Exams were a piece of piss. Short short short essays on topics that required no studying at all (I know this because the only "studying" I did was to wiki the Australian parlaimentary system, which it turns out I didn't need to know). However, the next two days were brutal. Tuesday Lauren and I worked all day making our presentation power point show, and finalizing our paper (/working in a giant quote that we found THAT DAY which made the Howard government's policies in the Intervention look stupider then they already are, which is saying something). Basically the quote gave a bunch of recommendations for solving the issues of violence and abuse in the NT, which the government completely ignored. The report stated specifically that "there can be no one-size-fits-all approach to solving these issues" What did the Howard government do? Make a giant discriminatory one-size-fits-all program.
Anyways. We worked on those two things for about 10 hours on tuesday. Wednesday was the first day of presentations, and we sat through 5.5 hours of presentations with one 20 minute break from 12:00-5:30. I nearly died. Most of the presentations were really interesting, but my body is not meant to sit still for that long. Lauren and I went to the library after getting dinner at a local restaurant, and then we worked on finalizing our presentation (and getting our works cited in the proper format...bleh) and we practiced once before I told her that I couldn't take it any more. She went home to practice, I went home to go to bed. I was not nervous at all. I was ready to be done.
Well...I never feel nervous for any sort of public speaking thing. I mean, I guess it's not conscious. I went to the bathroom 4 times in the three hours between when I got up and when I had to present. I guess my body was telling me something. We were the second presentation, and all throughout the first presentation I felt like I was going to be sick/faint/pee myself. Which is weird, because we've got a really nice group of people who all want everyone to do great. But they ask so many goddamn questions! And I had never given a 20 minute long presentation before, especially about a topic that was so broad and had so many factors influencing it.
Right before we got up to talk Lauren ran to the bathroom to take a pee. I would understand, but she practiced like...20 times the previous night, I just sort of made up how I was going to phrase things on the spot.
It was a decent presentation. I kept myself from jumping around and fiddling with things and spoke loud and clearly. I only got hung up once, and I dug myself out of it before Lauren had to jump in. It felt great to be done. I also liked flopping our 13 page monstrosity onto Peter's desk. I told him that Lauren had put me as the first author, but she really should have had that spot. He laughed and said "You are very generous Chris, you would never make it in academia."
We went over to the storage area where we are going to store electronics and unwanted stuff til the end of the trip, then I walked past this clothing shop with a really good-looking button up that I had been eyeing for days, and I decided to use some of my $650 travel stipend on it. Totally worth it. Then I got a haircut from a nice young lady who laughed at all my jokes and generally thought I was hilarious, which is weird, because no one tips in Australia so she must have just genuinely thought I was humorous. win.
There were supposed to be big plans for a giant party on thursday night, but everyone was too exhausted, so I ended up going over to Kaitlin and Anna's and we drank Cider, watched LOTR and dished out massages.
Friday was a different matter. We went to a rugby league game, got really into it(read: intoxicated) and then nearly everyone on the trip minus Kelsey C, Maren, Kaitlin, and myself went to a hotel room to celebrate Shandarra's 21st birthday. I would not be surprised if there are 20 American's in Brisbane police headquaters today.
The rest of my troupe headed out with Haley and Drew (Kelsey and Marens 26 year old host parents, for the past two weeks. Kelsey and Maren's original homestay had a family emergency, so Kelsey and Maren moved in with Haley and Drew. Haley is the daughter of Helen, who is Anna and Kaitlin's host mom).
We went to a 4 story bar with a live band and 5 or 6 different bars and a ton of different rooms.
We had a good time.
This morning I made the odyssey back home. I am having a family BBQ for the last night, and then I am going to run my computer and some extra clothes and presents down to storage.
If I had one photo to some up the past week it would be this one:
It was taken at the party Claire thew for her half-birthday last friday. This is our attitude now that exams, papers, and presentations are done.
This one isn't bad either:
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