Every Day Is Diversity Day

G'day Mates,

It's Sunday night and I'm just wrapping up a hectic week.  Classes started Monday (Tuesday at 4pm for me) and I was able to get a feel for how the semester is going to go.  I'm taking 4 classes, which can be seen 4 posts down, and I think they should be manageable.  My HOTS class (Hotel Sim) will probably be the hardest, next to finance.  HOTS is a completely group based class where your 4-5 person group manages a hotel and then enters your figures into a computer simulation program.  From there, the simulation program calculates your numbers like how much money you are spending on food, staffing, and facilities.  Once you get your results you can make adjustments as needed.  Theoretically, there is a group in the class that ends up with the "best" run hotel.  If you beat everyone in the class and rank highly overall in the history of the school, the names of your group members get engraved in a huge wooden plaque in the computer lab.  I want that so bad, so my name can be seen in this school forever.  I know these hotels are imaginary, but it's basically the next best thing to, well, the real thing.  I figure if I can manage a decent imaginary hotel, then maybe, just maybe, I'm suited for this profession? I don't know, just a thought.  My HOTS teachers are awesome too, just like Bruce.  There is an older one, Mr. Bonyage, and a younger one, Mr. Taylor.  Mr. Bonyage, or Bony as most people call him, seems to always make a point during class that I am the sole American in the class.  Eighty percent of the class are Australians, and the other twenty are Asians, and then there's me.  Bony called me "Mr. Nebraska" last class, he just really likes the idea of an American in his class for some reason.  He didn't even know what Nebraska was or that it even existed, or if we even had good university sports.  I tried to explain to him that Nebraska football used to be good, but it just seemed to go in one ear and out the other.  For the first time in my life when people ask me "where are you from?" and I tell them, I get a confused look and "I've never heard of that" every time.  He looked at me crazy when I told him I was a study abroad student.  He then went on to explain that we will probably be spending every waking moment with our hots groups, and that the class is a lot of work, and never taken by study abroads due to the amount of time it requires.  I'm paired with 4 Australian girls.  Ash, Georgie, and two others, their names escape me at the time.  We are meeting tomorrow some time, I'm not sure when, but one of them lives on campus so I can ring her room and find out.  Intro to hospitality should be easy, and finance is taught by a nice lady named Mrs. Sullivan.  For those of you who know Nancy Heiser, she reminds me a lot of her.  Just kind of a bouncy personality, always adding funny comments towards things.  Definitely fun to listen and she's not your average boring business teacher.  She often uses real life examples of the things we talk about, so it's nice to be able to read a news article and actually know what they are talking about when it comes to financial terminology.

You're probably wondering why I named the title of this post the way I did.  Well, for those of you who know me, know that The Office is probably my favorite show on television.  Yes, I did get to watch the new episode online (way to go Jim!) but it wasn't through nbc.com, I had to find a different website that was able to play it in Australia.  Diversity Day is the name of an episode in season one that deals with understanding the diversity in the office.  Well, here at ICMS, Americans are definitely just one of the minorities on campus.  There are 1200 students that go here, and only 65 are Americans.  Simple math tells you that we make up around 5 percent of the school.  Talk about being out of your comfort zone, that has basically been the theme of this trip.  Just a reminder that I go to NEBRASKA, a school dominated by whites, I'd say at least 70%.  But remember folks, different is not always bad, it's just different.  So far I have met (and by met I mean shook hands, introduced myself, and had some type of conversation) with kids from

• South Africa
• Norway
• Sweden
• China
• Vietnam
• Indonesia
• Germany
• Russia
• Korea
• Brazil

It's pretty crazy if you think about it, I've been here a week.  I love learning about different cultures, what it is like to live somewhere else, and the customs of other countries.  Not only are these kids interesting to listen to, but I find that often they do MUCH more international traveling than Americans.  I always ask them to list the countries that they have been to, and sometimes the lists get into double digits.  There are 65 nationalities with a total of 1200 kids represented at ICMS.  It's really quite something.

Next week is a big week for me.  I have a quiz in hots on Thursday.  Saturday I will be walking down to Manly (just a short 10 minute walk) for Manly Jazz Festival.  Monday is an Australian holiday so that means schools and most places of work will not be open.  This doesn't really matter to me since I don't have Monday class anyways.  MJF goes from Saturday-Monday and has 6 stages.  I'm really looking forward to this since I love live music, and try to see as much of it as I can.  I'm actually planning on heading into Sydney on Sunday for Parklife.  It says on the site that tickets are sold out, but I'll try and see how easy it is to actually get a ticket.  If I don't find one by Saturday night and Jazz Fest is holding me over music wise, I have no problem staying on this side of the harbour.

