The Urbanest is located in Ultimo, which is full of universities and students. I am about a ten minute walk from Central Station, a hub for the public transport. Just like Pitt, my program has given us cards with money for transportation. These Opal Cards allow us to jump on any bus, train, or ferry to anywhere for free. The train station is huge, with at least 25 platforms and 8 different train lines. The trains are crazy, each car has two levels!

I have gotten pretty good at navigating the train stations because I use it to get to and from work. I am interning with the Sydney Blue Sox, a professional Australian baseball team. My commute is pretty long, about an hour each way. I get to Central around 9 AM, head to platform 18 and catch the T1 Line to Rooty Hill. The commute isn’t too bad, though honestly not very scenic. It goes through many different suburbs, some of which are quite small.

But, the funny thing I have noticed is all the construction cranes I’ve seen out the window and actually all throughout the city. Apparently in recent years, the population has grown exponentially and so many apartment buildings are getting built so the city has the second largest number of construction cranes in the world or something. As random as this is, it’s fun to me because that’s my last name and my cousins and I always used to mess around and point them out. I’ve gotten quite good at spotting them, but Sydney also makes it real easy.  It’s as if I was meant to be here!

Though the commute is pretty long and some evenings feels like forever, it’s really not too bad to just sit on the train for an hour. The actual worst part of my commute is the fact that we (me and the other American interns) can’t just walk from the train station to the office. We have to be picked up by someone in a car. Usually, my boss picks us up in the morning and then either she or the Australian interns will drop us off on their way home. It does make it a little more difficult because most of my friends can come and go whenever they want and I have to make sure to coordinate well with my coworkers.

I definitely prefer to commute by train than bus. A few of my friends have to get to their jobs via busing and while not the worst, it is a little more complicated. As good as I have gotten at taking the train, I still don’t know too much about busing – pretty much always I’ll let someone else figure out directions on the bus. Usually when we go different places throughout the city we take a train, bus, or uber or if it’s close, we’ll just walk. The whole city is pretty accessible and it’s so nice to be able to get anywhere with just a tap of my Opal card!