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Some things I have done this year. It has bee quite a journey. I am growing and expanding at an exponential rate! I have learned to tattoo and I am going to the world body painting completion in Austria this summer! Who knew it would unfold in such a synchronistic fashion. I turned 22 this year on the 22nd, my favorite number 22. My golden year…. wow has it really exploded. So stoked on life and my creations! I hope you enjoy them too!

Ill add on to this more in the next few months. Im the worst at blogging!

<3 Madiee

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This year was my first year leaving the country by myself. I decided that Australia would be my destination. My family thought i was seriously crazy, they weren’t against me traveling but they weren’t exactly stoked that i’d be across the pacific ocean in the lower hemisphere. But hey! I went anyways. My journey down under began with 28 hours on a plane starting in Los Angeles, pausing in China, and finally landing in Melbourne Australia. I only knew one aussie…. and I met him in the line to burningmanlast year. An 18 hour wait in line really makes you get to know your neighbors and I was lucky enough to have a rowdy bunch of foreign wingsuiters in the car in front of me. I told him that I would be contacting him because i knew i’d be flowing over sooner than later. 6 Months later I message him with a proposition, I cut him a deal, I’d give him a ticket to Rainbow Serpant festival he’d just have to hook my friend and I up with a ride. So I landed and this sweet aussie picked me up in the classic white camper van which he lives in. It’s like I never left home.

The nextday we were off to the festival, but first of corse we’ve got to stop for some beer…..lol aussies. He comes out of the store with two thirty packs, my friend I look at one another and ask “you know we wont be drinking right?” He replies “Ya this is for me, I figure 3 days, one beer an hour is good”. We laugh and know that this is going to be a funny time.

We arrive at the festival and wait a couple of hours in a line of cars, anticipating the beginning of the festivities. We finally roll up to the entry gate but I have to go to artist will call to pick up my ticket………… the ticket was nowhere to be found. Noooooo, this cant be happening. I start freaking out because I’m in the middle of nowhere in Australia with the only Aussie I know about to enter the festival without me. The box office tells me that I could buy another one but only with aussie dollars, which of corse I dont have enough. So the others go into the festival to go figure my ticket out while I wait at the gate. For the next hour I meet countless others in the same boat as me. One after another recieving their ticket. I start hula hooping to get my mind off of things but the sun starts setting and my conscious is fixated on being stuck outside the festival. This guys turns to me and says how once the sun goes completely down he is going to hike in and I’m more then welcome to join. I figure this is my only option. Finally someone radios into the ticketing booth and they hook me up with a golden ticket, right as this guy and I were about to make the trek! I wish him luck on his journey and I hop into the next car to score a ride down into the festival so i can find the rest of my crew and camp. After an hour of wandering around the festival I stumble into them, phew thank god because everything i owned, passport and all was in that van! With a heavy weight lifted off my shoulders I know the party can start and the festi fun begins. 🙂

Durring this festival I painted tons of faces which in return helped me to make tons of new friends. This is also what completelyfunded my adventure, food, board, and fun. The funniest point of facepainting was the initial amount of coin donations i was receiving……. i thought to myself wow these aussies dont donate much at all. I started to become slightly worried that my australian vacation might proove to be a lot more expensive than enexpected. (and IT WAS!!!) I returned to my tent at the end of the day to find that all the coins i had recieved were $1 and $2 coins…. at least they added up! Before I knew it my change purse was on another level. The perfect amount to last me through my stay in Melbourne. The Australian festivals are way different then the ones I know and love on the west coast. Aussies prove to be a super fun-filled rowdy crew to chill with. Our neighbors at the fest were awesome, an amazing crew always glowing and happy. They even had a guy with a broken leg in there dance floor crew. They’d create a circle and he’d crutch into the middle and wiggle around. No lie the aussies sure can party. If you thought american college students drank a lot wait till you see these cats. I was deffinitely out of place when it comes to that.

Through out the festival people would greet you with a “Happy Rainbow!” Although this was far from the rainbow gathering I was used to, I could not help but laugh and dance around with the rest of them. 🙂 Plus the psytrance was on point! I had never seen a psytrance dancefloor dustier! (Until symbiosis this year!)

To Be Continued………