Happy Halloween!

Here in Australia, Halloween isn't nearly as big of a deal as it is in the US. While most Australians know about Halloween, it's not a huge deal nor do many of them dress up. Though, all of us being Americans, we had to celebrate, new continent or not.

Saturday morning I got up bright and early for Pilates, which always makes me very energized and happy all day. Afterward, I walked to Paddy's market (not to be confused with the Paddo market from last weekend) and met up with Sam and MJ to shop for our costumes. Paddy's is basically Canal Street in New York on crack - it's huge and sells literally everything you can imagine from batteries to handbags. It's pretty overwhelming but it is a great place to find costume-like clothing, and man, were we successful. Our entire group of friends decided to go as different high school cliches - jock, punk, teacher's pet, prep, band geek, etc. Sam was going to be punk, I was going to be a Literary Cliche (aka, that girl who's obsessed with Virginia Wolff and Sylvia Plath and talks about how awful the US is while embracing European culture), and MJ was really unsure about her initial decision to go as prom queen.

I immediately found a beret and pocket watch necklace - two hallmarks of my character. Sam found a great punk skirt and some fishnet tights while I found a pair of black leggings, a black turtleneck, and a black belt with a big buckle - very Parisian. We kept wandering around picking up pieces of punk paraphernalia for Sam's costume and debating what MJ should be if not a prom queen - and then it came to us when we saw some pretty bunk Baby Phat track suits on major discount. MJ should be ghetto. She's the white girl who wants to be ghetto. It was amazing. She got this brilliant Kanye West skeleton hoodie, a big gold chain, Kanye glasses, and had our friend Nathalie braid her hair in corn rows. She looked AMAZING. It was fantastic. We spent around three hours at Paddy's just exploring all of the stands. Then we headed home, went to the mall so I could get the finishing touch of my costume - a Sylvia Plath book. I hopped in the shower and ran over to Sam's room to start getting ready. It was so much fun. We made Sam completely Punk'd out, MJ got braided, I pained on my cat eyes, and everybody gathered to pregame for the BUSC party. Although we were running about an hour late, we had a fantastic arrival at the party and immediately sat down and started playing trivia. The entire program had some great costumes - Maria as a crocodile, the Dunder Mifflin crew, the Village People, even the program directors got into it - Pascal was Willy Wonka, our director Mark and his family were The Simpson's, and Caroline, Cal, and Adrienne were the three main charactres from Summer Heights High. We had so much fun - we even won the costume contest!

After the BUSC party ended we headed to Argyle, a club where they were having the largest Halloween party in Australian history. It was crowded and sweaty and we only stayed for about an hour before bailing and heading to Pancakes on the Rocks - a 24 hour pancake place near the club. It was delicious. We had an amazing devil's food pancake with strawberries and chocolate and Sam and I split some nachos. It was the perfect cap to the night. After looking for a cab for almost a half an hour we headed home, wiped off the makeup, organized the candy, and fell into bed!

Sunday MJ and I had our usual hangover routine: Thai food and the beach where the Sculpture by the Sea exhibit was going on between Bondi and Tamarama beach. They were gorgeous. We did a bunch of walking, had some fresh watermelon, and got to check out some great art. Dinner was at Wagamama, another one of our favorites.

Now I'm in class, wishing I was out enjoying the weather! The only casualty of my weekend was my knee, which is back in its brace and quite sore. Hopefully another round of Pilates this afternoon will clear that up and I can enjoy Thai and finish some work tonight.

G'day from down under!