Since We Last Left Off...

Orientation was pretty cool. We had a scavenger hunt around Sydney (now that we were equipped with our handy-dandy unlimited bus/rail/ferry passes). We got to tour the city a bit more and become more familiar with our surroundings and the city itself.

We came back to the hostel, and I got a shower and read some of my book for South Africa while some of the other group went to some bars. We all met up for dinner at an Indian restaurant, and then headed over to a marketplace to get some groceries and things in a sort of underground mall/store/thing. Then we studied for our exam and headed to bed.

This morning, I went for another early morning run (damn jetlag...), and we all had breakfast in the kitchen. We headed over to UTS (the university that we're using for facilities), where we had our exam (pretty easy...) and then 3 lectures. Grabbed some bagged lunch, and headed over to the University of Sydney (beautiful, by the way) where we got to do our first field research. We went around asking people about their preferences in sports (specifically rugby league versus rugby union) as research for our team. It was amazing to see how passionate some people were, how indifferent others were, and mostly how friendly EVERYONE was. They were very receptive to our questions, loved the fact that we were from the States, and our interviews turned into conversations about anything and everything. It was really an amazing experience just to get out there and talk with the locals.

Back to the hostel, and out for dinner in Darling Harbor. I didn't really love the food, but the view of the harbor at night was gorgeous.

We came back to the hotel, played a much more intense trivia than Sunday night, had some drinks, and listened to a band who came down to play. They were awesome: a guitar player and a violinist doing covers and their own stuff. Pretty impressive. Then some people went out to a bar, but I'm pretty exhausted still and decided to head up to go to bed, and found out that I could get on the web for a few and type up a post!

Tomorrow we head to the Sydney Cricket Grounds for some more lectures and on-site stuff. I'll let you know how it goes!

-Josh

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