Monday June 2nd-Day 101

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Today as the forcaster said it rained all day. Not light rain, 62mm of rain! in 24 hours. By 6:00AM when I went to AWX there was already flooding on the streets I had to walk. I arrived at AWX at 6:05 hoping to be the first one in. I knew there would not be much work available because of the weather. It turned out that I was second in. I sat down and ate my PB&J sandwiches I had made the night before for breakfast. From there I proceeded to read the local newspaper, taking that pages that mentioned the socceroos vs. Iraq game. After finishing the paper about 50 minutes had past waiting for work. The first guy had received a job and a few others had come into the office drenched! There was nothing else to do so I grabbed the financial newspaper that AWX also receives. It is very different to any other newspaper that I have read but interesting in the point of view it takes on news. By the time I had finished that paper it was about 7:45. The day workers were arriving for work and the rain continued to come down. More as if it was being dumped from a bucket then droplets coming from clouds. About 8:00 the receptionist came in and offered to check upstairs whether they wanted us to stay or just leave our numbers and go back to our residences. She came back saying that the later of the two was what they wished to happen. I left my contact details and sprinted the 500m back to the hostel. Mike had pre arranged work with AWX. He was supposed to arrive at the AWX office around 9:30 and they would drive him to the job. I received a phone call about 20 minutes after getting to the hostel that there was another spot available at the job and that I could come in with him to go to that job.

That raised the spirits of the day. Mike decided to make his pancake mix and tried to improve on the pancakes I had made. Instead of adding a couple table spoons of milk and the rest water he thought it would be best to add two eggs and the rest milk. He also didnt read the instructions that you were only to fill to a line and filled the jug up to the brim. The first pancake looked great but after that it was all downhill. The batter was very thick and the pancake would burn before it was possible to flip it. As a result they were all very burn't yet gouy.

Mike ended up getting full about half way through eating them. I helped him by happily finishing off the rest of them for him with the delicious "golden syrup." About this time I received a call from AWX that the job had been cancelled because of the weather. There was nothing really to do today as it was pouring rain, we did not have an umbrella and in three months of living here we had completed all that we wanted to see. Mike decided that we should use the day to plan the trip. I couldn't agree more and was surprised by the late surge in interest planning the trip. We spent the next while eating and researching the trip. By about 1:00 we had finished doing all that we thought we needed to research. Because it was raining so hard and that we knew the travel place would not close until atleast five we decided to try and wait out the rain. I went back down to the room. My bunk mate a 25 year old British girls named Shelly was just waking up from a good night of partying so I talked to her for the next while while re reading the Bill Bryson book which I had with me. The book is far more interesting and capturing when you know exactly where he is talking about. I ended up looking at my phone and it was 4:30 and I had read 40 pages. I dont think I have ever got more into a book before. It was actually quite scary for me.

From there I went up to the lounge and found Mike. The rain had not let up but I thought we should get a move on so that we would have time to discuss our travel plans with the travel agent and such. Mike thought it was too late to go and was reluctant to go out in the rain. I decided to find the phone humber for the place and found out that they were open until 7. I went back and pressured Mike into going by telling him that I wanted to work the rest of the week if possible and that it was only rain and we could make it an adventure trying to get there as fast and dry as possible. We set off with our rain coats and hid under trees and walked against buildings because the rain was coming on an angle. We ended up finiding a new travel place which had opened today called Beaches. We decided to go in and give them a chance/ take a break from the weather. They had a great package for two of the things that we wanted to do and answered lots of questions that we had easily. We got a quote on the identical package from the other place and found that they were very similar. From there we went to Peter Pans, our original destination. They were packed but they allowed us to go on the internet for free while waiting for an agent. I used this time to download a couple more pictures from the Australia Zoo while Mike use the time to feed his addiction to new music.

Once they had space we sat down and began discussing the itinerary. We planned a rough draft of our plan to see the east coast. After that we went back to the hostel and researched the differences between the places, how good the prices were they were offering and what we wanted ourselves. The rest of the night I made dinner and read until going to sleep. I knew that I would not be working making fences because of the rain so we made plans to not work and finish our travel plans tomorrow.

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