My first two weeks in Sydney have been an amazing experience. It has been a busy start, but an enjoyable kind of busy.
After leaving the airport, me and two of my friends hopped in a cab that took us directly to our living place. All Pitt students are living in a hotel called Break Free on George. It is a nice hotel that is in a very central location. The rooms have two twin beds, one bathroom, closet, mini fridge, stove top, microwave and a tv. The only annoying parts are there are no drawers to put our clothes in and the laundry is a little expensive. But, we do get our rooms cleaned and beds made every Monday! We are located in China Town, surrounded by many people, stores, and most importantly… great food. Our classes are located in the CAPA center which is about a 10-15 minute walk from our hotel. I take Sports Marketing at the CAPA center two days a week for 3 hours each class. It is long but our professor is awesome and there will be some days where we have class outside of the classroom.
My internship is with the Greater Western Sydney Giants who are an Australian Rules Football team (no, it’s not rugby). The AFL is the most popular league in Australia. After watching a few videos, I now understand how the game works. In the office, I work in the Membership and Ticketing Department. So far, myself and two other interns from Pitt are learning their computer systems and the types of packages they offer before we fully get started. My team members in the office are super nice and made us feel at home on the first day and the office atmosphere is extremely laid back. My internship is located in Sydney Olympic Park which is about an hour away from our hotel. At first, I thought it was going to be much worse than it actually is. But, the train system is super easy to navigate and CAPA gives us a card for free access to the public transportation. We took a practice run with the trains before we started working which helped a ton.
My Office Building
We have also done some traveling so far through the CAPA program. They set us up with a boat tour around the Sydney Harbor on the first weekend. This past Saturday was a full day trip to Featherdale Wildlife Park (finally met a kangaroo and koala!) and a hike at the Blue Mountains which was my favorite day so far. I also have future plans to travel to the Great Barrier Reef and the Gold Coast which are not through CAPA.
The Blue Mountains