Shimmer, Sparkle and Shine

I have a secret.  Kelly and I are not actually the great hobos we make ourselves out to be.  All this time I have strategically kept from you that we have spent the last several months preparing for one of our favorite holidays; Gay Pride.  I may be a dress wearing, lumberjack chasing, straight female (pay no attention to my previous references to my rugby career), but I LOVE me a shiny, slutty gay pride parade.  Kelly and I have sacrificed too many precious cubic inches and kilograms of backpack capacity (a cardinal vagabond sin) in order to collect the finest spandex, false eyelashes, fish nets, glitter and more glitter.  We have amassed an impressively eclectic collection of flare from around the world for a mere three day celebration.  Yes, it is by all means necessary, and probably a rule, to have a different outfit everyday.  Reservations were made way back when we were in Vietnam (whoa, remember Vietnam way back in February?) and finally the week was upon us.  We had one last stop this week before the festivities began; lovely Hamburg, Germany (or so we were told).

Poor, poor Hamburg.  I am sorely sorry I neglected it, but it was a busy week of working out, completing the finishing touches on our costumes and watching The Olympics!  I know people disagree about the importance placed on The Games.  Some people could care less and others think they're a waste of time (this includes most Swedes I've met).  Well, they're wrong.  The Olympics might be my favorite thing in the world (behind a warm chocolate chip cookie, obviously) and our hostel was playing the adrenaline spiking competitions non-stop.  This made out to be the perfect background (and often foreground) for costume crafting.  Further in our defense, the weather totally sucked that week.  So really Hamburg needs to take some of the blame here too.

Enough blabbering about Hamburg, the city I virtually know nothing about, and fast forward to Amsterdam Pride 2012; reportedly one of the best parties in the world.  This was about to be the best party of the year and sure to be our sparkle Mecca.  And then things got even better.  Gasp!  Better than gays and glitter?  Gays, glitter and my best friend Ramey!  Ramey, being one of my more organizationally challenged (also see disaster) friends had been suggesting that she was going to try to meet me in Amsterdam.  My expectations were low considering she is in grad school, working, taking care of her sick grandmother and, well, see my previous comment.  My low expectations, however, were advantageous because my friend the disaster made it happen!  (This may be the most exclamation points I have ever used in a paragraph).  I haven't seen my best friend in 11 months and it was an airport reunion to rival all airport reunions (and I didn't even have flowers)...and then things got even better!  Gays, glitter, Ramey and San Juanita.  San Juanita (AKA San J - she totally loves this nickname) is significantly more delinquent than Ramey when it comes to getting it together (really) and one of my other favorite people in the world.  How Ramey convinced AND then got San J to buy a plane ticket across the world a mere two weeks before departing is beyond my comprehension.  It is something that can only be described as a Gay Pride miracle.

Amid all the excitement I failed to mention that we had also convinced Weird Kate and some of her other recently released Peace Corps cronies to join us.  So, the eight of us squeezed into a rental apartment reserved for four people.  Cozy and sparkly.  It wasn't the occupancy the renters should have worried about.  Not many people think to enforce a No Glitter rule.  At least that apartment will never be dull again.  Unfortunately for them we were prepared for the second coming of the Dark Ages with the armory of glitter we were packing.  This is in addition to our shimmering clothing, metallic hair extensions, glimmering eyeshadows and shinning personalities.  Of course we cleaned, but it is a fact that glitter is the herpes of the costume world.  You can never get rid of it.  I do like to think that we left a permanent mark on Amsterdam though.

Yay Gays!