Independence Day... 4th of July

So apparently if you are going to be anywhere for 4th of July... its got to be Boston. It's so right!

The day was HOT... the weather has been late 30's all week and today it was something like 39. Everyone keeps laughing at us Aussies complaining about the weather but its a different heat with like 100% humidity and very sticky/heavy air. Our rooms have turned into saunas!

Anyway during the day didn't do much other than sit in front of the fans in our common room :)

At about 4pm Ash, Michelle and I started getting ready to go out with all our American gear on. Had a few sneakies in the room and took some into Annenberg to mix with cold mixers :) We literally sat in Annenberg for an hour near the air con not moving- so worth it!

Bec and Liv joined us and we headed back into the heat to the T (train). We got out at Kendall which is the MIT side of the river as we had heard it wouldn't be as packed... there were still tens of thousands of people lol.

We walked along the river down to Harvard bridge and back. We found Stephan, Will, Daniel and some others on the way :) Some interestingly dressed people, though we felt the party with our USA tshirts.

The celebration had such an awesome vibe. They have this Band stand which was on the other side of the river and the Pops Band played as well as guest artist such as Howie Day and they had people involved with the Boston bombings come out... and we got to see and hear all of this on huge tv screens and speakers all around the river.  We definitely all took part in some bad karaoke to take me out to the ball game and funnily enough the American anthem sounds very similar with the advance Australia fair lyrics (thanks Ash).  They also had food vans everywhere... fried dough, coco bongo drinks, frozen hoaggies (ice cream cookie sandwiches), kettle corn, pretzels etc...

As it got closer to the 9.30 fireworks we made our way closer to the edge of the river, which was quite hard as people had been camped out since 6am! The fireworks were incredible (2nd only to Sydney's NYE celebrations... you just cant beat that). The music they choose was very moving especially when they had Obama do  a voice over about being Boston strong and sticking together- so moving (Boston Strong is the slogan for after the bombings and everyone working collectively).

After the fireworks we decided to head home straight away as the crowds were crazy. We ended up walking home with the thousands of other people and it was nice due to the temp dropping a little bit, although it took us an hour!

It was definitely my favourite fourth of July!!!