This semester brings a great opportunity to produce a package in TV Broadcasting class. It’s nothing I haven’t already done, but at the same time it will be one of my harder classes simply because I have to figure out how to do my entire information gathering process. Trying to find story ideas is my biggest challenge at the moment because their major newspaper, The Advertiser, is, from what I’ve been told by basically everyone (including journalism instructors), a very unreliable, somewhat biased and overall “lazy” newspaper – apparently many of their writers are very good at reading press releases.
The overall class goals don’t really worry me, considering I’ve already done a few packages in my day for sports and news. We even have an assistant, Evan, who runs the editing lab. He will shoot our video as well as edit it – we just provide the script. It makes me glad that I’ve been through the Ohio University journalism department, hauling around my own camera to get interviews and shoot my own stories. Hopefully this class is cake because of it. Also makes me wonder what an Australian broadcast student studying in the U.S. might think upon taking OUR class…
Sport Literature and the Media will involve minimal work since our major assignments are just to read sports stories and be able to comment on both the subject and the way they are written. This should be a great way for me to learn a little about their sporting culture. Two presentations during the class and a few other small assignments, including keeping a journal throughout the course of the semester.
Sport and Leisure Law was the most interesting of my first classes. To start, my professor showed up late. Then half the class wasn’t present because the didn’t get the memo about a last-minute classroom switch to accompany more students in the class. The professor, Rick Sarre, is a really nice guy who talks fast from apparently being very excited to teach what he does – a good thing from a student’s perspective. He sent two students over to get the other half of the class who was in the wrong building and offered to buy them coffee after class just for volunteering.
After going through a list of study programs and having people raise their hands, he figured out that Sara and I didn’t ever raise ours. This led to that immediate pointing-out of the American kids in the class – not that it’s embarrassing, it just happens ALL the time. Prof. Sarre welcomed us and asked us to stay after class so we could have coffee with the other two aforementioned students. He plopped down 15 bucks for us all to get to know each other and learn a little bit about each other. He said the decision came mainly on the fact that he received similar treatment upon showing up to study in Iowa during an earlier stage in his life. Prof. Sarre also knows where Athens, Ohio is – he has a friend that teaches at Ohio University – and said he visited awhile back. He jumped up my favorites list pretty quick after Day 1.
My Wednesdays are busiest because I have two classes – Sport Law in the morning and Aborigines, History and Colonialism in the afternoon. The instructor for the latter class is really weird, but the class should be pretty interesting overall. There are a few older people in the class who remember all the stuff that has happened between the government and the aboriginal tribes over the past five or six decades, so I’m sure as students they’ll offer a neat perspective.
That is one thing about classes here – no matter what time the class meets, there seems to be a few older people (called “non-traditional students” in America) that are also in the class, studying right alongside everyone else. It’s only a bad thing when they try to take over the class, which was the case on the first day of the history course. They lived through it so they feel like their perspective is the one that matters, instead of just letting the teacher teach.
I also feel like I’m “seeing the future” of America in my classes – but don’t take those words in their very literal sense. In Adelaide, there is a large amount of the population that is non-white – a lot of people (students especially) from Asian countries and quite a few students from India as well. They come to places like Australia because it’s relatively affordable and there might not be as many good universities in their home countries. It’s for reasons like these that I’m glad to be an American, born into a country where I really don’t have to be overly worried about those types of things. “Lucky” and “fortunate” are a couple good words to use here.
Soon in the U.S. the former majority – those with white skin – will become the minority, numbers-wise, to groups like those of Latin American descent. It’s not a bad thing, just a different thing. It’s something that will take a lot of adjustment for everyone. But for those who think Spanish will soon be the only language spoken in the United States, you won’t be correct if the Australia is a model. The country still gets along just fine using English as the spoken language – though it may be due to the languages being more distributed in Australia – having all different Asian languages, while most Latinos in America possess a native tongue that is a dialect close to Spanish.
So that was my first week and everything that came with it. Looking a little farther down the road, it looks like there is a pretty good chance that I will be able to finish my final exams – a package (TV class), presentation (Sport Lit.), written exam (Sport Law) or final essay (History) – before the actual dates of the exams (which aren’t made final until October). Sara and I are trying to move things around with instructors, so there’s a possibility I could be back to the U.S. in early November. It would be nice to actually get a break from classes and it’d be a better decision financially because I have to pay for housing food and everything else while I’m here. Therefore, keep your fingers crossed.