If any of you have Skype, I have now set that up to open when I log on to my computer.  If you'd like to chat, feel free to message me on that and we can catch up on things.  It's a free chat/video service that is really handy.  I'm Skyping with my parents at 10am (6pm Indiana time) tomorrow.  I was able to listen to and watch the Nebraska v.s. Virginia Tech game today.  The video feed was pretty choppy, so I relied heavily on the radio broadcast.  I have to hand it to VT, they played well enough to win.  We simply didn't execute offensively like we needed to.  I thought Nate Swift played a great game, but when things were all said and done, VT just made more plays than us.  I think I'll leave it at that.  I know I promised pictures from the Shark Bar, but I'm pretty spent.  Look for a mid-week update here on the blog.  

Cheers,

Clay

Birds Of A Feather

We all know the old saying...

It's Wednesday evening, the Manly police warden (aka chief of police) is coming to meet with all of the campus residents just about some general knowledge about safety in Manly.  Don't get me wrong, Manly is VERY safe, but when you get 200 international students in a place they've never been, it's never a bad idea to share some knowledge about the good/bad places to be when the sun goes down.

Anyways, I'm sitting in my room waiting for that to start at 8:30, but mainly just waiting for the free pizza they promised us afterwards.  My window has been open for about 3 days now, and I've been able to hear quite a few different kinds of birds.  The birds here are nuts, they are loud, have interesting chirps, and fly around very fast by your head.  I almost had a close call when a flock of white cockatoos swooped at John and I when we were walking up the hill from getting dropped off at the bus stop.  Here's a video I just recorded of the birds, I thought I'd share. It's short, and not much happens after about 10 seconds in.  The most interesting one I thought was around 6 seconds in.  You may need to turn your sound up a little bit.  Enjoy.

Bruce the shark

It's Tuesday evening and I just got out of my first ever class in Australia, statistics.  It was absolutely amazing.

I have the best teacher on planet Earth, his name is Doug Taylor, and he's a heavy set late-50'ish marketing firm owner.  He is an absolute joy.  Before class even began, he was singing to himself while on the computer.  Our Tuesday classes are in a computer lab.  His voice reminds me of Bruce the shark from Finding Nemo.  I'm going to call him that in my head and to my friend John, whom is also in my class.  Bruce has a slur and a lisp, so imagine how hard he is to understand!  A thick Australian accent that is slurred while having a lisp, quite the combo.  Anyways, just thought I'd tell everyone how my day went.

I woke up and had a short Skype session with mom, dad, and Jimmy.  After that, John and I walked down to Manly and caught a bus to the Warringah mall.  There was an old man on the bus with a Notre Dame Fighting Irish hat on from AT LEAST 1970.  The hat was so small that he couldn't even snap the snaps on the back that make the hat the biggest.  At the mall I bought 4 pairs of socks for only $10, which is a bargain.  After that, we found a Foot Locker and I bought 2 shirts and 2 pairs of shorts.  A little back story:  I tried to check out a basketball from ICMS yesterday, but the two that they had left were flat.  So while in the mall John and I found a sporting goods store, which I bought some inflation needles at.  That is my donation to this school, free of charge, I'm leaving this place better than I found it.  Warringah actually has 2 grocery stores (Woolworths & Coles) and a fresh fruit market inside!  It's so bizarre, you can go to the mall to get groceries and fresh fruit.  We boarded the bus home and headed back to Manly Wharf.  We made a pit stop at The Corso for some ice cube treys, they don't have ice here at school!

I believe there are loads of us going out to the Shark Bar for $9 jug night, which is a steal for Manly prices.  But before the spirited spirits start flowing, we're all going out back for an hour or two of basketball.  Kids from Sweden, America, South Africa, South Korea, and Germany will be there, so it should be like a mini olympics.  I should have some pictures up of tonight and cheers to not having class on Wednesdays.  

Clay

An afternoon in Sydney

Sunday was spent taking the ferry into Sydney from Manly Wharf. The walk down the hill from ICMS takes around 15 minutes. Manly Wharf is a friendly and quaint place that is tucked into the bay side of Manly. We took the 25 minute ferry ride and I captured a few pictures along the way.

Since I was the only one in our group that was somewhat familiar with Sydney, I was the acting tour guide. We first went to The Rocks Markets, a Friday/Saturday/Sunday market about a 5 minute walk from Circular Quay. They were cool, but nothing really too special.

