Hobnobbing with the famous

Because Rugby World Cup is such a major worldwide sporting event - surely you Americans must know all about every single match result right as it happens, eh? - you'll appreciate that I was able to hobnob with the rich and famous ... err, well probably just the famous rugby players on the teams we hosted here in Nelson: Italy, Russia, Australia and the USA. OK, maybe in some countries they are famous, but I'm pretty sure in the US the American team isn't all that famous either.


EITHER way ... I was able to have a moment to get my picture taken with captain Todd Clever (gotta cut that hair) and helped farewell the entire team from Nelson. I have to say that they were by far the nicest team we dealt with, so polite and appreciative. It was a real pleasure to meet them not just for me but also for the rest of our team working on the tournament.

Don and I went to the match to be rowdy Americans cheering for the home team USA Eagles and we were as loud as possible. Got a text from a colleague about 5 minutes into the broadcast - Don had been on TV!! As it happens we recorded the game and there was indeed a glimpse of his smiley face all painted in red, white and blue so I took a pic with my phone of our TV :)

As fans, we stayed in the stadium after the game to thank the Americans, who were going home the next day having not made the quarter final cut, and they shook each and every person's hand, it was a really great showing for the USA, they impressed a lot of people.

Nelson hosted its last RWC match yesterday, phew, the drama is finally over. I can get back to real life now.

Next up on the blog, we are applying for citizenship. The end to our five-ish year journey to become permanent New Zealanders.