Ahhhhh Halloween. A holiday that originated in Ireland but has since fallen to the marketing and commercialisation of America. While it has kind of... sorta made its way to Australian shores, I've never actually celebrated Halloween. The most we do in Australia is use it as an excuse to throw a costume party. This is why it was exciting to know that I would be celebrating Halloween in a place that takes it so seriously!


Since Halloween fell on a Wednesday in 2018, I technically got to celebrate it twice! The first was in New Orleans. New Orleans is a major hub for Halloween with its deep history with Voodoo and being known for its Ghost Tours. They pretty much celebrate Halloween for a week. With this in mind, we celebrated the Saturday beforehand, taking on the infamous Bourbon St in my Marilyn Monroe dress and half face of skull make-up that took me an hour to do (it definitely didn't last the night). Not gonna lie, after consuming a few Hurricane's and Hand Grenades (famous drinks), the night got a little crazy, but that's the beauty of Halloween; especially in America. Everyone goes all out and you have an absolute blast of a time. We all bar hopped our way down Bourbon St and I ended up back at my hotel at about 6am. Crazy, I know! But I wouldn't change it. What was I doing you ask? Going from bar to bar, club to club, talking to locals and other travellers. Getting some new Instagram photos, you know, the usual stuff that takes up a millennials time these days.



The 31st October rolled around when I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Still going for the gorey look rather than (as Mean Girls put it) the one night a year where you can dress like a slut and nobody can say anything about it, I opted for a Top Gear dress with a bloody twist. Again, another situation where I put all my effort into my make-up and proceeded to drip fake blood on myself for an hour. This night was a little tamer. I think I learned that people will go all out on the weekend with those few die-hard fans of the holiday actually celebrating it on a weeknight. Also important to keep in mind that people had work the next day (duh). Never the less, lessons were learned on both nights and here they are:

1. Eat before you do your makeup. Otherwise you'll be left starving as you don't want to ruin the little project you spent an hour doing
2. Buddy up. The buddy system works for a reason and you need as many buddies as you can on Halloween night
3. Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. And that is something that I live by

Well, unless you've been living under a rock, or better yet, on another planet; you've been affected by the little disease plaguing the world at the moment, Coronavirus. And because of this, many of us have been forced to self-isolate for a long period of time to help slow the spread and flatten the curve. This, unfortunately, meant that a lot of us had to spend our Easter long-weekends, indoors and alone.

This year would have been the first time in three years that I would have Easter free from the stress of work. My parents were meant to fly over to London where we were meant to spend this weekend in Paris, France and then make our way to Edinburgh, Scotland. For the first time in a while, I was happy and content with where I was at in life. I was just beginning to get a solid social life having met an abundance of new people, I had (and still do) an amazing job that lets me do what I love with truly awesome people, I moved to a new place that was allowing me to save more money. It was all falling into place but then, of course, a world pandemic had to arrive at my doorstep and put everything on pause and I know that I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Little known to many people, Easter is actually my favourite holiday. I love the way it brings people together without all the same pressure that Christmas does. You buy a few chocolates for your friends and family, still, stuff your face and eat what you want, oh and that 4-day long weekend is also a great bonus! So what was I to do with myself for four days, alone in London with nothing to do. Well, I did what any normal person would do... I turned on Netflix and ate a box of chocolates. Well, there was one other thing... With the new friends that I had made over here in London, because of this, quite a few of them had to move back to Australia and the rest of us stayed over here in the UK. At 12:30pm, Easter Sunday, I turned on my computer, opened zoom, sent a link, grabbed a cider and talked to the girls for a solid two and a half hours. With everything going on and lots of us by ourselves, I thought that it was important that we all talked at one point over Easter. It's holiday's like this that make us crave social interaction so THANK GOD for video chat! Without it, we wouldn't be able to see the people we love, their faces, reactions, facial expressions, body language.

Times like this are testing, so it's important to check in on people, not just the ones you talk to day in and day out, but to also check up on others. Your neighbours, the people that you've lost touch with, that old mate you use to play football with. We need to prove to the world that not even a global pandemic can bring us down, even on a chocolate filled holiday.