I bought a bottle of water and split a $5 bag of cashews with John. We picked them up from a street vendor who had put some type of sugar on them, they were well worth it. We asked the snow cone vendor how to get to Darling Harbour, which is another harbour in Sydney. He told us that it would take around 20 minutes to get there, but we really didn't want to pay for a cab so we started walking.

Darling Harbour was packed with tourists, locals, and small children. There are endless options for food and drink, and lot's of other things like a mall, aquarium, IMAX theatre, and more. We split off into two separate groups at this point, people who needed food and people who wanted to walk around. Most of the girls wanted to stop and get food, so 3 others and myself went off in our small group just walking around. We came upon an Asian festival and a Brazilian festival. The Brazilian one was much bigger and way more interesting. It was in a park with tons of food vendors, and a big stage with music and dancers doing their routines.

We then headed back and met up with the rest of the girls who had finished eating. We weighed our options and decided it would be best if we all headed back to Circular Qauy, which is where the Manly ferry comes and goes. Here is a picture of our crew for the afternoon.

Updation

So I don't even think updation is a word, but I needed something to call this mix-matched post.  I got updation from the all-knowing Sweet Corn McNugget, so he's to blame if it's not in Webster's dictionary.  I took these pictures of the school 'front of house' and Manly beach today (Saturday, Friday in the states)

The palms in front of house.  Suits must be worn out here at all times

Moran house.  I took the previous picture next to those Mercedes'

The entire Moran house

Manly beach on a Saturday afternoon.  I thought the flag in the

lower right was a nice touch.

Kari, Sarah, Scott, Kate, and Me at the cocktail party.

Also, I finally have my class schedule

Monday

No Class

Tuesday

Stats 4-6pm

Wenesday

No Class

Thursday

Stats 8-10

Hotel Management Simulations 12-2

Business Finance 2-4

Hospitality 4-6

Friday

Hotel Management Simulations 10-12

Business Finance 12-2

Hospitality 2-4

Overall, pretty good.  The good news is that I don't have class for essentially 96 hours, Friday at 4pm-Tuesday at 4pm.  No Monday or Wednesday class.  The bad news is that I have 8 hours of classes on Thursdays and class until 4 pm on Fridays (YUCK!!).  I can deal.  I might be getting a part time job since minimum wage here is $16 per hour, and well over $20 on the weekends.  I think I could work on Tuesdays and maybe a day on the weekends, like a Sunday.  There is a golf course that is close by that I might call tomorrow, and also there is a hotel in the city that student services can hook me up with.

I'm starting to post often, so check back often!

O week carries on

I've had a number of things on my plate (literally and figuratively, I ate fried octopus this week!) so I think I'll just start at the beginning

We rolled into Manly on Monday, got settled in our rooms with the help of Tony Henry, the director of student services here at ICMS.  He's been a big help and has a great attitude towards making everyone feel welcome here at the school.  Tuesday consisted of sessions almost all day.  We had an 8 am welcome meeting for international students (that's us now since we're over here), a learning strategies meeting, and a computer lab meeting.  After that, we had a college welcome ceremony in the gorgeous chapel, and then a cocktail party on campus.  Things are much different here in the the sense that alcohol is a very acceptable thing here on campus.  For example, the general manager (who would be the equivalent of the chancellor in the states) came to the cocktail party after he had just given us a speech welcoming us to Australia and shared a few drinks.  It was really cool to see him so professional in one instance and then come join us at the party and personally introduce him self to almost all of the Americans.  He's really laid back and took the time to shake all of our hands.  The party commenced and us loud, obnoxious Americans headed down to a local bar called the Shark Bar.  

Wednesday consisted of getting ourselves 'officially' enrolled, that means filling out big packets and countless signatures and dating.  I began to feel exhausted from the hustle and bustle that is Hogwarts *ahem* I mean ICMS.  I took a nap and got ready for the night.  Most of my American friends attended a wine and cheese party on the 2nd floor balcony overlooking Manly.  I'm not a huge fan of wine so I saved my $18 for later.  From what I hear, it was quite the show.  My buddy John simply said "you walk out onto the deck, they hand you some cheese and a bottle of wine and say 'don't break anything'.  It was quite humorous seeing them walk into the meeting that we had following the 'wine tasting' with our RA's in the Great Hall.  After that, I decided to lay low once again and stay in.  I'm currently working on a slide show of pictures that I will post on this site once I finish it, it's coming along nicely.

Thursday was a day of errands for me.  I woke up with a laundry list of things to do.

• Get fitted for suit
• Obtain scheme of works (a.k.a a syllabus) for my business finance class
• E-mail said scheme of works to professor Richard DeFusco at UNL
• Find out if the meeting later in the day were mandatory (they were)

I'm probably forgetting a thing or two.  

