Super Samoan Sunday (Written 2/4/07)

Well today was the national holiday known as Super Bowl Sunday and Samoa decided to close everything and take the day off – nah, that's just any ole regular Sunday. But before I get into how my Super Bowl Sunday went let me tell you that something special did happen for Samoa over the weekend – they won the finals in a National Rugby 7s match in Wellington on Friday night. They beat the Fiji team which is one of the best rugby teams in the world and Samoa hasn't won a Rugby final since 1993, so it was a pretty huge deal. Everyone was talking about the game on Saturday and Sunday but it's only one leg of a world wide tour – so the rugby team won't be back in Samoa for a while, but when they do return there's a rumor that one day will be declared a national holiday to celebrate their historic win over Fiji! I don't think I've ever been happier for a rugby team to win – national holidays for sport teams rock!

Now onto the American sports national holiday. As you all know, I was pretty stoked about the Bears finally making it to the Super Bowl and was very much looking forward to watching them try to put forth a decent game. I was also looking forward to a Sunday that contained no rain – it has been raining all week and I really wanted to ride down to the city in dry weather so as not to be soaking for church and the Super Bowl party I was going to. As soon as I walked out the door to bike to town I noticed that it was basically clear skies over the main town area and the clouds that looked like they were holding rain were heading away from the city, so my day got off to a great start! So I went to church under dry conditions and immediately after church I bolted to the Kofi Haus to watch the game. Now the rest of the Peace Corps volunteers went to JT/Hennie's (where we all went last year for the Super Bowl) but Bryan and I have the hook up so we were able to attend a private party at Kofi Haus and it was without a doubt the best time I've ever had at a Super Bowl party (for reference, this is like my second Super Bowl party ever). Even though Bryan and I were the only Americans in the place we were surrounded by Samoans who knew the game and were actually into every second of it – no distracting talking and everyone was paying attention to what was happening on the screen, it was great! As for the game itself, I missed the Hester kickoff return to the start the game but overall I think that Chicago had a decent effort (Rex didn't start throwing the game away until the 3^rd quarter) and Indy wasn't as sharp as they could have been, but I'm happy that Peyton finally got a Super Bowl ring. This win for Peyton is important on a couple of levels – it's the first time he's won a championship in his football career, he finally beat a Florida Gator and he avoids becoming another Dan Marino (a lot of records, but no championships). Indy definitely looked like the team of destiny this year and there win over the Patriots 2 weeks ago actually means something now. So I was happy that the golden boy from THE University of Tennessee finally got a ring – he (and Marvin Harrison and Tony Dungy) definitely deserve it. The best part of the game was that we were able to watch it on televisions at eye level without having to squint, we could hear the commentary (it was commentary from the NFL Network, not CBS) and one of the screens we were watching on was a plasma television. So hopefully the next time I watch the Super Bowl (back home in the states) I'll be enjoying it on a nice, crisp High Definition television. The oddest thing about the game was the weather – for the whole week it has been nothing but rain here but on today it was nice and sunny out BUT in Miami it was raining like no tomorrow. I guess God had to move the rain somewhere and I'm glad he didn't leave it here.

After the game, I hung around and chatted with some of the guys for a bit before heading home. The humidity is pretty bad here because of all the recent rain so I had a bit of a rough time getting up Mount Doom but I did it – my first official bike trip up Mount Doom in 2007, let the race to 100 begin! For the entire time I was out the weather was perfect and exactly what I was praying for – as soon as I got home and showered, it started raining at my house! How ironic is that. So maybe now that the Super Bowl is out of the way we can have our week of rain to cancel school and take a few days off. If not, then the storm that is brewing is about to head my way a lot sooner then I would like it to. But you know what I always say (and Phillip stole this from me), "Just Bring It!"

PS – The halftime show was actually decent this year, no old man syndrome going on. The funniest part of the halftime show was when Prince (in the rain) began to sing "Purple Rain", everyone at the Kofi Haus began singing along with him! Imagine about 10-15 big Samoan guys (ranging from 24-54) singing "Purple Rain" and you can imagine how funny a scene this was. I told you, it was a lot of fun hanging around folks who were actually into the game and provide a great atmosphere to enjoy all aspects of the game.