It will come as no surprise that my birthday (a British person) being on independence day (America’s moving out party for British people) was both wonderful and amusing to our new American friends. Me and Cat ended up having a very busy day.
In order to start my birthday off in style, I ‘decided’ to take part in the Fort Collins 4th July 5 km Firecracker race (though if I’m being honest, a certain Harry-Potter-loving, anti-clapping office friend talked me into it!). Despite the early start (7.30 am), the race was really good fun with a trumpet lead national anthem (I still don’t know the words), and some great fancy dress. This was about the median level of America-loving clothing:
Cat felt this was exactly how not to spend a birthday, so organized a birthday/4th July pool party/bbq at our friend John’s house (thank you John!). It was sunny, hot (36 °C), the pool was warm (29 °C), the food was obviously excellent, the craft beer tasty, and my friends Rachel and Morgan got me some strong American clothing to let everyone know how much I loved the 4th:
Now you might think that the fact the pool was full of inflatables such as a grumpy-looking turtle would not matter to a bunch of serious 20-somethings, and we would just sit around drinking beer, throwing an american football around…
… and you would be wrong:
Though to be fair, I think the turtle won in the end.
We also played some disk dunk, which is like a cross between Frisbee and basketball. Your teammate throws the Frisbee towards your bin and you have to dunk it in for points. Check me out below inventing the reverse dunk and doing a celebratory lap hi-5 lap of the pool:
To finish off the evening, the whole of Fort Collins decided to throw me a fireworks show to make me feel welcome (is a solid joke and I’m sticking by it). It’s quite hard to put into perspective how impressive the fireworks show was, but needless to say they did not hold back, and my eyes and ears hurt afterwards:
Happy American Independence day you guys!
Rob
Channons Abroad 