A slice of the US

Today, Condoleezza Rice came to the University of Sydney to speak a bit about US foreign relations and answer questions from students. This all happened at the conservatory in the hall. I was invited to attend due to the whole Fulbright thing along with 300 students(mainly political science majors) from universities in New South Wales. The Conservatory was blocked off from the public all afternoon. Security people were scurrying everywhere and apparently had ringed the building. There was a huge group of protesters outside and some even got arrested. The Con, music schools generally being very liberal, was full of debate and anti-american sentiment (we felt a tad uncomfortable). The biggest to-do though was during Rice's speech.

A few minutes into her talk, two students in the back started yelling "Condoleezza Rice! You have Iraqi blood on you hands that won't come off! You are a murderer!" over and over. The secret service wasted no time in hauling them out of the room. A few minutes later another student started yelling about what freedoms did the Iraqi people supposedly have now. He was promptly escorted out. There were at least a dozen secret service guards there that we could see. All of them were the stereotypical SS guys-huge and Marine like, all wearing dark suits with the coiled earpiece, constantly looking around at everybody.

Neither of these incidents phased Rice one bit-I'm sure she's had to deal with this a lot with the unpopularity of Bush around the world. She was a very intelligent, well spoken woman who knew what she was talking about. Her knowledge of history on the spot was impressive. It's a nice feeling to know that, as stupid as Bush may be, at least he has some intelligent people(at least one!) around.

Other than that, our day was pretty uneventful. We started training at the music library and practiced. How exciting!

~Mike