After 8 weeks, going through Circular Quay on my daily commute and looking out onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House - never gets old. Even the locals take a second to look out the window at the view as we pass through in the morning.

My final week at Telstra International is here and I've been concluding the work I've been doing over the last two months. I have produced a FAQ document for the sales team and helped design the customer sales collateral. I've had some fantastic insight into project management and one of the project managers has let me follow her for the last 2 weeks, making sure I was included in all the meetings and exchanges. It was good to see how the different departments interacted - some were very involved in the process and their feedback meant the original process design had to change. I've really enjoyed the project management aspect - listening to other departments, trying to quantify and qualify their concerns and looking at ways the process can be improved to ensure that it works and that we reach our end goal. Finding solutions and overcoming any road blocks is important as well as staying positive and upbeat.

I also had a busy weekend. On Friday evening, I met with some other expats here in Sydney who are in the Telco world - it was great to get an insight into other companies and the Telco market in Australia which is very different to that in the UK. I thought that they would be very similar as it's a similar product offering, however the history of the phone lines moving from being publically to privately owned, the geography of Australia and the position Telstra plays as the incumbent, all change the market model here in Australia.

Saturday brought the Whisky Live event, I walked from Newtown to where the event was being held at Randwick Racecourse and it was nice to see the city on foot. The event was great; lots of whisky exhibitors form the UK and Australia - even a whisky from Japan! I visited Sydney Cricket Ground on my way back into the city before meeting Kyle (NZ Saltire Intern) from the ferry at Circular Quay. All was fine until I suddenly remembered that apart from meeting Kyle at the get together in June, I had no idea what he looked like. The ferry from Manly has around 900 people on it so trying to find him in that crowd was a worry - after everyone left we soon spotted each other as the two people at the terminal looking a bit lost. It was good to hear that he was enjoying his time at Reannz and loved NZ as much as I was enjoying Sydney.

I visited the Australian Museum in Sydney to learn more about the history of Australia. I knew very little about what happened when Westerner's landed in Australia and their effect on the existing Aboriginal people. Many of the Aborigine traditions were fascinating and their connection and respect for the land was inspiring. In the early 20th century, Aboriginal children (especially ones with fairer skin) were often taken away from their parents and fostered to Western families on the agreement they'd be integrated into society and as such "dilute" the Aboriginal gene pool. It was heartbreaking to hear the stories of children who were taken from their parents and now have no idea what happened to them. The practice was still carried out until 1964.

I'm looking forward to the rest of my week (and all the leaving lunches/dinners) and can't wait to get home to the final year of my course and get out into the real world of work. It's given me renewed passion, I now realise how much I love the Telco business and that I'm actually more knowledgeable than I gave myself credit for. I'm not looking forward to the 30 hour + travel time it's going to take to get back home to Edinburgh but I'm more motivated than ever to work hard and find a good role after I graduate - whether that be in the UK or out here in Australia!