November 7
New Zealand is 21 hours ahead of home (18 hours ahead of the east coast). This means that the November 6 election results actually happen on November 7 here.
As we were waiting for our second cave tour it was 2pm, so we figured that the East Coast polls were probably closing. By the time we finished the tour and other exploring it was after 3pm, and we got into the car for the 2-hour drive to Auckland. We scanned the car radio a few times and were able to get some top and bottom of the hour news reports; as we got closer to Auckland we finally found Radio New Zealand which seems to be a close approximation of NPR.
The US elections were the top news story of the day. Lots of interviews of Americans living in New Zealand, and of Kiwis living in the States. Apparently in Wellington (the capitol), the US ambassador went to a bar to host a party, and there were life-sized cut-outs of both Obama and Romney.
By the 4:30 news we had news that several battleground states had gone for Obama. And by 5pm we heard that MSNBC, Fox, BBC, and CNN had all called Obama the winner. Note that this is an hour after the west coast polls closed.
By 6pm we had found lodging and were able to look at the results online. A fine, civilized hour for results. We watched Romney's concession speech, then went to dinner.
We had a very tasty Japanese meal, complete with saki. Jeff posed an interesting question: in how many countries have we eaten at Japanese restaurants together? We counted 8....US, Australia, Japan, Luxembourg, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, and now New Zealand.
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Nice bit of food trivia. We would probably try to count Mexican restaurants. Hard to find outside of the US and Mexico, though. :)
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good travel destinations so you can add to the list (no Canada???).