Australia Day!

January 26, 2013

My new favorite holiday is Australia day! This is a wonderful holiday similar to Thanksgiving and Fourth of July in the US. The Australian volunteers invited Peace Corps and others from around Vava’u (mostly the strange palangi population that live here) to celebrate the day the white people came to Australia. We got to eat Australian food and desserts (if you are wondering what Australian food is, it is a lot of desserts with coconut, Anzac cookies, sausages and Fosters), there was even a meat pie-eating contest! We partied from 11 am until past 3 am (well I went to sleep but others stayed up that late). We had set up our slip n’ slide made out of the tent tarps and had a lot of fun going down it in our costumes. Oh that’s right, it was a costume party! I borrowed an Australia shirt and hat from kids in my village so my costume wasn’t too impressive but the Ausy volunteers went all out, dressing up as Australian Icons, one volunteer went as some Australian comedian’s drag character- she painted her wig with purple drink flavor and then had to spray it with Mortiene to keep the bugs off it (probably wasn't the safest thing to have on her head for several hours). There was dancing and a lot of general merriment to go around, overall it was really awesome and I will be looking forward to the holiday in the future- I hope I will be able to make the Ausies proud when I celebrate in the future!

Tria is the Australian volunteer who dressed up as the drag character, the other one in the picture is Sean, he went as an Australian shark attack victim

all the Ausaid volunteers and me

the pie eating contest, I guess the pies were right out of the oven so everyone burnt their mouths trying to eat it quickly