Suzanne after Hong Kong: 4th of July ... on the 5th!

So I am constantly surrounded by a myriad of other nationalities here at Crossroads, the majority of which are Australians. And since I'm always outnumbered, and also since everyone likes to pick on America, I can't really say much about my country without being berated and told how much better Australia is. It's actually a little annoying, because America's still my home, and I'd appreciate a little respect.

In light of this, myself and the other four Americans (Christy, Josh, Kara, and Lonita) on our team of over 70 decided to have a little 4th of July celebration. Schedule conflicts kept us from celebrating on the actual 4th, so we switched over to the 5th. And it was a glorious night!

We began with the classic 4th of July feast of hot dogs (real American ones!), potato chips, watermelon, and even some red, white, and blue Jello. (Aussies don't get Jello ... they call it jam, and they call jam jelly .. it's all very confusing). And we all made the similar observation: "Wow, I didn't realize how few of us there were until we all got in a room together." Our numbers may be few, but our patriotism is big, especially when we've been cut off from our fond traditions while in Asia (and Christy is married to an Australian, so she really misses Americanisms sometimes).

We decided we needed to take this incredibly rare opportunity of being just the Americans to do a little reconnaissance work and talk about all the things the Aussies and Brits here do that make no sense to us. They put a "u" in color and honor (colour and honour), they use the metric system and measure temperatures in celsius, and, worst of all, they write their dates out of order. April 7, 2008 becomes 7-4-08 instead of 4-7-08. What's up with that?

Then, Kara, a fellow Texan, had the truly inspired idea of heading out to Disney and watching the fireworks. At Crossroads, we have been very blessed and have a few cars that have been given to us. They are generally used for business needs, but as it was Saturday night, we were able to use one of the vehicles to drive to Disney, a 40 minute drive away on Lantau Island (and cheaper than taking public transport). We arrived at the Hollywood Hotel, where we sat in the parking lot to watch the fireworks (it's free to watch from the parking lot). They lasted about 15 minutes.

We then took a walk through the grounds of the hotel, and it was thoroughly American, being the Hollywood Hotel. The grounds were amazing, and they were playing good ol' rock and roll music. We walked through the pseudo Hollywood, and took many silly photos.

Christy and I had decided to theme things up a bit, and printed out some American flags that we took with us. Throughout the evening, the goal was to get the flag in as many photos as possible. Great fun!

So it was a completely ridiculous, silly evening, and I loved it. Every one of us was from a different place in the States, but we still had so much common ground. Everyone was willing to be embarassed and take photos with the flags, especially Kara who had no problem pulling out the biggest flag for every photo, and she's lived in HK the longest (5 years).

It made me realize how much I miss talking to people who have the same cultural background as me. Kara and I both talked about how surprised we were at how different it was to be talking with just Americans, and it was almost a little bit of a relief not to have to work to re-word something or think about the other person not relating to you. It was just nice to indulge for the evening.

And we finished off with homemade apple pie. It just doesn't get any better than that.