RUGBY!

It's about 9:30 on Saturday night, and I'm sitting in the lounge talking rugby with Hill. Tonight is one of the most anticipated games of the Rugby World Cup: New Zealand vs. France! France knocked the All Blacks out of the quarter-finals four years ago, and the ABs are ready for battle! Our old-school bunny-eared tv only gets three channels, and normally the RWC wouldn't be aired on one of those, but since this is such a massive rivalry the game is available even to Dunedin scarfies. :)

I got my rugby fix last weekend when Hillary, Maxine, her friend Kim and I went to England v. Georgia at the new stadium here in town. An AB game would have been our first choice, of course, but those matches were a bit too pricey for our budgets, and none of them are in Dunedin. Anyhow, we decided that the atmosphere of a world cup game, with the experience of dressing up and cheering with a few thousand other fans would be a pretty awesome experience. (A once-in-a-lifetime experience probably, for those of us whose home country doesn't even know what a rugby looks like.) Plus, you know, theoretically we will some day be too old to wear face paint and dress like a flag. :)

We decided to support Georgia because we figured the underdogs deserved to have some fans in the stands, too. As it happened, heaps of other people decided the same thing, and there was a decent-sized Georgia following at the game! We did the wave with inexhaustible enthusiasm, we hollered till our voices nearly disappeared, we bonded with the international fans around us, and we got in several pictures with random strangers. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my trip: being an American-turned Georgia rugby fan attending a World Cup match in New Zealand! Hillary, the resident photographer at 43 Howe, did a fantastic job of documenting the evening, so all photo credit goes to her.