Mardi Gras in Sydney!

This past weekend me and a group of girlfriends headed into Sydney on Friday evening to experience the city as it was alive with spirit and celebrating Mardi Gras. Specifically we headed in to town for Saturday's huge Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade and celebration which is the 2nd largest in the world! It was an amazing experience to say the least. People of all different backgrounds coming together to celebrate. Friday we just hung out with our friend Jake from Albion and some of his friends at the University of Sydney.

Saturday we got up, had breakfast, and headed over to Darling Harbor. Steph and I had the awesome chance to meet up with Lisa Dorr, our soccer teammate and Delta Gamma sister who graduated from Albion a couple years ago. After the great visit with her we met back up with our group to board the boat. We had signed up for a Harbor Cruise to take us around the Harbor to celebrate Mardi Gras with lots of people. It was such a beautiful ride, with a great party atmosphere as we listened to music and hung out with friends.

After the Harbor cruise we headed over to the main streets where the parade was held and packed full of people. The streets were lined much farther than you could see with at least four or five people deep to the front line to the parade. We stood behind a group and reached up on our tip toes to catch the colorful entries of the parade as they walked or rode by. It was such a cool experience and quite the display of culture. I randomly and quite fatefully ran into my Delta Gamma sister Mekayla! It was so awesome, we just made eye contact walking down the street as we passed each other, screamed, jump into each others arms and celebrated! It was so great to see her and have a chance to talk to her for a little while.

We continued on with the evening walking around the city and later meeting up with some more friends. Sunday we packed up and headed back on the ferry after a very eventful and awesome weekend spent in Sydney!

Back to classes on Monday and Tuesday with some pretty cloudy and rainy weather. Classes are going good, still very interesting and fun just getting a little busier as the first big deadlines of most of my classes are slowly approaching. The past couple days of not the best weather has really helped me focus and crack down and work on school work. Today I had two morning classes, ate lunch, and headed to the beach for a little time in the sun. It was nice and sunny for the first time in a couple days so I had to embrace it. Overall things are going great. I am having a blast and learning so much about so much, if that makes sense :) I miss my friends and family a lot but I appreciate their constant communication via skype, email, and of course facebook. :)