IARD 4960: International ExperienceEleni Rigas (esr75)

Melbs/Aussie/Depreston

Ruby drove a small, bright yellow VW station wagon. There was a hot water bottle with a leopard print cover waiting for me in the passenger’s seat—I first attempted to get in on the driver’s side before correcting myself—I’m in Australia now.

Reflecting on my two months in Melbourne, Australia in a few pages is a daunting task. During the summer, I acquired nearly two thousand photos and videos, stones and shells from every beach I visited (including one in the oldest rainforest in the world, the Daintree), four new pairs of shoes, a hat with a koala embroidered on it, and many other small tokens, along with lifelong friends. In my mind, my trip is divided into the day-to-day routines that I developed, my evening and weekend adventures, and the way I personally related to myself and evolved during the trip. These elements together provided a transformative experience.

My internship in Melbourne with Earthwatch Institute Australia was facilitated by The Intern Group. The Intern Group program additionally included housing, professional development opportunities and weekend activities such as wine tours, wildlife sanctuary visits and the Eureka Skydeck (Melbourne’s tallest building). I arrived with eleven other interns working at different companies, and over the course of my two months, three other groups of interns arrived. The other interns were predominately from around the US and the UK, with Jose from Puerto Rico, Kristi from Hong Kong, and Emmanuel from Switzerland the exceptions. My core group was comprised of Annie and Didi from the UK, and Maggie, Cass, Tyler, Evan, and Rex from the US. The Intern Group’s social chair, Phil Tan from Melbourne also took a particular liking to our group and we became close friends. Phil had a car and would drive us on weekend adventures to Hanging Rock for a hike or to see Wonder Woman in theaters.

We lived on Bell Street in the suburb of Preston, approximately 50 minutes via train and tram from the center of the city and my office. The Breakfree at Bell City became home, with small rooms that I likened to a train compartment, with the toilets right in the shower—talk about saving space. My room was eggplant purple with a large window overlooking a soccer field, a tall palm tree inhabited by a flock of colorful birds, and a view of the sunrise. I added a personal touch to my living space with a large gold duvet borrowed from my friend Ruby—a native Australian I’ve been friends with for 6 years who is currently studying art in Melbourne—and a few succulents from the Preston Market.

The city is very comfortable to live in and I adapted right away. Melbourne has a population of 3.85 million spread across 3,857 square miles and is a commuter city. The Melbourne Central Business District (CBD) is the majority of the city’s center and where the tallest buildings are concentrated along the banks of the Yarra River. The suburbs are close by—some just 10 minutes by train—and consist of small, one-story brick houses with tile roofs. Each house has a fenced in courtyard, usually with a lemon or olive tree at the front or back. The houses are charming and it’s easy to forget that you’re in a city bigger overall than Chicago (a smaller metro population) with the sprawling city plan and burbs extending many miles outside of the CBD.

My weekday morning consisted of a 6:40am wake-up, 15 minute walk to catch the 7:33am train to Flinders Street Station, a 15 minute stop for breakfast at the Degraves Street Espresso Bar where the head waiter, Russel, became a good friend who gave me free pastries, and I always ordered the same “Green Eggs” (scrambled eggs with pesto, onion and feta cheese

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on toasted sourdough with roasted tomato on the side), a trot to catch the 19, 57, or 59 tram up Elizabeth Street to the Queen Victoria Market stop, and short walk to 60 Leicester Street, Carlton, the Green Building, where the office is located. The Green Building is the most environmentally-friendly office building in Melbourne, using only solar power and rain water, and housing other environmental non-profits including the World Wildlife Fund. I worked from 8:30am-4:30pm, with about 45 minutes for lunch, at a high desk with two computer screens, a footstool, and plants in a row behind the computers. I loved all of my co-workers, especially Julie at the reception desk. We would go to Stovetop together for a latte in our mugs we brought along at 10am, find The Age newspaper and flip to the games section to do the quiz while we waited for our coffee. I always ordered my favorite, a large cappuccino, extra hot, no sugar, extra chocolate powder on top. Melbourne is known for its exceptional coffee and no one (except tourists I’m told) go to chain coffee shops. Julie and I would also take a picture of a word puzzle in the paper to bring back and work on throughout the day—emailing each other when we figured out a challenging word. As I look back, I realize how important these little things were in their contribution to my experience.

