The week so far

Here’s a little update as to where I’m at now.

I woke up the next morning (Monday) at 7:30. I’m not sure why I did, as I wasn’t being picked up by my supervisor until 9, so it proved to be a little overkill. It was another awkward/hard to explain moment when my supervisor came to pick me up. I felt weird having to get picked up for work by my boss on the first day, but that’s life.

She is a really nice lady. As soon as we got their she gave me a little tour of the place and bought me some tea. We just had a little chat and I told her a bit about my life and what I kind of wanted from the internship. Even though it’s a government organization, everything is so relaxes. She told me that people usually arrive anytime between 9 or 10 and that people leave anywhere from 4 to 6. I have my own little desk with a computer and everything. It feels really weird. Kind of like I’m supposed to be important or something.

Now that I’ve worked for about a full week, I really can’t complain. A lot of my tasks right now involve reading and summarizing articles and reports, and I made a power point presentation for my supervisor to present at a workshop next week. I’m researching issues about the Murray-Darling Basin and how it should adapt to the climate change so Australia doesn’t die. It deals a lot more with environmental issues than economic ones right now, but she said this was only a temporary task until sometime next week.

She gave me a bike too, so that I can ride from home to work. I like to think that I’m not too out of shape, but riding that thing really takes it out of me. I can’t tell if it’s because the bike’s in a high gear, it’s a little small for me, or that the pedals are weird, but I have a hard time pedaling. I’m usually covered with sweat when I arrive, but luckily it’s been overcast this whole week so I can blame it on the rain. I think I’ll just have to bring a change of clothes all the time…

As far as things outside of work go, I haven’t had a quiet night in Australia yet. Monday night I went with Fran to her daughter Stacey’s house (she’s the fiancée of Mike, the guy with the Batman tattoo) and I had my first rugby experience. It’s actually a very fun game to watch. I am now a Canberra Raiders fan! It was a small game that night, but Mike invited me over to one of his friend’s houses on Wednesday to see the first State of Origin match. It sounded like fun, so I decided to go.

This is apparently one of the biggest games of the year. It’s a weird system they have for it. They basically choose the best members of the league and put them on a team, either for Queensland or New South Wales (depending on which state they were originally from) and they pit the two teams together in three matches. Fans go absolutely crazy for their team, and you definitely don’t want to get a die hard rugby fan angry. One of the best parts about that night was that they made NACHOS! I was really worried they wouldn’t have Mexican food down here in Australia, but fortunately all my worries have subsided.

So right now I’m about to go to bed after Kelley’s birthday dinner (one of Fran’s daughters) so that I can wake up tomorrow morning to catch a bus to Sydney. Since Monday is a national holiday, The Queen’s Birthday, I thought it might be a good idea to get some traveling in. I bought my ticket yesterday, and for some reason it was $20 each way if you buy the ticket one-way, or $30 each way if you buy it round trip. I’m not quite sure what the marketing idea behind that is, but needless to say I just bought a one-way ticket for right now.

So I’m off to Sydney with no idea what I’m going to do! But that’s always half the fun.

The other half is figuring out how I'm going to get cash...