So anyway, as I said it is hard to believe that it is Chrsitmas time, because it is so warm, but yesterday, we had the pleasure of walking five minutes down to the main street in Auckland and watching the Auckland Santa Parade in the sunshine. I even got a little sunburned yesterday at the parade. It was very different watching a Christmas Parade in the heat, and some stores had santas dressed up in a red short sleeve and shorts costume! So wierd, but it was a lot of fun, and we really enjoyed seeing a Christmas parade; we have never seen one before, so we thought we would share some pictures with everyone.
This first picture is a policeman. They have such funny atire, and this is what they wear on a daily basis; it wasnt just even attire. We have even heard that policemen don't carry guns here. That is pretty crazy, and this guy was super nice. He kept walking up and down the street slapping the hands of all the children. That was fun to see.
This is a picture that Matty took before the parade to show how many people showed up to this parade, and this picture really does not do it justice. There were SO many people, it took us about ten minutes to walk home instead of five, because of trying to maneuver between all these people!
These here, I know it is hard to see, but are Maori's. They are the native settlers here in New Zealand, and they are very "Tongan-looking" people. They are dark-skinned and very muscular, but the Moari's that we have encountered (they really are all over) have been very nice. This parade was very culturally diverse, with the Maori's (we aren't completely sure how to pronounce it, but I keep saying "Mowry"), Koreans, as you will see later in the post, Chinese Dragons (they had Chinese Christmas music playing), Scottish and Irish bagpipers, and tons of other cultures too. Matt and I were saying that we will probably NEVER see another parade that is as diverse as this one was, so it was actually really unique and fun to see.
Here is the Chinese dragon. Matt really liked this, so he took tons of pictures of it, but here is the best one that he took.
And of course, they couldnt have a parade without a Kiwi bird in it, and we couldnt post this without a picture of it :)
The parade, like I said was very diverse, and it even had a float of Woody, Mr Potato Head, and they even had Dora the Explorer and tons of other children TV shows, some of which we do not know and some (sadly) that we do know...
One of my favorites was these beautiful horses (dont ask me what they are called). They were very bg and really pretty, but I didnt like them as much when they stopped and pooped right in front of us, so the rest of the parade it smelled pretty bad... but it's ok haha :)
And much to Matt's disappointment, they had SpongeBob, which is a Nickelodean (did I spell that right?) show, but no Penguins, which is made here, so why wouldnt they have that?!?
But in between all these floats and blimps, they had very off things too. They had tons of these guys on the really tall bikes, people on stilts walking, and even Halloween stuff! It was so wierd to see Halloween stuff in a Christmas parade. There were these girls dressed up in black dresses with black wings on, and black makeup running down their eyes... very odd, but it must mean something to the Kiwi's.
And of course, the finale was Santa. Mind you, it was called the Santa Parade, but there was ONE Santa (I guess that's not a bad thing), but it was wierd that there were not very many Christmas Floats at all really. It was very bazaar, but we are very glad that we were able to go see the parade, knowing that we will probably never see a parade like that again, particularly in Auckland, so we enjoyed it :)
Thanks as always for listening (reading I guess) to us babble and tell about the fun and wierd things we do in NZ. We love you all and cannot wait to post about our next adventures.Carla and Matty
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