At Earthwatch I worked on my own project supervised by my mentor, Ari Pangiotou, a well-dressed, energetic man from Cyprus who served as Earthwatch’s Director of Development and Innovation. We had connected during my Skype interview and were instant friends, I could tell throughout my experience how much Ari enjoyed having me at the office and working with me. I worked from the Business Development folders of their company database, completing an extensive spreadsheet of research on the top Australian businesses in major sectors, including ones such as PWC, KPMG, Woolworths, AIG, Qantas, and many others. The goal of my work was to provide a crucial layer of screening and information on sustainability practices and value alignment to pursue potential partnerships. The key sectors I focused on were Insurance and Superannuation, Pension Funds, Mining and Oil, Fast Moving Consumer Goods, Renewable Energy and Clean Tech., Energy, Electricity, and Utilities, Construction, IT, and Accounting and Consulting. Over my 8 weeks I gathered information on the sustainability practices and corporate social responsibility of over 80 companies. I then created a scorecard for each sector and using a combination of data and personal judgement, created scatterplots to illustrate each company’s alignment with Earthwatch. I then entered my graphs and data into a PPT presentation format for Earthwatch Australia CEO Cassandra Nichols to present to the Board of Directors. Eventually, when I would go to Southbank in the evenings on the river (usually meeting fellow interns at our favorite bar spot, the Ponyfish underneath a walking bridge right on the water) I could look up at the signs illuminated at the tops of the major office buildings and identify every company.

While I worked I was allowed to listen to music (along with the rest of the office) and I discovered many exceptional artists as my intern friends shared their favorites with me. Courtney Barnett is an artist from Melbourne who wrote a song called “Depreston” while living in our suburb of Preston (I promise it’s not depressing it’s just the song title!). One evening my friend Tyler and I scoped out a well-known jazz club called the Paris Cat and enjoyed a fantastic quartet, while another night attended a Father John Misty concert at the Melbourne Performing Arts Center. Melbourne has a thriving art and music scene… I also saw the Van Gogh and the Seasons exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria and we came upon numerous bands performing on our nights out. Australians are very laid-back, real people. When you talk to someone even for a few minutes, you walk away feeling that you really got to know them and that they enjoyed meeting you. I noticed that Melbourne has a very open and accepting culture surrounding the LGBTQ community—the night life was all but dominated by gay clubs with

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fantastic DJs and lighting. From the Carlton, to Yah Yahs, to Cookie, we explored the night scene and found it vibrant and dynamic. There was also a massive China Town and strong Asian culture influence in the city. I enjoyed many delicious meals of Thai, Malaysian, Korean, Chinese and Japanese cuisine. My weeks and the weekends I spent in Melbourne were easily some of my favorite experiences of the trip.

There isn’t space to detail all of my weekend adventures, however there are two important things pertaining to them that I discovered. First, that everything in Australia is very far apart and difficult to reach, especially without a car, and second, that the Great Barrier Reef is far more critically endangered than I had realized. During my weekends, I and other interns journeyed to Phillip Island where we saw the smallest penguins in the world in their natural habitat, to the Mornington Peninsula where we attended a fantastic house party with local Australians, the Great Ocean Road where I saw the 12 Apostles and wild koalas, Hanging Rock for a hike up an ancient erupted volcano, the Yarra Valley for both a wine tour and wildlife sanctuary visit, and a week in Cairns at the Great Barrier Reef. My sister, Dina, came to visit for a week and a half and we shared the experience of snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef together. At the reef, we rented a car and took a road trip to the Daintree Rainforest where we explored a stunning beach and trails, and did a full-day reef charter trip to three snorkeling sites in some of the reef’s most pristine locations. It was truly a dream come true in every single respect.

