AUSTRALIA DAY!!

Although today - Jan. 26 is actually Australia Day we went and celebrated the events yesterday in Canberra (Australia's Capital City)!!

We arrived at Parliament Hill just after 4:00pm for the action to begin. It was very similar to a folk festival as we brought an esky(cooler), rugs(blankets), decks of cards, and stuff like that. Dallan (my intern coordinator) had brought a blow-up Australian beach ball so we played with that until too many people came and we had to return to our seats. By the time the evening show began the whole grass was covered with people so it was soo hard to even just walk!! Us 4 interns and our coordinater Dallan went and we had a blast.

It was just a big stage set up in front of the Parliament buildings and then tons of space to just hang out. My housemate - Candice is a crazy fan for one of the bands that were going to be playing so I went with her to go get autographs by 'THE VERONICAS'. We stood in line for almost a hour and when they came out the line just went wild!! I also fell into the trap and purchased a sweet australian hat and flag (that I ended up waving most of the evening so that was great!!).

Around 6:00 the show got on the road and they started off by announcing the Junior Australian, Senior Australian, and Australian of the Year. This was so cool to see because there were 35,000 Australians dressed up in Aussie colors and clothes just cheering for the people they wanted to win. Later after all the speeches were done they started up the concert. Although I had never heard of any of the artists I left wanting to buy most of their CD's so that was great!! We were pretty close to the stage so we could kind of see the actual people on the stage but we had great view from the projector.

A funny thing that happened was that Lena (German intern) and I were just walking around looking at all the people and then it just clicked that 'we were in Australia' and we were just in awe of all the Aussie spirit!! Throughout the night whenever anyone said 'Aussie Aussie Aussie' the crowd would respond with 'Oi Oi Oi'...very cool!! I will post pictures later as I was snapping away most of the evening!!

Well enough about that...I'm already planning what I can do for Canada Day here, it should be good!!