So I'm still in Sydney. I was supposed to be getting on my bus today but it set off at 6:15am and I woke up at 7am, oops. So now I have to stay here for another two days to catch the next Oz Experience bus (could get Greyhound but I wanna make friends dammit). Considering the majority of my time in Sydney's been spent inside in my PJs, I'm not too thrilled about this extension. I've only actually ventured into the city twice... having a bit of a holiday from my holiday I guess, got a bit tired of taking photos of myself with random landmarks!

So my excuse for this laziness is the fact that winter in Oz actually means winter and it's really really cold. I've been sat in this McDonalds for about 3 hours now and it's been POURING it down the whole time, hope they don't chuck me out. Also, it being winter means that most of the people who are left here are the ones that are working full time, and have already seen everything and aren't that bothered about making friends with passersby, so I had a pretty lonely week until Spry and Jenny joined me this weekend. Not that I cared too much, I'll be social next week.

This weekend's been awesome though. Far too much goon has been consumed, it's even worse than buckets! So Thursday night I went out with the guys in my dorm. There were three of them and it soon became clear that there was some weird love triangle going on there except that most of the conversations were conducted in French so I had to piece everything together with my very patchy French while trying to keep the peace. Ended up in a gay bar where they all disappeared and I was left watching a drag show on my own, felt like I'd gone back to Thailand for the day!

So that was confusing. The next night Spry and Jenny finally came over, and words can't express how nice it was to be around people I actually knew properly for once! They had friends at the hostel (Dave, Laura and Siobhan) so we gooned it up over there then wandered around town. Despite being relatively sober I was rejected from a bar for being too drunk (I tripped on a step, something I do on a regular basis while sober) so had to wander around for 20 mins, so used to not having any rules in Asia, having to relearn social etiquette here! We took lots of videos of us dancing badly then all snuggled into one bed, just like old times.

On Saturday Jenny and Spry took me on a tour of Sydney and I finally saw the opera house and bridge (it's 10 mins away but somehow took me 5 days!) and took a ferry over to Manly beach where a lot of crazy people were surfing in these arctic conditions. Got back when it was getting dark and hid from the cold in a bar with a very expensive bottle of wine trying not to fall asleep until the Vivid light festival started. This is a big light show that's been on in Sydney for a few weeks now, the buildings are all lit up and they project moving comic strips and things onto them. There's also a big game of noughts and crosses and a weird thing you scream into. It felt a bit like being in a festival, I liked it. Anyway we were all shattered so said goodbye to Spry and Jenny, watched a bit of Sabrina the Teenage Witch with the others for a while then passed out.

Yesterday was supposed to be a lazy pajama day of drinking the leftover goon and watching films. Which we did for a while and discovered the wonder that is mulled goon (goon with hot water in it, genius) while watching Shame. But then we got a bit carried away with the goon and played some drinking games and did some gymnastics and ended up going out (how I got ready I have no idea, I don't even remember leaving the room) where we decided to buy a new box of goon and got talking to some irish people who it turns out went to Jenny's school (the world is so small), and went back to their flat and played with a cat hat and then all ended up asleep in strange places (weirdly I was in bed) and missed the bus. Best day I've had in ages though!

I quite like Sydney as a city (apart from the weather), it feels different to home cities, airier somehow. There's millions of skyscrapers but they all feel quite far away even in the city centre, and the sky feels bigger. I think it's cos it's sprawled out more. King's Cross where I'm staying is awesome. It's such a dodgy area (it's the red light district) with prostitutes and tramps everywhere, but it keeps it interesting. I was getting my hair cut the other day and there was a group of about 20 druggies dealing and squabling outside in broad daylight for ages with a police van just down the road, pretty entertaining. Plus there are a lot of just generally really strange people here, everyone's talking to themselves and loads of people have no shoes on. The guy next to me just told me he made six dollars today, that's nice. Watching people come in and out of this McDonalds is an activity in itself, screw the blue mountains!

So I'm just gonna spend today reorganising everything and then tomorrow I'll have goodbye tea with Spry and apart from that I'll probably be in bed the rest of the time. Oh well, it's my half way point and I need to recuperate for the next leg, doubt I'll get another break for a while!