Now that I have given an overview of my weekly routine, internship, and weekend trips, I will conclude with a reflection of my experience of these events. Simply stated, I rediscovered myself. After three years of being at Cornell essentially in a bubble, in which I had convinced myself that I was perfectly content and that I knew exactly what I wanted, I had my eyes opened to how much more the world has to offer, and how much more I want to experience in my lifetime. This is not to say that I realized I had become unhappy at school, but that I had become complacent. In Australia, when I stepped away from all that was familiar—my town, school, family, friends—I was left with myself and who I wanted to be in that moment.

A revelatory moment occurred for me on my very first weekend when my friend Abbi told me, in a very good-natured and complimentary way, that she saw me as a person who is perfectly emotionally stable, has their life together, and is going to work in a very nice office… a big one, with a view. That was her impression of me, which I had fed into with my mannerisms and the way I presented myself when I arrived. While I could have simply found this comment very flattering and thought nothing much of it, I found it disconcerting and not a description I wanted to identify with. Or at the very least, I wanted to also be other things. That’s when I made the choice to let go of my attachments to image and being a certain way, and to simply experience everything Australia had to offer in the way that I wanted. My motto became freedom and flexibility—no attachments, no upset, no fixation on particular things, no stress. And that is why I had the time of my life. Since being back, I have continued to feel more relaxed and to focus more on who I want to be, not what I want others to see me as, and it has been liberating. Getting away from all that was familiar was necessary for me to rediscover myself and I am thrilled that I had that opportunity.

Professionally, my internship was transformative and taught me a great deal about how I work and what I want for myself as a future career. I worked in one of the most comfortable and well-designed office environments available today, with ergonomic stand-up and adjustable height desks and chairs, mats for standing to ease pressure on the knees, footstools, and plenty of natural light. A staff kitchen always had fresh fruit and tea available (Julie brought it from the market) and the restrooms were across the hall. It was additionally one of the most progressive

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and flexible offices, with employees each spending one day a week working from home and continually moving around collaborating with one another. There was no shortage of coffee runs, chatting breaks, and laughter. In spite of this, I found the idea of coming to work at my desk from 8:30am-4:30pm every day overwhelming. While I was not unhappy, I cannot say that I felt truly enlivened every day and excited to be at my desk, it was simply too stationary and confined. Previously I have worked in very active environments teaching kids and adults tennis, dance and outdoor survival skills, which include both physical activity and continual human interaction. I discovered that these are qualities I must have in my work environment.

I had the opportunity to have a one-hour career development call as part of the Intern Group program and we discussed what I perceived as a tradeoff between stability—a reliable 9-5 desk job—and freedom, which to me is having my own business, being my own boss, and creating a more active and flexible work schedule. The conversation resulted in my discovery that stability is an illusion—no matter what I am doing, I am working every moment to maintain a certain lifestyle and it is up to me how I choose to spend my time, knowing that nothing is permanent and infallible. As Jim Carrey said in his Maharishi University commencement speech, “You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.” My internship experience and career development gave me the confidence and reassurance to pursue the goal of starting my own business.

My international experience in Melbourne was incredible overall and I would do it again in a heartbeat. As I said to my sister when I got back, “I don’t think I’ll ever get over Melbs.” For me it was the people who made the trip. Going back without them wouldn’t be the same, although I have a strong affinity for the city itself. Two months abroad gave me confidence in my ability to thrive away from home, make strong new friendships, and succeed after college. The trip came at an excellent time for me and I recommend an abroad experience for everyone. No matter where you go, being away from all that I knew was liberating and freeing. I can’t wait to explore more of the world (I already have a trip to China scheduled in January and hope to go to Greece for Spring Break), and have many more adventures. Below are a few of my favorite pictures of the trip (it was difficult to choose!). Thank you to everyone in IARD for teaching me about the world and encouraging me immerse myself in another culture.

My Intern Group, June 3rd Arrivals. Southbank, Melbourne, VIC 4

Beach near the 12 Apostles on the Great Ocean Road, VIC

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The Daintree Rainforest and Great Barrier Reef

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Healesville Sanctuary, Yarra Valley, VIC

Earthwatch

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