I have been in Sydney long enough to truly feel comfortable here now. I finally feel like I got a hang of things. It took me multiple weeks, but now I know the scoop on certain elements of Sydney like how to get from point A to point B or even certain restaurant deals that would have saved me a lot of money. I remember before I came to Sydney I was told about the concept of culture shock. I was shown this graph of how the process typically affected students while abroad and I remember that I was like no way I would experience it that way. It happened exactly like they said.

One moment that got me particular more conformable with Sydney and truly exposed me to the differences in culture was my week spent at Macquarie University. This was a week at my internship dedicated to a joint venture of Incept Labs and GoGet, which are both clients of Andiron Group. GoGet is a company where you can select from a variety of vehicles located all around Australia and use them as your own, similar to Zipcar in the states.  Basically the purpose of the week was to bring in a classroom of 7^th graders and have them help with a real problem GoGet was facing. The problem at hand involved the illegal parking of individuals in designated car share spaces for GoGet vehicles. The students were broken up into multiple groups and came up with a variety of ideas to solve this problem. It was very similar to the concept of the Celebrity Apprentice and I was Donald Trump Jr. assisting with the decisions of what group should win. Listening to these Australian kids talk about how the company should address this problem and their potential solutions was shocking to say the least. They were so intelligent for their age and gave extraordinary presentations that used multiple software platforms. These kids meant business and made me understand the discipline they have in schools around here.

Another funny moment worth sharing was at Manly beach. Manly beach was one of my favorite beaches I have ever been to. The boardwalk was filled with all types of cuisine and shops. On the beach they have multiple volleyball courts we like to play at. One day we were playing with a dynamic group that consisted of strangers and our group of friends from our program. There was one instance when another guy on my team asked to set him up for a spike, but I didn’t do it. Why didn’t I do it? It was because he asked in Portuguese and didn’t realize he switch languages while in the heat of the game. We all laughed about it and continued to enjoy the beautiful sunny day with our new mates.