June 25

HAPPY PRIDE DAY

After waiting an obnoxious amount of time for Nicole to get ready this morning, we finally left an hour later than planned. We started in Soho Square, where they were selling the official #NoFilter London Pride shirts, and face painting, and handing out free buttons and whatnot. There we ran into Cate and her friend, and this is when we started to separate. We knew that there was no way the 8 of us, 10 with Cate and her friend, were going to be able to stick together, and we were right. No one was deciding where to go and we were tired of waiting on people, so we left Cate and her friend, and Aleesia stayed with them.

We gt to Trafalgar Square just as the parade was beginning to go by, and in the confusion of 'where should we go to see it?' Christian, Brittney, and Dom left too...but they were not nearly as into the event so that was absolutely no surprise. It was just myself, Katie, Nicole, and Alayna, trying to squeeze through the crowd now. These people could not figure out that there should not be 2/3 "lanes" of people going in the same direction, because they were going to get no where, which is exactly what happened. I felt like I was back in Fallas. We were at a pretty nice stand still for a few minutes before others started shoving through. Nicole and I lost Katie and Alayna in the crowd, but met up with them in front of a spot where we could see the parade from, yay! 

It was so awesome. Everybody was in a great mood, dancing, screaming, and high-fiving everybody they could reach. We saw a lot, a lot of drag and they were walking the parade route in heels that I would never be able to stand in. It's definitely an experience that everyone should have at least once. Between the 4 of us, this was the first PRIDE for all of us, and I think it made it extra great that we were in London for it, it was a massive event. There were a lot of American flags being waved, for Orlando, and it's really great to see a community come together in such a way. What I though was really interesting was that the police march in the parade, that's something that I don't think we'd see in America.

Later Katie, Emily, Aleesia, Alayna, Nicole, and I watched a movie which was a really interesting bonding experience for all of us.