Sara and I traveled to Perth this past weekend, seeing all the tourist sights there, like King’s Park and Botanical Garden (though it started raining, so we didn’t see much of those), Rottnest Island (where we rented bikes and rode around all day) and the Wave Rock – a really cool natural landmark where a river carved a huge rock into a shape like a wave.
We swam in the Indian Ocean at Rottnest. The water was freezing, but we knew there probably wouldn’t be much of a chance that we’d get to swim in the Indian Ocean again, unless something brought us back to Perth or Southeast Asia, for whatever reason. I forgot my trunks, so I had to go in regular shorts, which was OK, but that basically showed how unprepared for this trip.
We forgot to bring plenty of towels. We didn’t bring much soap or shampoo either. Which didn’t matter a whole lot because we also forgot flip flops to wear in the shower and I wasn’t about to go walking around in this hostel without shoes on. Underground Backpackers in Perth was basically Perth’s version of Ohio University’s Washington Hall, except “Wasted Washington” actually got cleaned more than once every two weeks.
The whole thing got off to a bad start when we showed up at the front desk Thursday night and the private double room we booked was not available. Even though we had it booked for weeks, they gave away all the private rooms. So we had to stay in separate dormitory rooms with complete strangers and we could get our private room the next morning for the remaining three nights. FAN-tastic.
I had a room with three Irish guys. We were pretty beat at that point in the night, so we just did what we had to do and went to bed, hoping to wake up early in the morning to 1) get started with our day’s plans of sight-seeing and 2) get into a private room. The worst part was that we were charged the full price for a dorm room, even though that wasn’t what we booked.
The night before we left, however, I went down and got it all straightened out with the front desk. The guy was really nice about it and though he didn’t have the power to give us a full refund, he called someone who did – and he called that person at 11 o-clock p.m. I was really glad that guy was helpful because if he was as ridiculous as the guy who checked us in (and gave away our room), I probably would have flipped out.
We got the first night’s rent back - $50 apiece, in cash. Which was a great thing because of another great planning fiasco – we didn’t carry enough money. While credit cards are OK, each transaction carries with it a foreign currency exchange fee, so we try to stick to bank cards as much as possible. I have a banking account here, but I needed to put more money in my savings account so I could use it (at the ATM or wherever Visa is accepted). But when I went to connect to the internet banking website, the site was down for whatever repairs they had to do.
This was a big problem considering we were leaving Perth at 6:45 Monday morning and needed some cash to buy bus tickets. The refund from our first night made that possible. I have another bank card that I can use at the ATM, but it doesn’t have sufficient funds. I tried to reload it before leaving Adelaide – apparently you have to leave four business days for that to be sure to happen. I didn’t leave four business days and, therefore, didn’t have any available money.
In fact, upon returning to Adelaide, I checked out my balances. In my Bank SA student account, I had 83 cents. It’s no wonder the ATM wouldn’t let me take out $20. Perth was a pretty good trip overall
Notes:
+Australia is becoming one of my favorite countries for different reasons. One is the 3rd degree of separation from the Cleveland Browns. You see, when I hear AC/DC songs, I think of the Browns and the upcoming season. AC/DC is a 1970s rock group from Australia. Therefore, Australia=The Browns. Yet there is only one Browns Backers group in Australia, located in Perth.
+I learned a little “cocktail knowledge” from Jess Morgan before I left for Perth. The city is the spot on the earth that is directly opposite from Athens, Ohio. So if you really started digging towards Australia, you’d probably end up in the Indian Ocean, which wouldn’t be too bad I guess.
+I’ve been in Australia for just over a month now and I’m still not used to carrying around a lot of coins. Just as a refresher – the country has no paper money under $5, so the change below that amount is given in coins. I actually had to think twice about putting my legs up the other day because I had a ton of coins in my pocket. Luckily, my legs don’t need much stretching, considering I’m not a tall person.
+Check out my facebook profile to see the albums of pictures as they accumulate during our different trips around Australia and the surrounding places. Feel free to comment on this blog or on the pictures.
That’s it for now. Love you all in the states, check back soon to see how my job search has gone in the past few weeks and see whether I have a job yet.
From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.
If you want to see me soon, start digging.
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