Day 35: Work Day at Wesley

Today began around 8:30am when I woke up from my overnight slumber. I took a shower (another hot, sweaty night without air-conditioning), and decided to give the Ausgrid switchboard a call. After going through the automated portion of the switchboard I was finally answered by a live person who easily transferred me to Aaron Russell. I hoped he would answer his phone (I don't have a direct number and switchboard is a pain...) and he did so on the second ring! I briefly explained to him who I was and what our research is geared towards (I'm getting good at doing this...) and asked him if it was possible to set up a tour of the Ausgrid Learning Centre. Aaron was wonderfully accommodating to the proposition and after about a 2 minute conversation, I had a tour booked for 11:00am tomorrow!

After the successful phone call, I decided to celebrate with some breakfast in the Wesley cafeteria. Breakfast was the usual cereal and juice, but I was able to tell Anoop about the tour so nothing else would be planned for tomorrow morning. After breakfast I went back upstairs and started looking at some "cheap" hotels in the Syndey area that could provide accommodations for me on Thursday and Friday nights. After calling home and talking with my mom and dad, we decided to go with the Bayswater Hotel Sydney. I booked online and I was glad to have those details worked out finally.

Shortly after making the reservations, Brittany and I were able to have our devo over Skype. I really enjoyed our talk and I am also looking forward to getting back to Auburn to see her again. Australia has been a blast, but I'm ready to come home.

We finished our chat and I began to work on a few blogs. Some folks were heading back to Manly Beach, but it was pretty overcast and windy so I decided to stay at Wesley and get some work done. I posted a few blogs and took a break about 4:00pm to complete the temporary structures assignment for Auckland. The afternoon flew by as I worked on the computer and before I knew it my stomach was growling - dinner time! I still had more work to do, but took a break and walked down to Subway for a sandwich and picked up a Dr. Pepper at a convenience store. (I think I've found and memorized all the Dr. Pepper locations in Sydney!) I took a few photos while I was out and about:

Park by the University of Sydney at dusk

Wesley College

Left side of Wesley College (dusk)

Right side of Wesley college (dusk)

Back in the room after dinner, I continued to blog. About 9:45pm, I heard some drums and after listening for few seconds I thought it might be a drumline. (Odd time of night for drums to be playing, I know.) Needing some fresh air, I left my blogging to go out and see if I could find where the drum sound was coming from. I hadn't been outside 10 minutes looking around when rain began to fall. The drums had stopped playing almost as soon as I left Wesley, so I decided just to walk back before I got completely soaked.

I dried off with a towel in the room before sitting back down to work some more on my blog. I didn't work much longer though (I had been in front of a computer almost all day) before calling it a night. Today had definitely been productive, but I wanted to be well rested for my last day with the group in Australia!