Hey all! Carter and Lee here.
Yeah we are!
Today was our first full day in Sydney, and man what a day it was! We had an early start to the day after a restful night in our top notch hotel rooms. We took a bus over to Champagnat Catholic College, an all boys high school. We were greeted by Mr. Michael Blake, the principal at Champagnat. He gave us a quick overview of how their school functioned, and talked about some cool plans the school had to remodel their staff offices and add new classrooms as well as an updated library. Champagnat was an engaging and inclusive school, as the principal discussed how despite being a catholic school, students from a wide variety of religious backgrounds attend, even including Muslims and Hindus. One of the most interesting things I learned during the presentation was that each staff member in Australia has a professional growth plan so they can improve from year to year. For all the avid readers out there, Champagnat had the sweet feature of being divided into houses, all named after former important faculty members. After the presentation, we got a short tour of the school, in which we got to see the interesting classes Champagnat offered like wood shop, automotive technology, and even cooking. We even got to visit a couple classes in full swing and watch kids discuss the formula for BAC and work on Picasso based art projects.
I wonder which one is the good guys?
After that we made our way on a public bus to the University of New South Wales where we first broke for lunch. A group of us decided to check out CocoCubano and treated ourselves to some scrumptious cuban sandwiches. Once we had all eaten we made our way to an international student dormitory where we were given a briefing on Australian culture by our friends at TEAN, as well as an overview on how Australia’s education system is structured. After our Q&A period we finished off the presentation by learning some rad Aussie slang in hopes of alleviating our culture shock.
Apparently milkshake doesn’t mean quite the same thing here…
We caught another public bus back to the hotel where some of us broke away to check out Sydney with Jenn, and others—including ourselves—took some much needed relaxation time in preparation for our own romp of Sydney. Once the sun went down and the evening rolled around, we caught a train downtown and got to check out the gorgeous lights illuminating the city and the opera house. Thanks to the efforts of the people running the Vivid light show we also got to school ourselves on tons of environmental issues, as well as witness some stunning art and music.
We couldn’t find P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sydney, but this was pretty cool.
Green Party anyone?
We ended our first full day in Sydney with dinner at Hive Cafe, and with our last public transport ride of the day we made our way back to the hotel in order to get up bright and early for tomorrow morning.
Cheers everyone!