American Superheroes in New Zealand!

We've had a lot of fun celebrating Independence Day for the past week here in New Zealand. I think this week has been the most patriotic week I've had in a long time!

It all started off on Monday night when we were invited to the Ambassador's Independence Day Event because, let's be honest, we are pretty high profile Americans. The event was a reception with some musical performances by small children (always a classic for patriotic events) and a speech by the Ambassador. I have to say, I'm not much into political events or formal gatherings of any kind, but this was actually a good time. The Ambassador's speech was very good. He compared the USA (both the country as a whole and the people) to various superheroes and they made surprisingly good parallels. In Spiderman we have the reluctant hero that just wants to be left alone, but who cannot sit back and watch injustice. In Ironman you see the hero who is a bit eccentric, and not well understood by outsiders, but who nonetheless comes in to save the day. In Batman, the hero who fights injustice with no pomp and circumstance and even dislike from his community. And Superman, the outsider who rises up to be just what we need. Overall, it made me proud to be American!

Cute little boy's choir singing The National Anthem

The Ambassador's speech, sorry for the crappy lighting in the pic!

On Thursday we had the 2nd Annual Pwc 4th of July party. We had several of Will's co-workers over for a good ol (winter) BBQ. We had lots of fun decorations (thanks to Katie Sleeman) and lots of good food. In true American fashion 3/4 of the dishes were dessert :) I also made a 4th of July Quiz with some tough political, sports and pop culture questions. The winners were a team of 2 Americans and 2 Kiwis--Congrats to Marshall, Nathan, Danielle and Mel! At the end of night we had a "photo booth" with fun props for everyone to dress up in and get their picture taken. I'm sure we took more than a few new Facebook profile pics.

Full house of people who LOVE America!

They lit up the sky tower in red, white and blue just for my party! --photo courtesy Drew Peters :) 

THEN on Saturday we had our Independence Day celebration with Team America where we played football and rugby and had a picnic outside in the lovely Auckland winter weather. The football game ended in a tie, and the rugby game was won by the team with the South African, so we might have had a slight advantage. I learned that rugby is very hard mentally and physically. Mentally it's hard to remember to stay behind the ball and stay in your zone of defense. Physically it is non-stop running for however long you play with lots of switching directions, and starting/stopping. I will say I was sweating a lot more from rugby than football. Craig promised to have "rugby school" for us Americans so we can learn more strategy to the game for the future (currently our strategy was just to "do something"). Overall we had a pretty darn good Independence Week.

Safe to to say we are all proud to be, be married/engaged to or friends with an American!