Trying To Catch Up

Just got back from my 6th day at Channel 9. Slowly being given more to-went on my fourth shoot to talk to a big-time social blogger about an 18 year old woman who is going to Malaysia for a tummy tuck, breast implants and vaginal tightening. If that sounds weird to you it should. I've found that most Australia news is extremely sensationalist and for the most part soft-its all about crazy random stuff, where the normal hard news is undervalued. Outside of this story the other three big stories are the upcoming national prime minister election, the death of two Australian soldiers in Afghanistan and the movement of refugees into the Outback for the first time. Its funny that the national election is given so little time and the refugee movement which has already seen over 80 people moved from an island off the coast to a small refugee town on the west coast at the edge of the Outback. On the other side the two deaths of soldiers is an absolutely enormous story, while in the U.S. it would be a minor 20 second blurb on the news.

I've started to plan my traveling for the rest of the semester and it looks like I'm headed to the Blue Mountains next weekend. The Blue Mountains are two hours west of Sydney and are home to Olympic Park-one of the major venues (tennis, basketball, track) from the 2000 Sydney Olympics and tons of places to hike and go on bushwalks. Australia is really proud of their natural landscape and outside of the Outback (desert) the bush (heavily forested areas) are their second biggest pride. At the end of my stay I'm looking at taking a 12-14 day trip that will take me to 7 cities/countries. Although all the details haven't been worked out hopefully it will include the Great Barrier Reef, Melbourne, New Zealand, Fiji and a couple other famous places in Australia.

Below is a link to some pictures I took of a high school rugby match and some random pictures from Sydney. We went to the market that morning and randomly wandered onto the field on a rainy Saturday afternoon. During our time there we got to watch an entire half-which included a couple of fights, several ridiculous hits and little to no whining. In a welcome change from American sports-the coaches did not make themselves known to the refs despite some dirty plays and the players were just allowed to play. An interesting fact about Sydney is that all private school kids have to play rugby here whereas it is voluntary for public school kids. The setting was beautiful, the atmosphere was better than any high school football game I ever witnessed in the states and these kids were great. Some of the hits would have left most high schoolers crawling off the field or on a stretcher but in the hour we watched only one player was injured. I'm hoping to see a rugby game in my time here as it dominates the winter months in Sydney, the only competition in terms of Australia leagues is the AFL-Australian Football League. In reality though the game of rugby is closer to American football then the the football they play here.

High School Rugby