Happy 4th of July! (a couple days late...)

so i'm a little late in posting this, but Happy 4th anyways!

unlike the rest of you back home, i worked on the 4th. and i worked hard! it was hot, rainy, and hot (remember, europe has yet to discover air conditioning). anyhoo, by the end of the day the weather had cleared so i went out to the Bout de Monde for a 4th of July celebration hosted by the american club in geneva. they say it's the biggest one outside the states, but i'm sure everybody says that about their own party... still, it was nice to find a little piece of home.

the Bout de Monde is a sports complex about 20 mins on foot from my apt, so my lazy self took the bus. kinda funny to hop on and find everyone on board was a transplant. mostly expats and their families attend this thing, but some locals come too. it was busy!

with the exception of food and booze, everything is free at this event. apparently they get some corporate sponsors to help make it a big party. there were free balloon rides,

free fair rides like bumper cars,

and free music. there were bands playing on the stage, but they weren't dressed like these guys...

they even set up 4 plasma TVs so you could watch the football game and eat fair food at the same time...

i watched for a bit, but had to move on. they had a harley biker show earlier in the day, and even tho i missed it, some of the bikes were still out and i wanted to see them before they all went.

i even found some french-speaking biker dudes!

got caught taking photos by one of their friends (i'm sure he thot i was your stereotypical asian tourist taking snapshots), so he insisted on taking one of me. posting for a limited time only! you know how i feel about me and pictures and the internet...

after snapping photos i ran into gregory and mita, jackie's friends that i met post-BEP at the montreux jazz festival. aren't they cute?! mita is from malaysia and gregory is from switzerland. hung out w/them the rest of the evening, met a few more folks, and watched fireworks (sorry, camera battery died at this point so no pretty photos). the fireworks were awesome, tho kinda funny too. they set everything to music, so it thru me off at first watching stuff explode to madonna. they even had colored lights set up so it looked liked everything was shooting out of red and green smoke. CRAZY!

after all that was done, we went back to the TVs to check on the game. got there just in time to watch italy score both goals to beat germany. and since france beat portugal last night (i won't post how i really feel about that game), i'm not quite sure who to cheer for during sunday night's championship.

wknd is almost here. WOOHOO! think i'm going to zurich or a mountain this wknd. will let you know next wk!