July 5

What can I say. Not too eventful today. Another day, same hostel. I've noticed two of the guys in my room, one from New Zealand(the IT dude), and another from Africa (Zimbabwe?) have this habit of sleeping with their cell phones. The New Zealand dude typically will send lots of text messages when he's laying in bed, but I woke up at 3:00am because the African guy, who was sleeping right above me, answered his cell phone, and then began to talk to the caller in some who-knows-what language at his normal voice level! Geeze! Haven't people ever learned to turn the phone off when they go to bed? Maybe it was family or something calling from back home, who knows. It was annoying to wake up to someone talking in their normal voice on the cell phone at 3:00am though. Oh well. Fun times. Only one more night. :-D

I went running in the afternoon. I wore just one long-sleeve shirt, and shorts, and I ran throughout the commonwealth park. It smelled, felt, and looked like a sunny fall day in October or November, and it was amazing. I felt absolutely great, which I haven't felt on a run for quite a while. It reminded me so much of a nice, easy cross country practice run, and felt a lot like that's what I was doing. I ran on some paths throughout the park before turning around and coming back. All together I ran about 25 minutes, and I saw a new bird -- Little Pied Cormorant -- while I was running. I am definitely pysched about running. I found a website that lists races for the Canberra area, and apparently there is at least one type of race every weekend. There are "mountain runups" where you run literally up a mountain for ~2k and gain 200+ meters of elevation, and there are the occasional half-marathon or marathon, as well as races ranging from 2K to 15K with everything in between. Maybe if I get back in shape I can run a race in a few weeks to a month or so. :)