Meteor Shower!

Sunday, August 12th 2007, Wake up time: 8:55am


I woke up surprisingly early and passed morning playing more computer games. Uncle Jerry and Aunt Sue (Bev's other brother) were coming round for dinner, so I offered to clean the kitchen and laid some napkins out for when they arrived. 


When they arrived, we sat round and talked and had snacks and root beer. Lunch was a serving of Kielbasa (a common North American type of sausage), chicken and salad with mozzarella. It was all quite delicious! Desert was a serving of Carrot Cake. 


After lunch, we took a walk with them to the local park. We passed a house that was giving away free items (Americans do this a lot with anything they don't want.) I picked up a hard hat that was in the pile of items. Why? Because I could, and I wanted a free hard hat! We finished our short walk around the neighbourhood and got home. Once we got home, we sat and talked in the living room while having ice-lollies. We then said goodbye and cleared up the left-over food.


Ralph was channel surfing and he stumbled on a soccer game. I'd never seen Americans play football and as it was David Beckham's new team (LA Galaxy), I thought it would be worth a watch. They were playing the New England Revolutionaries, who were winning 1-0. The score stayed that way, and we watched quite a bit of the first half and the whole of the second. It was an awful match. No wonder people mock American's way of playing. They were playing the terrible tactic of smashing it up the field and hoping someone receives it. The passing was crap, the game didn't flow and the commentary was worse than average, with really obvious statements such as "LA Galaxy need one goal to equalise." There was a shot of Beckham with his head in his hands (as he wasn't playing) and I couldn't help laughing. He probably thought "The money wasn't worth this." 


After the abysmal game, I went to do my clothes wash. For dinner, we just finished off what we hadn't eaten at lunch. The news had announced a meteor shower over our area, so we headed to the park again to watch it. It was really quite amazing, and we saw many meteors over head! It was going on a while and it was getting late so we headed home and I cleaned the kitchen. We also wanted to get back as the first televised debates were on. I had visited a good year, as it was the building up to the new Presidential Election (after what have called the Tyranny of Bush) It was only the first stages but it was a good chance to see each candidate that was running. It was more important as in America you vote in the candidate for each party, and then vote for the party themselves.


In terms of this system, I am torn, part of me thinks it seems a really good idea as it is more democratic to elect the candidates. However, it's a Republican candidate and a Democrat. If you have loyalty to a party, you might not choose a good candidate for the other on purpose (hence why some State laws make sure you are affiliated with a party.) The other negative is that it can introduce what is called 'Personality Politics' where people are judgemental and base their votes on superficial reasons (which is why some have argued Obama only did so well because he was mixed-race.)  After the debates were over, which I was taking an active interest in as I wanted to learn the politics of America, we headed out into the garden to see more of the meteor shower before bed. 


Thanks for listening.