Say hey to Hershey!

Lauren woke up on the early side today to finish her project since she had to present today. I wasn’t thinking I was going to get up early, but I realized it would be a better idea since I was planning on skyping with my Mom.  Also, with Lauren going to school early, I figured I could go early and get my one Anthropology class out of the way. I decided that I would meet Lauren at the uni later since I had a little under 5 minutes to make it to class and I was still about 10 minutes out. There was no time to wait for a girl to get ready! I made it to class just in time to see my teacher wearing a wolf mask. Why you ask? Well, she never really said why she was wearing it, but I guess she just felt like it! My class was over quick and I was soon skyping with my mom. It was nice to talk to her again since it was the first time skyping her since I have been in Australia. We’ve tried before, but due to technical issues, it didn’t happen. I think she is still a little amazed that technology gives us the capabilities to talk over the internet. But I’m not going to lie, I’m still a little amazed by it. We talked about a lot of things and I was even able to see Hershey(my favorite poodle; don’t judge). Lauren soon joined in, but I was informed that they were talking before while she was in the library ‘looking over’ her project. Since it was getting late back in the states, my mom had to get off and go to bed.  We headed back to the library so Lauren could really look over her project. She blames me for not being there to keep her off of Facebook… oh women ;).  I stayed in the library with her and worked on my French book while she was working hard on her project. Our stomachs soon started to rumble so we both knew that it meant lunch time. We decided to eat our lunch at our little work station since we didn’t want to give it up considering they are scarce all the time. People like to just set down their stuff and then disappear, or fall asleep in front of a computer, or sit at a computer and use their laptop. So. Annoying! It was fast approaching 1 o’ clock which meant Lauren had to go to class. She had a presenter from America coming to talk to her international education class about American education. Lauren was a little worried that she was going to cover all the points that she was going to discuss in her project, but luckily the presenter went too in depth with early American history that she didn’t get to the topics of Lauren’s project. We met up one last time at the library to do the American things that we do: Facebook and emails. That lasted a couple hours and then it was off for Lauren to finally present her project that she had been working on for less than one full day. I’ll let her explain how it went!

Walking into the classroom to set up I was a little nervous, but no more than when I usually present. I was just hoping that they would all find it interesting to learn about the United States from a girl that was actually from there. I started the presentation with showing my home state and where I live and go to school. I made sure to point out that I live 3.5 hours from my college because that is pretty uncommon in Australia – most just commute from their home. For my presentation I was supposed to talk about the United States educational reforms and how they have affected the US, along with how our system compares to Australia’s. I really wanted them to understand the importance that segregation played in our nation and made them do a little scenario. Everyone was given a note card with a scenario on it (whether they white or African-American, male or female) and then they had to board a bus in the front of the classroom and sit according to their color. One of the girls was Rosa Parks and I played the white male that asked her to move. They all could not believe that she got arrested for such a small little thing. After that exercise, I knew I had their attention and I flew through the rest of the history. One thing I was excited to talk about was my high school, WEMCHS. I consider it to be a form of public school reform and they all asked lots of questions about it since they had never heard of anything like it before. I also had the students do a mix-match activity with stats from the US and Australia. A lot of them didn’t even place the correct index card under Australia, let alone the US. However, they were still really interested and mind blown by the statistics so I considered that an accomplishment. The tutorial session is supposed to be for 2 hours, but I presented for a solid hour which I was very pleased with. The professor even said at the beginning of class that if I didn’t go for the whole hour then it wouldn’t hurt his feelings. Not much more went on throughout the day. Later that night Lauren decided to write her reflection for  her presentation, but it was done in no time so it must have been a piece of cake!