This week in classes, we learned about policies that gave rights to the LGBTQ community as well as immigrants from other countries. The efforts to create a version of Australia that was welcoming and presented equal opportunities to these people greatly helped shape the diverse version of the country that I’ve gotten to experience throughout my time here. Along with this, we also learned about sensitivity analysis and its real world application. I gave my individual data presentation which analyzed music data, and demonstrated how the raw data set could be organized and interpreted to provide insight and business opportunity within the industry.
On Friday afternoon, the group of students and I took a bus to the airport and flew to Melbourne until Monday morning. On our drive to the hotel from the airport, we passed many historical churches and government buildings, the famous Victoria Markets, and the Melbourne Cricket Grounds. Upon arrival, we unpacked and had the remainder of the day to explore the city on our own time. My roommates and I familiarized ourselves with the area around us and explored Melbourne’s night life. We also had a great view from our hotel balcony.
Melbourne is also known for its food since it has the highest amount of restaurants per capita out of any other city in the world. There was definitely no shortage of options and I made sure to explore as many of them as I could during my time there. I had Japanese, Mexican, French, Chinese, and Italian. Our hotel was very close to Chinatown so the Asian food in our area was very good. While looking around for places to eat, I also visited AC/DC Lane which was full of street art dedicated towards the band who originated in Melbourne.
On our last full day in the city we did a guided walking tour of the city. The guide was very knowledgable about the history of the city and showed us to a lot of cool landmarks as well as popular restaurants and bars. After this, we met with a Bucknell alumni, Jon Black, who is a professor at the University of Melbourne. We enjoyed a lunch at a sports bar as he provided valuable insight about what it’s like to work internationally and how he leveraged his experiences at Bucknell to get into the position he is in today. I and the group of students were all very grateful for the opportunity to speak with Jon and further strengthen Bucknell alumni relations.