Sevens!
This weekend a lot of us students stayed in town for the New Zealand International Sevens Rugby Tournament. Sevens is a tournament between sixteen countries in seven different cities. This weekend it was in Wellington. The tournament is different from most rugby games because there are seven people on a team instead of fifteen. This makes for a quick exciting game. The halves are also only seven minutes long so the games go very fast. Every team plays three games on the first day for ceding in the elimination games on the second. 
The tournament is kicked off with a parade of all the teams on Thursday afternoon. Everybody went down town to enjoy the festivities after class.
Friday is the first day of the tournament. Three other students and I decided to go try to get into the sold out game. We patiently waited and scalped some tickets for 100 dollars New Zealand. Not bad considering one day lasts more than 10 hours and has 24 games. This is a picture of a line out play in one of the kiwi games. Damn, I sound like I know what I'm talking about!
But the truth is sevens is much more than a rugby tournament. It is a weekend long party. Everyone dresses up in costumes for the game; it looks a lot like an adult Halloween party for 40,000 people. The atmosphere is electric and the night gets crazier with time because instead of maybe four hours of drinking at a football game these people have been guzzling for ten hours. My friends and I have decided that sevens can best be described as an enormous costume party and if you get bored with that you can turn around and watch a little rugby.
Well, everyone was dressing up so we didn't want to break tradition. Believe it or not the US had a team in the tournament so we thought it was only right that we support them. In the picture is Adam, Doug, Jim, and myself. On a side note it was pretty educational having my chest painted like that in front of all the kiwis because it was the first time we had been in a large group where it was obvious that we were Americans. I definitely found out a lot about how people feel about the US. There is no middle ground from what I can tell. Everyone either told me they loved America and chanted USA or said F America. It was pretty interesting
I'm really glad I dressed up for the game, though. During halftime of the second United States match they played "Born in the USA" over the loudspeakers and we were on the jumbotron for like 5 minutes. We had a great time watching all the games. Sadly the United States lost all three matches on the day we watched.
On Saturday we had a party at Katie's apartment for the last day of the tournament. Of course costumes were still required. Doug and I went as southern frat boys. Look at those short shorts and croakies!
I think Cailin will be proud to know that I am still in the practice of "rescuing" banners from the dangerous streets of down town. The red one is mine and it is six feet tall. It is the coolest souvenir you could hope for from this country. I think it will look excellent on my wall in Atlanta.
We finished off the week by going out for "Super Bowl Monday." All of the Americans went out to sports bars so we could watch the game. This one is called Chicago's and had a lot of American decorations which was nice. This upcoming weekend I'm going to Queenstown in the South Island. It is one of the Adventure capitals of the world and incredibly scenic so look for a good post about that before I leave for Sydney, hopefully.
The tournament is kicked off with a parade of all the teams on Thursday afternoon. Everybody went down town to enjoy the festivities after class.
Friday is the first day of the tournament. Three other students and I decided to go try to get into the sold out game. We patiently waited and scalped some tickets for 100 dollars New Zealand. Not bad considering one day lasts more than 10 hours and has 24 games. This is a picture of a line out play in one of the kiwi games. Damn, I sound like I know what I'm talking about!
But the truth is sevens is much more than a rugby tournament. It is a weekend long party. Everyone dresses up in costumes for the game; it looks a lot like an adult Halloween party for 40,000 people. The atmosphere is electric and the night gets crazier with time because instead of maybe four hours of drinking at a football game these people have been guzzling for ten hours. My friends and I have decided that sevens can best be described as an enormous costume party and if you get bored with that you can turn around and watch a little rugby.
Well, everyone was dressing up so we didn't want to break tradition. Believe it or not the US had a team in the tournament so we thought it was only right that we support them. In the picture is Adam, Doug, Jim, and myself. On a side note it was pretty educational having my chest painted like that in front of all the kiwis because it was the first time we had been in a large group where it was obvious that we were Americans. I definitely found out a lot about how people feel about the US. There is no middle ground from what I can tell. Everyone either told me they loved America and chanted USA or said F America. It was pretty interesting
I'm really glad I dressed up for the game, though. During halftime of the second United States match they played "Born in the USA" over the loudspeakers and we were on the jumbotron for like 5 minutes. We had a great time watching all the games. Sadly the United States lost all three matches on the day we watched.
On Saturday we had a party at Katie's apartment for the last day of the tournament. Of course costumes were still required. Doug and I went as southern frat boys. Look at those short shorts and croakies!
I think Cailin will be proud to know that I am still in the practice of "rescuing" banners from the dangerous streets of down town. The red one is mine and it is six feet tall. It is the coolest souvenir you could hope for from this country. I think it will look excellent on my wall in Atlanta.
We finished off the week by going out for "Super Bowl Monday." All of the Americans went out to sports bars so we could watch the game. This one is called Chicago's and had a lot of American decorations which was nice. This upcoming weekend I'm going to Queenstown in the South Island. It is one of the Adventure capitals of the world and incredibly scenic so look for a good post about that before I leave for Sydney, hopefully.
posted by Patrick at 8:15 PM
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