Sunday, November 30, 2008

Turkey, Basketball, and 8 hours of Cricket


Happy Thanksgiving! This is our all of our home group that we had over for dinner.

This is another picture our home group minus Justin who is taking the picture. You can see some of the food.

And here is all of the food. We had turkey, green bean casserole, cranberries, cornbread, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and for dessert pumpkin pie and lemon pie. Alot of people had never had pumpkin pie before! We had quite a few left overs. We had never cooked for 15 before!

Ah, yes. This is Justin with his "mo" for Movember. It is now officially gone since it is December 1st in Australia. That is Skippy the kangaroo in the picture with him.

On Saturday night we headed out to the Adelaide 36'ers basketball game. Justin got free tickets from work. This is an overall shot of the court. We were half court about three rows up. Great seats. The 36'ers are part of the NBL (National Basketball League). They weren't near as good as the NBA players, but it was still a great game to watch and it was close! The 36'ers pulled out a win in the in end.

Adelaide Oval. This is were the Cricket 5 day test was held between Australia and New Zealand. A five day test means that the game can go on for 5 days, with each team batting twice. Adelaide Oval is supposed to be the most picturesque oval in all of Australia and possibly the world. This is the score board. It is all done manually. It is heritage listed, so it can't be knocked down.

This is the team warming up. The guy in the blue is Andrew Symonds and he is one of the most popular players on the National team. He was only up for 3 bowls (that is like a pitch in baseball) and he was out. I was pretty bummed since he was the only guy I had heard of before. Another guy, Hadden was up to bat pretty much all day and scored 168 runs. The game lasted from 10:30 in the morning until 5:45 at night. We stayed the whole time!

Another view of the oval

More of the oval

See the red blanket and the people on it. That is where we stayed all day long. All in all we were at the Cricket for 8 hours! We arrive at 9:30 and left at 5:45. It was quite an experience!

This is people getting the pitch ready. The pitch has stumps at each end. The stumps have bails on top. There is a batsman protecting the stumps at one end and on the other end is the bowler and another batsman. The batsman is supposed to protect the stumps and not let the bail get knocked off. And in the process they hit the ball to get points. So one batsman hits the ball and then he must run back and forth on the pitch with the other batsman to get points. Each day a minimum of 90 overs is played and an over consists of 6 bowls (or pitches). Australia was up to bat for 79 overs and then New Zealand finished the last 11. Cricket is pretty hard to explain. So this is very simple explanation of Cricket. Surprisingly enough, Justin has a pretty good idea of the game and I am not too shabby.

Here we are the oval!

Some of the action on the pitch.

This is Tyson and Talitha (they are my friends from work) who helped us to understand the Cricket.


We have been pretty busy the last week or so with Thanksgiving, basketball, and Cricket. It has been fun and we were able to give our Australian friends a bit of American culture with Thanksgiving and we got some Australian culture at the Cricket. I couldn't believe we were at the Cricket for 8 whole hours and that is normal for a Test match. Crazy!! We were lucky that it wasn't too hot because there was no shade. I couldn't imagine being there in the 100 degree heat with no shade! We are planning on going to the Cricket again on Boxing Day (December 26th) with our friends Rowan and Nyoli. It is another Test but we won't stay for the whole time! That is about it from here! We need to go rest after being at the Cricket all day! Next weekend we are going to see Australia the movie and relax a bit. We miss you all!!

2 comments:

Jess said...

Cricket baffles me. I'm glad you've managed to figure it out a bit. It's like the neverending game.

MOUSTACHE.

Less than two months, baby!

Justin and Ann said...

Less than two months! That is like so soon!! We are going to be two girls out on the town in Syndey! See you soon!!