Spring Break!

The month of March welcomed the traditional student holiday which one calls Spring Break. The dates of my Spring Break at UF fortunately coincided with the dates of Mardi Gras and of course, we decided to take full advantage of this. New Orleans was pretty chaotic with hundreds of people wearing fancy dress and drinking freely! Parades occurred in the day and night where marching bands and floats would enthusiastically move down the roads whilst throwing beads to onlookers. Some people took the beads very seriously and their necks were engrossed with hundreds of beads, however for me I had far too many painful experiences of being ambushed with beads that soon I began to dodge them! Most parties started in the morning and carried on late into the night and the streets were constantly filled with street entertainment. Aside from Mardi Gras, New Orleans provided some delightful Creole food and also beautiful buildings and shops in the French Quarter and I would love to go back and explore all the unique shops.

For the second half of our Spring Break we headed over to Panama City Beach in Florida for some traditional Spring Break action i.e. beach in the day and partying all night. Most of the clubs had ridiculous entry prices which we couldn't justify paying for so watch out for that and there are plenty of other places which are cheaper! Just because it is Spring Break, people believe they can rip people off! This was a fun experience but it was just like any other holiday in a place like Malia and Zante but still all in all a great Spring Break and a week to remember!

Howdy y'all

My stereotypical Southern title to this post is due to my visit to Texas during the last weekend in February. I went to Austin for a weekend to experience some Southern culture. Austin is renowned for its live music (hosting SXSW music festival), chilled out nature and just generally cool people. During the weekend I didn't meet one unhappy person! The general consensus among the people of Austin is to keep Austin weird and indeed it is like no other place I have been to so far. They have a pink State Capitol, live music every night of the week and drafthouse cinemas where you can be served food whilst watching a movie. Although it is a bit different to your typical Texan place, I still witnessed many men walking around in cowboy hats, shirts, jeans and boots!



Aside from Austin, February has left me wondering where the past few weeks have gone as they seem to have drifted by very quickly. At UF work has been the main agenda this month where many people have experienced mid terms. I still don't quite understand why they are called mid-terms when people generally have three lots of mid-terms so really they should be called third-terms! The other week, Gainesville hosted the arrival of a well known DJ called Steve Aoki. This was a massive event for small town Gainesville and a very enjoyable night for everyone.