Following the Leader, New Zealand, and the Super Bowl

alright so this past weekend has been very eventful. it all started on saturday when amaya, cassie, and i volunteered to go into london with the study abroad people and help the students that are here for the second semester only around. we got our fare into london and lunch paid for, so we were pretty excited to help!!! we met up with everybody around 11 and went into central. it was funny to watch people in london for the first time but mostly it was really annoying cause they just screamed "american" sooooo much. it was like there was a giant finger pointing at us giving us a lot of unwanted attention. but it was an absolute gorgeous day, the sun was out and it was warm... so i couldnt be annoyed for too long!!! amaya, me, cassie, and jen (she works in the abroad office. she is one of the girl's that helps us out with questions..she is maybe 25 ish) were really ancy to get going away from the group because saturday is also waitangi day in london. its a holiday in new zealand and all the people that are from new zealand in london come out to celebrate all day long!!! they celebrate in a giant pub crawl along the yellow circle line on the underground. how it works is you have to ride from stop to stop on the underground, and you are ONLY allowed to ride on the circle line but when you are on it you arent allowed to hold onto anyone or anything. so you have to have really good balance, but when there are so many people there that you are smashed up against one another than...thats ok. but it was so much fun cause a lot of people are dressed up in funny costumes, new zealand flags, or wearing any all black apparel. BUT the big thing of the day is the giant haka dance in parliament square by big ben. everyone on the pub crawl (some 8,000 + people) crowd into the square and whoever can climb to a high spot and grab the crowd's attention leads all the men (shirtless) in the haka (its a traditional new zealand dance that women arent allowed to take part in, the all blacks do it before all of their rugby games if you have seen that). it is one of the most "man" dance i have ever seen. its totally an ego boosting dance if you ask me, but it was really cool to watch! we spent the rest of the day (the five of us) hitting the rest of the pubs on the circle line and watching the new zealand pride dance around us. while leading the "kids" around i stopped to take my picture with the gaurd...amaya, me, and jen on the circle line showing off our sweet skills of balance...gemma, cassie, me, amaya, and jen in front of westminster abbey right after the giant haka dance!

some guy trying to lead the haka to about 8,000 people or so...good luck buddy!there is the new zealand all blacks performing the haka before a game...

so sunday was obviously the superbowl and we totally lucked out and were able to watch it on tv here. it did come on at about 10:45 pm than having the actual game start around 11:30 pm. But we had a bunch of people over anyways (a bunch of americans who were ready to cheer, and some very confused british and german people). i tried to explain the rules for the most part to them, and me myself trying to remember them also. but it was a lot of fun. the room quickly turned into the colt fans sitting in the back on the counters (thats where i was located) with all the bear fans up front. it was a really good time the only thing that i didnt like was the fact that there were no american commercials. i didnt know if there was gonna be cause the channel that aired the superbowl bought the rights to the entire superbowl (they had bragged about it for a few weeks coming up to it) and i was secretly hoping there would be commercials but, alas no. so now i have to youtube.com any of them if i want to see them!!! but i didnt make it through the entire superbowl, and i went to bed at 3 a.m. and i had class at 9 a.m. BUT all in all the weekend was a good one and very eventful!!!!!

colt people upset about the touchdown in like the first 20 seconds of the game....