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- I am very lucky. Despite the fact that my clothes are hanging on the line and it has just gotten ominously dark and cloudy. When you think of it, chance, consequences, small decisions made for no apparent reason - well, if you thought about it too much you'd probably get all paranoid. I'm staying now at the nicest guesthouse ever. It's so nice it's stupid. It's nicer and quieter and smaller and friendlier and cheaper than where I was staying before. And I called this place to see if they had a bed just because it was $2 cheaper than the other place I was going to call - I'd seen the other place and decided I wanted to stay there, but instead here I am. The people you meet in these places are hilarious, if you stay long enough to get to know them. In my room there are three girls. Mariuka is Finnish. She's big and boisterous and very friendly. She's been in Australia since July but has only been in Sydney. She's staying here for free, working here 15 hours a week in exchange for her bed. In a couple weeks she's leaving to travel around Australia, and then she's going to find a job that pays. She's staying until June. Eleanor is from Wisconsin but was born in New Zealand. She's here with her parents - a cousin got married on Friday. Her dad is American and her mom is from either New Zealand or Australia, I can't tell which. Eleanor talks with an interesting mixture of Wisconsin and New Zealand (or Australia). She just finished school, doesn't want to work in an office, and doesn't want to go to grad school yet. ("You shouldn't!" I politely advised her. "Don't go to grad school unless you really want to! Take a break from school! School sucks! Grad school sucks even more!") Eleanor and her parents are leaving Tuesday and they just got here last week. Adrienne got here last week too. She's here for six months working for some museums. She's been getting these bites and she doesn't know why. She thinks it's bedbugs, although she changed beds and she gets them during the day when she's not in bed too. She also thinks they're bird mites from birds pooping outside our window. She told me to keep the window shut to keep the bird poo from attacking her. She also thinks it's because she sat in a park for a few minutes the day she got here (and I can't really laugh at that, since I got attacked by a crazy ant because of sitting in a park). She sprays her bed with bug spray - she hoses it down with bug spray before she gets in. When Eleanor got back from the wedding at 4:00 Saturday morning, Adrienne got up and hosed her bed down again. Obviously she's getting bit by something, and I'm not trying to belittle that, but she's a little too hysterical about it. Last night I was listening to the radio and I heard her switch her bed light on and off and few times and then I heard loud exclamations. I took off my headphones in time to hear her say, "Does nothing work in this stupid room?" Me: "Your light doesn't work?" Her: "No. I can't even read! Christ!" And there's a guy here who always yells "Oh give me a fucking break" at the TV. I think he must be Italian. At the last place I stayed, which was more of a hostel than a backpackers - huge, people coming and going, in and out, nice but impersonal - there was Snorri and the Loudest Canadian and her best friend, but then they all left and for a whole day the room was empty and lonely. But then a girl from South Africa came and she was very nice and - get this! - courteous corteous curteous courtious curtious curtiose curtiouse curtious courteous and quiet when she came in late! And then this girl Lucinda came. She was from Perth and she reminded me of a mouse. She was very inquisitive. Kind of weird, but nice. Her: "You write in a journal?" Me: "Yeah." Her: "Oh wow. Where are you from? How long have you been here? How long are you staying? Where have you been? Oh wow. Do you think Australia is very different from the U.S.?" Lucinda had just gotten back from living in Boston. She'd been to L.A. too and thought it was weird. Someone there told her that if she'd stand up straighter she just might make it. Then the South African girl left and the hoochie mamas came and their suitcases exploded all over the room and everything was crappy. I was feeling stuck in Sydney and I decided to leave, but since then I've been finding all these new streets, places to go and things to do, and I came here to a new part of the city, and for one wild moment I thought I could just stay here for the next month. Why not? Wherever you go, there you are, and there are always new streets to go down. But no, so I'm leaving NSW tomorrow, headed for wine country.
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