After all of that, John, Mike, and I decided to go exploring out east of the school.  By this I mean we wanted to go to the cliffs overlooking the Pacific.  We headed up the hill and came upon this sign.  You don't see this in America ever, so I took a picture of it.  

After that, we found our way through some bush before we came upon a lagoon.

 

The lagoon was sweet.  The stuff that looks like sand is actually sandstone rock.  We moved onward and I began snapping photos of the cliffs and Manly.

This cliff doesn't look tall, but it was at least 75 feet high.

We then headed back towards Manly on a scenic walk.  I found a few good spots to go do homework that have great views of the ocean.  

Last night we went to Warringah Mall, which is the largest mall in the Sydney area.  In typical Clay fashion, I didn't buy anything or see anything I like.  Pair of Dickies khaki shorts were $80!!  So we got back on the city bus and headed back to Manly Wharf bar where we met up with Laura and Yvonne, two German students that I had met on Tuesday.  After that, we headed over to Shark Bar because they had a band and a list of drinks that you could choose from, all being $5.  That is the cheapest I have paid for any drinks here, it's expensive to have fun here!  Anyways, I'll leave you with a photo of me, Frankie, and Will.

Frankie is the most interesting person I have ever met in my life.  He's one of my closest friends so far on the trip.  He's from South Africa and was picked up by the Australian Union Rugby team when they saw him play vs. China.  He's funny and has told me some amazing and shocking things about South Africa.  He said he hates it when stupid Americans come up to him and ask him if he has lions in his back yard.  He said it's hard to deal with such ignorant people.  Rightfully so, I mean, it's not hard to learn a little something about a few different countries.  At any rate, he's a really interesting guy.  He told me a story the first few minutes that we met.  He said that he's almost gotten into a few fights already.  Since I'm not a fighter, this sounded strange to me, and I asked him why?  He said "It's just about where I come from.  In South Africa, if you don't fight, you don't drink.  If you don't fight, you don't eat." And so on.  This was very eye-opening to me.  He basically laid it out, black and white, about what it's like to be where he's from, Cape Town.  

Not to sell Will short, but he's a cool kid from University of San Diego.  He's a Lambda Chi too.  It's just hard to top Frankie, haha.

That's all for now.  I've forgotten to mention this to everyone, but if you'd like to subscribe to my blog and get e-mail alerts every time I write a new story, that option can be found near the top of the page, I believe.  Thanks for all the comments on the blog, keep them coming!

Clay

30 Hours To Cairns

Edit: Big shout outs to Strege, Hanni, Ralston, Achelpohl, and whoever else might be keeping up with my journey.  You guys were the BEST teachers I will ever have.  Truly the best.

I made it!!

So now that I've gotten that out of the way, more about my journey, my new friends, and the things we have been doing.

Dallas and LAX

I landed in Dallas and had a small amount of time to kill.  I wondered around until I found my gate and quickly set up shop.  As I was sitting there, reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, I heard "Are you going to Australia?"  It was Brittany and Candace, two of my new friends.  They were from Philly and were also on their way to ICMS.  All 3 of us had the AustraLearn bag tags, a dead giveaway that we would all soon be studying together.  We conversed and got to know each other before boarding the plane.  We we landed in LA, we all got off and went our separate ways for one reason or another.  I headed towards the Qantas international terminal.  I needed to get my flight confirmations out so I could see my flight number.  I had no clue where my gate was, or if I was even in the right place to begin with.  I whipped it out and tried to match it up with the flight number on the screen.  

This is when I started to panic.  My flight number wasn't listed on the screen.  I was looking at the departures screen, for Sydney and Qantas.  Nothing.  Picture me standing by myself in LAX with my back pack on and my flight confirmation out, looking down at the paper, looking up at the screen, down at the paper, up at the screen, paper, screen, paper, screen!!  

This is when I realized it all.  I had been exactly in sync with the monitors, they had the departures text scrolling and I was timing my looking at my paper with my actual flight information on the screen.  My heart rate then returned to normal.

After that, I met my 3rd classmate, Dana.  She was not on the group flight, but going on her own.  Then I ran into Brittany and Candace again.  We got in the wrong line for Qantas, wrong terminal actually, we had to go outside and walk about 2 minutes over to another building for our flight.  When I got there, I had left my bag tags on the American Airlines plane I was just on, so I had to walk back over to the other terminal and have a worker there write my tags down for me.  After I checked in back over at the Qantas counter, I checked out all of the restaurants before I went through security.  I had the best chicken quesadillas that I have ever had at a place called Daily Grill.  So good, that I took a picture of the place!

