Blog On The Barbie: One day he'll get to you and teach you how to be a holy cow...

Song: "Just" by Radiohead (Mark Ronson cover was also involved in the evening)

March 17th
St. Patrick's Day

I woke up and wore something green. Went to class, peaceful day. Came home and grabbed the mail and I got a postcard from Stephanie Q. in Barbados! Super exciting. It made me get really excited about sending my own.

I ran into Justin and Greg, who were wearing green unlike most everyone I passed at school this morning. I was starting to get worried about Australia not celebrating St. Patrick's Day as much as we do, even after going to that crazy Irish festival in Sydney Sunday.

Anyway, I went to Aesthetics, and afterward came home and got ready for the evening. I had no idea where we were going, but I knew we were going into town and being Irish.

We met up at #52 and got ready. There was green paint around and shamrocks being painted everywhere. Vilde decided to write the "Chinese symbol" for St. Patrick's Day on her arm.

From St. Patrick's Day in Sydney

We took the bus and got into the city, and basically decided to just go to The Rocks (an area by Sydney harbour) and find a bar to have fun in. We started at Jackson's on George. I requested Radiohead's "Just" on the video request machine before knowing that playing just three songs before it would be the Mark Ronson/Alex Greenwald of Phantom Planet cover of the exact same song. I love both versions very much, so I didn't mind. We met some random Irishmen and three lovely Australians who we hung out with for the rest of the night. I met these Australians by singing "You're the Voice" by John Farnham at the top of my lungs. Knowledge of this song is proving useful around this country. Also, I spent most of the evening quoting the movie Hot Rod back and forth with one of these Australians. It was a great night.

Bernie and I had some Jameson Irish whiskey to "celebrate our heritage." It resulted in this picture which I enjoyed thoroughly.

From St. Patrick's Day in Sydney

We also somehow obtained a Guinness St. Patrick's Day hat (probably stolen from an Irishman or an Aussie). Here's me with Cam:

From St. Patrick's Day in Sydney

Well, there were about 20 people in the whole bar, and we made up over half of those people, and we decided to leave, based on the suggestion of one of our new Australian friends. We then walked to The Observer, which was no longer letting people in since they were full to capacity, and then down to the next place which served alcohol, The Orient. I don't think we were in there two minutes before Cam got kicked out for absolutely no reason. Anyway, I found him there and after we all got over the initial disbelief that "that just happened" we decided to leave and find the next place down the line. I'm just going to call it a pub crawl, because that sounds like we intended to do this.

When we were outside with Cam, still in disbelief, Lindsey decided she wanted to get a kebab. Everyone thought this was a great idea. The Australians, Brad, Adam and Will, led us (sort of) to the next kebab place we could find. This happened to be practically across town, but we were not aware of this at the time. We just really wanted kebabs.

Anyway, walking around Sydney was incredibly entertaining with our new friends, crazy hats, and green wigs.

From St. Patrick's Day in Sydney

Brad and Adam:

From St. Patrick's Day in Sydney

When we finally made it to the kebab place, the guy in line in front of us blatantly stole a kebab without paying for it. We watched as the kebab shop owner locked up his place and proceeded to run down the street wielding a metal rod. We weren't intending on waiting for kebab man to return from the beat down, so some of us kept walking. We eventually went back and got kebabs after a period of time and they were worth the wait. When we went back to the kebab shop one of our Aussie friends asked the manager about his earlier pursuit of kebab thief man. Turns out the guy running had "bought" it for his friend and the kebab manager said it wasn't eaten when he found him, so the manager just took the kebab back. Anyway, we sat with our Australian men and chatted about differences between Australia and the states. It was a lot of fun. Then we hopped in a cab and went home. What a night!

On a side note, before we left we had a lizard-y thing run into our apartment.
We named him Gary.