I LOVE MARDI GRAS!!!

Hello from Down Under!

This past week has just been amazing. I have grown to love Australia more and more every day. I have formed close friends whom I am sharing this experience with and can't wait to come home to tELL everyone my stories and experiences.

The weather here changes from day to day. You never know what to expect. On Wednesday and Thursday it was raining all day! In the mornings, it is usually cloudy, but by 12, the sun comes out and it gets hot outside. Yet, at night, if you are by the beach, it starts to get a little bit chilly and you will usually have to wear a sweater. I have been told by many Aussies that this is strange weather to be having in Australia at this time of the year. They said that it is cold by their standards and that summer "never came". This is when I respond to how the weather is like where I am from and am just grateful that I am not freezing with snow up to my waist.

In an earlier post, I said that most of my classes are project based. You work on them throughout the term and they are due towards the end of the semester. Well, being the good student that I am, I have been working on multiple projects little by little, so I wouldn't be stressed out a few days before the project was due. When I would save my work, I would save it under the file "My Documents". This past Friday, I was trying to bring up a project I was working on and I couldn't the file anywhere. Turn out to find that you need to save all of your work on an H drive that they have on the computers on my campus. If you save it under "My Documents", once you log off, all of your work is erased. All of the work I have done thus far...GONE!!!!

Now here is the kicker.

On Friday mornings at 8 am, I have my Venue Management class with my dear friend Sean. Anyhoo, Sean tells me that him and Erica bought tickets the night before to see Kathy Griffin in a comedy show later on that night. I love Kathy Griffin! I think that she is hilarious and I habitually watch her show, "My Life on the D List". I was surprised when I found this out because I had no idea that she was in Sydney. When on our break from class, Sean and I go up to the computer lab to see if there are still tickets left, which there was, but it was up on the balcony and him and Erica had floor seats. Sean felt so bad that he said that he would sit by himself and that me and Erica could sit together, but I said that he didn't have to do that. My friend Dana likes her too so I wanted to ask if first if she wanted to go before I bought the tickets anyways. Well, between looking up tickets and talking to Dana, this is when I realize that I have lost all of my work because I didn't save it to my H drive. I ended up not going to the show because 1)Dana couldn't go 2) I didn't want Sean to sit by himself 3)Cost $70 4)I now had to make up a shit ton of work. Basically, that was the major factor for me not to go because I would have sat by myself because I love Kathy that much

So, the next day I talk to Sean and Erica and find out, not suprisingly, that the show was phenomenal and she was hilarious. Then Erica turns over to Sean and is like... "I don't know if we should tell her" Turns out, one row behind Sean and Erica is LANCE BASS FROM NSYNC AND HIS BOYFRIEND!!!!!!!! While Kathy Griffin was in Australia, she was filming for her show and she made a reference to Lance being in the audience and they were filming him directly. Once the show was over, Lance and his boyfriend made a run for it so he wouldn't be hounded by fans for autographs.

Can you believe that? So not only did I miss Kathy Griffin, I missed a chance to meet Lance as well. Instead, I spent the night working on a project that I had already done. Just my luck.

Now here is the better part of me weekend:

Saturday was.... Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras!!!

No matter how much I try to describe how amazing the festival was, words will not do it justice. We took the 12:45 ferry to Circular Quey in Sydney. Once we got off the ferry, we took the train to Central Station, which is when we realized we took the wrong stop and walked much further than we needed to. It didn't bother us too much because we had time to spare and we wanted to enjoy the nice weather and take in the city.

The festival is held on Oxford Street every year and I was lucky to attend the 30th Anniversary! As we entered Oxford Street in the early afternoon, people were already sitting along the streets, guarding their spots for the parade which began at 7:45.


To say the least, yesterday was unlike anything I have ever experienced. The streets weren't too crowded in the early afternoon, but you could still see the occassional drag queen walking down the street. Gay and lesbian couples walked up and down the street, showing affection towards each other and no one stared or made a deal about it whatsoever. It was extremely refreshing to see a culture value each other for who they are, unlike America, who discrimates them for their differences.


As we walked down Oxford Street, we passed a bar called "The Columbian Hotel." It has glass windows in the front looking out onto Oxford Street which were opened up crowded with people, waving their arms telling us to come in! It looked like it had a fun atmosphere so it didn't take much convincing for us to grab a drink.

In the bar, they had videos up all over the place playing the "Top Gayest Songs." Everyone was dancing to songs like "Spice up your Life" by Spice Girls; "Like a Virgin"; Britney Spears songs, etc! Everyone was having a great time and dancing! One of the bartenders was dressed up as a drag queen and another male bartender was wearing a female cop outfit. It was great. Everyone got into the festivities, regardless of ones sexual orientation.

After an hour or two at the bar, we decided to head back up closer to where our friends were on Oxford St. waiting for the parade to start. They had staked out our spots since 2 in the afternoon! By the time we got there, we had about 20 of our friends from ICMS there. We waited about two hours for the parade to start, but decided to pass the time by singing random songs at the top of our lungs. Although, I do have to say, the crowd like it. We were getting requests from people in the parade. Somebody wanted us to sing Pink... I can't explain that one.

Anyways, once the parade began, it was well worth the wait.

It was about a two hour long parade, which was longer than what I had thought. But I enjoyed every minute of it. I was surprised that there were floats from various Churches, such as the Catholic Church and men and women were carrying signs saying "Would God Discriminate?" On top of the float they make it look like the Vatican with a man pretending to be the pope. Controversial, eh?

During the parade, there was a man who held up a sign saying: "This parade is SOO Gay!" I got a good chuckle out of that one. I took the video camera with me and taped parts of the parade and have plenty of pictures displaying the floats! I can't wait to show you all what it was like, you just have to see it to believe it.

Oh, you will also never believe who was walking down in the parade... KATHY GRIFFIN!! So even if I didn't see her show, at least I saw her up close and personal! Her camera crew came right up to my group of friends and started filming us as she passed. I hope that we get onto the show... That would be amazing!

After the parade was over, we went to a bar called "Side Bar". A professor at my school was DJing there... yes, I said professor. He calls himself "DJ SNOWY!" When we got there, DJ Snowy was playing the jams! It was awesome to see my professor there. He got into the celebration of the parade too by wearing a tight flamboyantly pink t-shirt that had "GAY" written over it. We didn't stay there for too long because we wanted to catch the last ferry back to Manly. But overall, the day was phenomenal and I will remember it for the rest of my life!

Anyways, today (Sunday) has been mostly a lazy day. A lot of people have just been recooperating after the parade. My friends and I had planned on being beach bums all day, but when we woke up, it was cloudy. The weather changes quickly here and it turned to be nice and sunny out but Michelle, Dana and I decided to go to a cricket game instead. When we went to Lachlan's birthday party, we met some Aussie boys who play cricket and invited us to see them play. I have seen cricket on TV but haven't had the chance to attend the game and really wanted to go! So I met Michelle and Dana down by the Corso to have lunch and then we were supposed to take the bus over to the cricket match. The game was to go from 1-6. We didn't want to be there for 5 hours so we thought we would go later. Well, we didn't plan it out accordingly and we realized by the time we got there, with the communte of taking the bus and train, we would see only about 1/2 hour of the game, tops. Luckily, Paige and Christian had made it into the finals so they said that we could visit one of those games instead. I liked Cricket when I saw it on TV but would you believe me if told you that players take a tea breaks during the game?

I'm not joking.

No wonder Cricket takes forever. They are munching on crumpets and drinking tea, chatting about life.

But now I have procrastinated all day and am off to do redo the work I have already done for my project :(

Miss you all! Take care!