June 20, 2005 - 6:11pm

IH is turning into a cemetary and I'm getting kicked out of here in 5 days. Not too long ago I went to Sydney where I had a grand ole' time. Riding on the coattails of mommy and daddy's bank account, Lane and I got to take a fancy tour around the city and visit the Blue Mountains. Later that night we went to see an amazing dance performance at the Opera House called "Grande". There were all these different dances set to famous piano pieces (with the piano as the focal point of the whole show) and some avant-garde multimedia shenanigans thrown into the mix to keep things interesting. The piano player even started plucking on the piano strings like a guitar during the performance. Early the next morning, the family split and I was left to my own devices. I scoured the entire city on foot, hit up the Sydney Film Festival with a screening of "A Day Without A Mexican" (about what happens when the Latino population of California mysteriously dissappears overnight), and finally settled in at a hostel in the seediest part of town, Kings Cross. I quickly made friends with these two Irish guys, Jamie and Ray, and we headed off for some partying at The Rocks (the oldest part of the city). We wound up at an Irish pub, and miraculously enough, everyone was Irish, not just people of Irish blood, but those actually from Ireland that speak with an awesome accent. Ray and Jamie said it was as good as being in Ireland. Afterwards, we made the long trek back to Kings Cross and visitied the shadiest strip club imaginable. The following day, the three of us took the ferry to Manly Beach, which provided us with quite a dandy view of the city. When dusk started to roll around, I said goodbye to the Irish lads and set off for a new hostel as far away from Kings Cross as I could get. In my new room, there were 4 guys and 6 girls: 4 Americans, 1 Canadian, 1 Frenchman, 1 Israeli, 3 British, and a partridge in a pear tree. We chatted it up for several hours and the other Americans kept trying to convince the others that peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches are actually tasty. The next morning I set off for Bondi beach with two girls from Montana. In an effort to prove to me how nice Montanans are, they packed me a PB&J sandwhich and fed me Tim-Tams. At 2pm, it was time for me to set off for the airport to make it back in time for dinner in Melbourne with the European crew.