Thunderstruck and Thriving

Spring break was nothing short of adventurous. Between arriving in a power outage, battles with cockroaches, climbing endless hills and a deceitful hike to a fake beach, Whitsundays was amazing. There are so many parts of this trip I could talk about but my absolute favorite day was the last day when we went out on an ocean rafting boat in the pouring rain all day. We were on a marine boat that was a high speed donut doing boat called Thunderstruck. The crew was super rowdy and fun and they played storm themed music the whole day like, It’s Raining Men and CCR Have You Ever Seen the Rain? So naturally I was having a blast. We were being pelted in the face by rain so hard that we wore our snorkeling masks on the boat so we could see, we hiked up to the Whitehaven beach lookout in our wetsuits and then sat in the ocean where a baby shark was apparently swimming around us AND we snorkeled several bays around the Whitsunday islands that was still apart of the Great Barrier Reef. It could be said that the highlight of the trip was getting the captain to blast Rocky Top for us and confusing the whole boat with our Tennesseeness. Our English couple we befriended got a kick out of Rocky Top and SURPRISE, they ended up sitting next to us on our flight back to Sydney the next day. I may not have seen The Shire over spring break but I did find Nemo and it was incredible.

My first two weeks as an intern at an ad agency in Australia has been nothing short of unreal. I don’t feel like an intern, I actually feel like I am apart of the team and office. I have already learned so much about the industry and about Australian culture, I can’t think of a better way to immerse myself in Sydney life. Everyone I work with is extremely friendly and from so many places that I have a hard time keeping up with the lingo since I am dealing with several different cultures at once. The entire work environment is so different from the States too. They play all kinds of music like Cher, Flume, NWA and RHCP throughout the day, they have a sign on the trash cans of Mr. T saying “I pity the fool who doesn’t recycle”, one girl came to work dressed as a unicorn just because she could and boy do they know how to order coffee! (by the way if anyone can figure out what jet fuel is for coffee, let me know). 

Overall Sydney solo life has been pretty rad and now that we have passed the half way mark and are starting our descent back into American ways, I have really started to appreciate this trip and all of the amazing things I been privileged enough to do. But it isn’t over yet, so stay tuned for more adventures down under!

**Also I ran into one of my sorority sistersthis weekend in Newtown randomly and that was amazing to find a friend 9000 miles from home.