If you are ever in LAX at the terminal with Daily Grill, it's California law that you get the chicken quesadillas.  After that, I met up again with Brittany and Candace at the gate, where all 65 of the students were flying over together sans a few, and anxiously awaited.

The Flight

I sat in the window seat of our 747 next to two other study abroad students, Laura from Vermont and Scott from Denver but he goes to San Diego.  We chatted for the first hour or so and then split off doing our own things.  The window wasn't that bad considering I'm 6'4.  I took a few sleeping pills and was out for 8 hours.  I woke up in the middle of the night, and to my surprise Scott and Laura were awake.  We talked for another hour, ate breakfast at 5:30 am, and then I went back to sleep for another 2 hours.  All in all I slept about 10.5 hours of the 13 hour flight to Brisbane (Bris-bin).  Here is picture from my seat.

Sunrise over the Pacific

Cairns

Cairns (pernounced Cans, silent "i" and "r") was a blast.  Having been there before, I knew what to expect, and knew my way around the city.  What a cool place.  I've never said the word cool so much as the 3 days we spent in Cairns.  All in all, from my flight in Omaha to touchdown in Cairns took 30 hours, so you can imagine that I felt pretty disgusting, as did everyone.  We got to our hostel

No doors allowed

and got our room assignments, and met our room mates for the next 3 days.  Gilligan's was the perfect place for us.  It was only 22 bucks a night for a room, which was included in our payments for the trip, had the best night life in Cairns (3 bars, 2 downstairs and 1 upstairs called Pure) and a great location with markets, shops, and tons of restaurants and pubs nearby.  Probably about 75% of these places were open air.  For example they had their doors open, had no doors, or had sliding doors that were kept open during hours of operation.  Very cool.  Here's a picture of our room in which 7 20 and 21 year olds stayed for 3 days.  It's no bigger than your average 2 person dorm room.

Hostels are a very cool (there I go again) idea.  First off, it's cheap.  Hostels save money by not having daily maid service and also save on electricity by requiring a key card be slipped into a slot in each room every 24 hours to activate the current. Second, the rooms are more than adequate.  They provide all of the linens, including 1 towel per person, pillow, blankets, and sheets.  Third, they are full of interesting people just like yourself.  Most of the people we ran into were traveling and looking to not open their pocket books to get some shut eye.  And Fourth, they have community kitchens.  Now this is the most interesting of them all to me.  Each floor has a fully stocked kitchen.  Sink, oven, microwave, 2 huge refrigerators, and all of the other standard appliances.  It's totally based on the honor system.  You keep your food in the kitchen refrigerators, and use the hostel's plates and silverware.  After you eat, you do the dishes and put things back how they were when you found it.  The honor part of it is that you don't touch anyone else's food, or leave a mess.  It works better than you'd think.  We were awake by 7:30 each morning and I never saw any messes in the kitchen.  Here's the kitchen.

Cairns has a lot to offer for a small city.  We went to the reef and to an aboriginal culture center.  Both we very fun and interesting.  Here are some pictures from both of them.  

The aboriginal dancers

A 250 year old australian fan tree on the army duck tour

We fed some reef fish off the side of the boat

An island in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef.  We dropped

anchor here.  This is literally the most beautiful sight i have ever seen.

This tiny island is home to more than 50,000 birds and is protected

by the EPA.  The dark spots in the water are reef.

We rode a boat over to the island and played with some fish.

This is looking back over at the main boat.

After a fun weekend in Cairns, all 65 of us packed up our things and headed to Sydney.

Sydney

We got in around lunch time and took a bus to ICMS.  My fingers are about spent, so I'll leave you with these 3 pictures.  I will have more pictures tomorrow or Thursday of the school, it's an amazing building.

This one is for my mom.  I hope you're proud!

The great view from my room.

This is the only picture I have of myself on the trip so far.

I never think to take pictures of myself, I just point and shoot

at everything else.  I hadn't shaved in 5 days (sorry mom)

Obviously I can't share every single detail or picture on the blog for a number of reasons, time and energy being the two most obvious.  If you have any questions and want to e-mail me, just use claycollier44@gmail.com and I'll be happy to write you guys.

Cheers,

Clay

Waiting...

I'm sitting here in the Omaha airport. Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, in my opinion the best album ever made, pumps through my headphones almost at full blast.

Saying goodbye to everyone was much harder than I thought. Thanks to everyone who came out last night to say farewell. It was impressive seeing so many of you out on a Tuesday.

I'll keep everyone posted on my journey the next few days, and hopefully have a few pictures to share of orientation in Cairns. Monday our group fly's down to Sydney where we begin orientation week there. That's all for now.

Clay