Celebrating Guy Fawkes...

... whoops, I mean Independence Day (sorry, couldn't help myself).

So last night was pretty fun because we got to celebrate our first Independence Day in the US. We took a walk around the neighbourhood in the afternoon and were met with delightful sights of families throwing baseballs around the yard, and the delightful smell of BBQ wafting off the grill. We don't have a BBQ unfortunately - so Josh had to make do with pizza. Otherwise it was a pretty normal day for us - until it got to 9pm when we wandered down to the local park for the community fireworks display.

This was quite an epic fireworks display. It went on for 1/2 an hour, and was pretty impressive. There were heaps of people down at the park, and it was nice just to sit out on a balmy evening and watch the display. Josh took some pretty cool pictures and a short video that shows a bit of it. It was great to get out and do something a bit different. 

 

Today was business as usual for Josh with Greek class in the morning, but then we had an errand to run around lunch time, so afterwards decided to treat ourselves to our first 'eat out' lunch - at Subway. Hahaha - yup we are still playing it safe. It was cheap (for both of us together it cost less than one foot-long costs in NZ) and relatively familiar. I noticed that the two girls who were serving us were giving us some funny looks when we were first ordering, but then they finally asked where we were from and seemed very impressed that we were from New Zealand. Said that they liked our accents and that we needed to go back again so that they can hear us talk some more. Haha it's the first time that we have had anyone exclaim over our accents since we have been here - everyone else just seems to take it in their stride. So that was kind of cool.

Then we decided to go to a local park to eat our lunch and enjoy the sunny weather. And even had a go on the swings in the playground after we had eaten. It was nice. :D Here's a panorama that Josh took, our car is parked down the street on the right. It's a really pretty area with lots of big trees and that luscious grass again. :)

Hopefully Josh will get the chance to write an update for you on how he has been finding Summer Greek so far. He has definitely been working very hard. Otherwise we are very thankful again for everything that we have been blest with so far, and the next big thing is just finding a place to live - but the Seminary are being amazingly helpful in regards to that, and are searching for somewhere for us at the moment. 

I have been doing a bit more baking, and made some butter and buttermilk this morning which came out pretty well! So made a loaf of bread with the buttermilk which is quite tasty. A lot of food here seems to have quite a bit of sugar in it - so the bread that we have been buying from the store is quite sweet tasting (to us anyway), so it has been nice to be able to make some of our own bread. It's been really nice to make the most of summer fruit that is cheap here at the moment too - so we got some strawberries today which is exciting (it's not even Christmas and you can get strawberries! Heheheheh) So I have to decide whether to make them into sorbet, soft-serve ice-cream, or just have them fresh, all of the above are tempting!