FROM CINCY TO SYDNEY

Before coming to Australia I had many meetings with my advisers at school about which classes to take while here. When looking at the list of eight classes to choose from this one stood out from all the others for obvious reasons. Being that I am a business major and this was only one of two business classes offered I figured I should take it. When I found out that it would be counting as required International business class it just made this trip even better.

While I enjoyed the exploring the global cities class a lot because of the field trip, I loved this International business class. My teacher was once again a local Australian named Murray. The first day he walked in everyone was shocked, he is like 6' 10'' 160 pounds and bright red hair. We knew from the start he was going to be interesting. He is only 28 and is by far the smartest Australian I have met.

To continue with the first day of class, Murray had all of us go around the room and say our name, school, major, and one interesting thing about our self. He was wanting something completely different than your usual I play video games, or I like watching movies. I said Hi I'm Aaron, a marketing major from Marshall University and I can dunk. He tried recalling everyones name after going around the circle and referred to me as dunker (dunkah in the Australian accent.) So my nickname while in Australia has been dunkah.

I have gotten more out of this class than I have most classes in my college career, and a lot of that is due to the fact of Murray's unique teaching style. He just uses a powerpoint presentation to present the course material but he is so knowledgeable, and uses great examples to put everything into perspective for us. Since we are in class for three and a half hours he knows the class drags on so he uses his famous "boredom slides." This slides are basically some of his favorite funny youtube videos. This is an excellent tactic that more teachers need to do, especially in such a long class.

I don't want to bore you with sharing what I have learned from the class because I know you guys don't really care. So I am going to share a field trip we had for the class. Murray took us to Lunar Park, which is the only amusement park in Sydney. This park started in 1935 and was started after Lunar Park inside of Coney Island in New York. This is your typical "old" theme park with lots of carnival type rides. The location of Lunar Park is awesome, it is right on the harbour across from the Opera House.

We sat through an hour lecture with the manager of Lunar Park about how it got started, how they go about doing business, and how they make money. It was a very interesting lecture as my first day of my internship with Disney I had the same lecture. Obviously the lecture with Disney was on a much bigger scale and better. After the class we got free wristbands to ride all the rides at the park and we were able to stay for as long as possible.

Most of their rides involved spinning of some sort. I'm more of a roller coaster guy myself, so these rides did not excite me as much. I still rode quite about all the rides. The last ride I rode we all got in and put our backs against a wall and it started to spin faster and faster. Then next thing you know the floor drops out and you are still against the wall with your feet touching nothing. I was so glad when this ride was over with and most of the group decided to leave after it for good reason.

Fun Fact: It cost $52 for a day at this park... much more expensive than the average theme park in the united states which have huge multimillion dollar rollercoasters.