Hamilton is a small city about 150km south of Auckland. You might be wondering how we got there considering that we don't own cars and certainly did not want to ride on a bus. The answer? RENTAL CAR! How I went about getting a rental car is another question you might be asking yourself. Its all about the coupons baby. My host father gets free 24 hour rental vouchers through his company N-Compass. Realistically he don't need them because he owns a car and its much more time efficient to use his own. Since he has no use for these vouchers, he gave one to me for free. The lovely car that I was given was a brand spankin new 2011 Toyota Camry with a lifetime driving distance of 88km! (88km is about 54.6 miles) I had a pretty flash car for the drive.
Considering that nobody died, there were no accidents and nobody was severely injured I considered it a good day! Driving on the left hand side of the road was quite fun but also very different that what I'm used to. One particular thing that I had to get used to was the difference between Imperial and Asian cars. Back home all cars are standardized, having the blinkers on the left side of the steering wheel and the wipers on the right side. But here, there are Imperial (European) and Asian cars. Imperial cars use the system that we have back in the states, blinkers on the left and wipers on the right. Whereas Asian cars are the opposite. Due to the fact I had a Toyota this was something new and somewhat absurd to get used to. A few times before merging I hit the wipers instead of the blinkers. It was quite funny but at the end of the day I got used to it. Looking to the left to use my rearview mirror was also another absurdity associated with driving on the left side of the road.
Back to the focus of this post. RUGBY!!! It took us about an hour and a half to go 150km, traveling at about a rate of 100-110kph. The drive was relatively easy because its a straight shot, staying on one road appropriately named Highway Road 1. Jamming out to the amazing songs on my iPod made the trip heaps of fun, not to mention the 10,000 Tim Tams that we had in the back of the car.
Once we arrived, we went to get lunch at a very nice Italian restaurant. We all ordered small individualized thin crust pizzas. After sorting out lunch, the next thing we needed to do was to get costume and decorations to wear to the game. The end result was flags, flash hats, face paint a huge tie and rugby jerseys.
The weather was not perfect for the game but we had a blast. It began to rain after the second half started and we all got quite soaked. The fans were insane, particularly the Welsh. We had decided to support the underdog, Fiji. Unfortunately they ended up losing 66-0. It was a complete and utter blowout of epic proportions. Its crazy to say that I've been to a Rugby World Cup game, even if it wasn't the All Blacks or two teams that I particularly liked. All in all it was good fun!
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