Day 4 melbourne - Site visit and the Australian Open

WOOW it was extremely hot today.  We got up early and threw on some long pants, long sleeve shirts and headed out to one of Melbourne’s colleges called RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology).  They have a construction program similar in structure to Auburn’s and were able to hook us up with a few site visits.  The campus was in the city.  It reminded my kind of like an NYU or a BU where the university was mixed in the the city.  They had a pretty nice campus and we were really excited to learn about all the different ways they build buildings over here.  Turns out that they incorporate a lot of pre fabricated materials in order to stream line the building process.  This calls for the use of many different types of cranes to lift these pieces into place.  Our first site visit was at Larosse Docklands.  We toured the site with their project manager who knew everything about the building and was able to answer all of our questions we threw at him.  It was pretty interesting to see how knowledgeable he was about his project.  It was a apartment complex that was being built in two stages.  It was supposed to be built in one stage but the owner ran out of money a few years back so they had to separate the building in to two parts in order to stay within their new budget.  Overall, construction over here is almost the exact same as construction in the United States.  The only really big difference that I was able to point out today was their emphasis on building a few environmentally friendly building.  They do not see it as an annoyance but really embrace the idea of “going green”  and take pride in all the ways they can help the environment. 

After about three hours of walking the site we headed back home to get cleaned up and head to the Australian Open!  After a twenty minute train ride to where the stadiums were we were able to make our way in.  It was extremely crowded!  We all head to a concession stand and grab a drink then headed to our gate.  We got in and the retractable roof opened and of course we were in the part of the stadium where the sun was shinning.  No worries though because the sun set about an hour after we got there.  We saw Federer and I really want to watch that match because I was yelling at him the whole time telling him how much I loved him.  I didn’t get the memo that you were supposed to only clap throughout the match.  Oh well haha!  It was a great day and I am exhausted!  G’day, Mates!