In Which John Spends a Day in Sydney and John Spends a Night in Sydney

Nothing of note happened on Monday, save for my final roommates moving in. There's Vanessa, the 3rd Aussie and Matt, an American. They are opposites.


The next day, I got to go on a tour of Sydney. It was a cheesy bus ride full of photo-ops.

See, here, I'm blocking the Sydney Opera House, because I'm more important.


As you can see, it was still cloudy and blah, so that made for a nice small tour group. However, it was full of very tired and jet lagged people, so there was not a lot of conversation or mingling. I met a girl from Norway. Whee.


(Before this trip, I was accidentally standing in line for a bus to another tour, where the people were a lot more talkative, and I probably would've bonded a lot better.)


We went to the Harbor, and Bondi Beach, and the Gap, which are big cliffs that serve as the doorway to the Harbor. Many people commit suicide off of these cliffs. What a cheery tour.


It seems as though I have more pictures from the beginning of the day than I do interesting stories, so I'll just place them into the nighttime section of the story. Don't get confused.


That evening, the 3 girls and I went back into Sydney on a pub crawl with their friends. That's the equivalent of bar-hopping, where we visit many bars in one night. Oh, the girls get very dressed up by the way, so if you're ever in Australia and plan on a night out, be fancy. Matt was no where to be found, so he didn't come.


When we arrived at the first pub, the main group was already leaving, so I don't have much to say about that one.


At the second bar, I spent most of the time talking to this redhead from Wisconsin, bonding over our Americanness. It was nice to have an extended conversation with someone who wasn't Australian for a change, so I thought that this night might be fun after all. However, this was the only bar in which we talked.


At the third bar, I ended up talking to this really nice bloke named Chris, and a group of 3 other Aussie girls. They were very nice and open, and filled with wonder about America, and gave me tips on what to do while in Australia. I didn't remember seeing these people at the bar from the other night, but I was grateful for them. However, when I mentioned who my roommates were, they had no idea who I was talking about. It turns out that the pub crawl was sponsored by their dormitory and was supposed to be a "getting to know you" field trip for freshmen. My roommates and I just crashed it. I have nothing against freshmen, but I wanted to mingle with people my own age, who were all sticking to themselves, and not interacting with the newbies.


By the time we got to the 4th bar, it was getting very late. All of the freshmen were tired and wanted to go home. I wanted to go home. My roommates wanted to go home. But we had to wait for the bus that would drive us all back to campus, which wouldn't come for another hour and a half.


Once it was time to leave, we all learned that the bus wasn't coming. That's okay, we could just use a regular bus, right? No, they all stopped running an hour ago. Fortunately, the trip sponsors arranged for a wave of taxis to pick up everyone, and the school would cover the charge.

Unfortunately, remember how I said my roommates and I crashed this event? We weren't going to get a free taxi ride. Vanessa, however, devised a plan in which we just get into a taxi, acting like we were with the dorms, and just get dropped off there and walk the rest of the way. So we did, and managed to convince the taxi driver that we lived in the dorms. It got a little scary when, in order to keep our lie valid, my drunk roommate kept on talking about how much she lives in the dorms. Not "loves living," but "lives." When we finally arrived at the dorm, the taxi driver told us that we'd have to pay for the ride, and he'd give us a receipt so that the dorm would pay us back.


So our plan was foiled. We didn't cheat the taxi system. And I had to pay for the $50 cab ride, since my roommates had no cash. Plus, we were now across campus, away from where we actually lived, so we had to walk another 15 min in the rain.


This was probably my favorite part of the night, though. My roommates and I bonded on that walk. We made the best of the rain. And I got to hear their true feelings about all of their friends and the people they met that night. They said I was one of them. I was their brother now. It's like Raincloud Village, down here.









P.S. The code word is "Penguin" if your bra is showing.