Week 1: KANGAROOS AND DIDGERIDOOS
G’day mate! My name is Owen Geoghegan and I am a finance major studying abroad with the Management in Asia Pacific program. It has been one hell of a week with many notable highlights. The city of Sydney has so many awesome things to see, and a lot of cool places to go. I have had an amazing time so far, and am looking forward to sharing my experiences in the coming weeks. Without further ado, here are some lowlights and highlights of my first week in Sydney.
Lowlights:
My first and only lowlight of the week was the JETLAG. A full 24 hours of travel is not easy to begin with. 6 hours from Newark to San Fran, a 4 hour layover in San Fran, a 14 hour flight to Sydney, and 4 hours waiting for everyone to land made the travel was EXHAUSTING! On top of that the jetlag was hard for the first two days. Everyone says that the first night is the worst but in my experience it was the second that was the hardest, especially when you get off the plane and get right into whatever you’re doing. Compounded by the fact that we absolutely had to see what nightlife was like meant that it was a very long day. Most would agree though that this exhaustion is a small price to pay for the privilege of living in such an amazing country.
Highlights:
Where to begin! Our first week was packed with fun experiences, from white sandy beaches with the clearest water I had ever seen, to classes with new perspectives on a part of the world I have not been exposed to before. My first impactful educational experience was our Australian Cultural class. Learning about the historical similarities between our own country and Australia was fascinating. The good and the bad are eerily connected through British colonialism, and learning about parallels helped me gain a deeper understanding of our own country and Australian culture.
My favorite thing we did this week was go to a wildlife sanctuary. Australia is an ecologically diverse country with awesome wildlife native to this continent only. We saw Cangaroos (of course), Wallabies, Wallaroos, Koalas, Wombats, Emus, and so much more. In addition to this we got to see many protected aboriginal sights and learn about the sanctuarie’s fight against a mining company in its efforts to preserve the land around it.
Overall it was an amazing first week, can’t wait for the next!
