Sunday, November 4, 2007

An Early 4th of July

In 1605 a number of Roman Catholic conspirators attempted to blow up the House of Parliament, but failed. Last night we enjoyed a colorful fireworks display in celebration of this failed attempt. Since New Zealand obviously won't be celebrating Independence Day, it was an early 4th of July celebration for us. We first hung out in the backyard with our landlords, their children and some friends of theirs, and watched them light off a few fireworks of their own. We started off with a twirly sparkly thing, a roman candle and a few others. Then they lit off a larger firework that shot off a bunch of colorful sparks, however, as the firework was going off, it fell off the fence and started shooting sparks as us. The kids were scream and the adults were panicking. I freaked out and ran behind the fence, with Dave right behind me. Deb was trying to shield her son and had a hole burned into her pants. Pretty much we almost died. That may have been an exaggeration.

After that we went to the upstairs balcony to watch the fireworks display that would be going on at the stadium a few miles northeast of us. Dave and I grabbed some Root Beer (technically Sarsaparilla, they don't have Root Beer) and ice cream for Root Beer floats. We made one for each othe kids. They had never had a Root Beer float before or even heard of it. We had to wait a while for the fireworks to begin. They started about quarter to ten. Unfortunately our vision was impared by a bunch of tall trees in the distance so we could only see the higher fireworks. It ended with a not so grand, grand finale. The fireworks in the US are so much bigger and better.

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