Part of our internship program involves each intern writing a weekly blog about a particular topic they’ve learned or discovered. Today, Drew Gowan, interning with us this summer from Hanover College, has tackled the blog:
I had the pleasure of interning here at Nine13 for about a month in January earlier this year. Unfortunately, I had to leave them for about six months as I made my way down under to study abroad in Australia. They all took it pretty hard, especially Chris, although he only cried once. But alas, the prodigal son has returned.
Coach Drew is back getting #KidsRidingBikes with us this summer!
While I was on the other side of the world I learned a lot, and not all that I learned was in the classroom. I feel that I learned more outside the classroom, experiencing a culture that was not all to different from our own but was alien to me at the same time. One thing that I noticed right off the bat was the bike culture. I lived on the outskirts of a small city called Wollongong and people were riding bikes everywhere. It seemed to me that everyone used bikes to get around. For a lot of my fellow classmates, bikes were their optimal choice of getting to Uni (uni is what they call college in Australia). This made me a bit jealous because on the beautiful days there in Wollongong I would have much rather ridden a bike to Uni instead of taking the bus.
Seeing how common it was to use bikes to get around made me think back to my internship at Nine13 and how important it really was. Getting children on bikes at a young age, riding and having fun can help shape future culture, especially in a city like Indy where the bike culture is growing rapidly.
Needless to say, I am excited to be back at home and to start working at Nine13 again helping kids assimilate to a healthy lifestyle through riding bikes.