Move In and Meetings

Saturday, January 22, 2011 - Aaron

"As the seconds of our lives are ticking away, you have to realize

that life needs to be an adventure"

G'Day

The first day I arrived at the Meriton Apartments at 10:30am I met a handful of CAPA students and waited for the rest of the 52 students. One student had her flight cancelled and had to check in the following day. After everyone arrived we were able to move into our apartments. The apartments can be rented for one night of up to a year and they are really nice. The best part about it is that it’s like a hotel; they even clean our rooms every week. The remainder of the day was spent in meetings about the apartments as well as unpacking. To cap off the first night the roommates and I enjoyed a great meal of spaghetti and meatballs on our balcony in beautiful eighty-degree Sydney weather in January.

The following mornings were spent with the CAPA staff. They had meetings about what to expect during the internship, how to handle living in Australia, as well as where everything is in the city. Friday after our meetings all 52 of us went to the Australian Hotel for pizzas thanks to CAPA. The pizzas were the first real “taste” of Australia any of us had ever tried. We had four kinds of pizza: Crocodile, Kangaroo, Pumpkin, and Margarita. Yes, I was adventurous enough to try all four and had to say I was surprised as to how good the kangaroo and pumpkin pizzas were. After, hearing how good gator was during my time in Florida I was disappointed as to how the crocodile pizza was. It was not terrible but I wouldn’t have been able to eat anymore than a slice of it.

The afternoons for both of these days were free for us to do whatever we would like. We joined a group of students both days to the world famous Bondi Beach. Bondi is a beautiful beach with huge waves. You may have heard of Bondi Beach from the show Bondi Rescue that goes in depth with the lifeguards and their rescues on the beach. Friday we in fact saw a rescue of a surfer that looked pretty bad. The camera crews were rolling the whole time with huge crowds looking on. This beach is rated by travel channel as the number two sexiest beach in the world! Which means we expect to spend lots of time here.