before she had "bitten into a spring roll and part of her tooth broke off." I didn't know spring rolls were that hard, but whatever. So she told me how the dentist had temporarily fixed it, but a permanent fix would cost her 2000 dollars and she didn't have the money, etc. How lovely. So I told her that I needed a dentist for my tooth, and we looked up the insurance that covers the US students. The list of what it does NOT cover is about 2 -3 times as long as what it does cover, typical. And of course, it does not cover dental. She called a few different offices in our school to find who the dentist is that the school recommends, but of course no one answers. Soon, she got a call back from Tony, a very nice man who runs Student Services. They talked for a minute and Amy wrote down the name of the dentist. Once she was off the phone, she told me that Tony's tooth had fallen out while he was eating lunch, and he was holding it in his hand. At this point, their dental care really sounds promising to me, but nonetheless, I was able to make an appointment at a dentist in Manly for Wednesday at 2. I'm kind of nervous to go to a different dentist, especially in a different country, but it will be worth it if the pain stops!

Today, I woke up with a cold. I'm not too excited about that either! Mike and I are going to Oceanworld, and aquarium in Manly, and then shopping for cold medicine and going out to eat. Hopefully the medicine helps!!

Cheers!

when it's low tide you can see dead fish.

went on a photo shoot tonight and here are some pictures! :)