Remember that time the President came to town?

So . . . this is embarrassing. The side effect of not being able to publish posts for a few months is that it really makes our laziness at publishing posts before the shutdown look ridiculous. Case in point. This happened in November. We are now telling you about it in July.

You may remember (or might not, it was a long time ago) President Obama came to Australia, specifically to Canberra and Darwin. Melbourne and Sydney were super pissed, and since all the media comes out of one of those two cities we heard a lot about how Canberra and Darwin were too small and not "worth a Presidential visit." Screw you Sydney. You may have a cool opera house and 20% of the population, but whatevs- Canberra got Obama!

After giving an address to Parliament (we got stuck in the traffic closures as he drove there) President Obama was going to go to the Embassy to give a private address to Embassy staff. Since Greg works for the US, he naturally got to go. Laurel, however, works for the Aussies. So she called in sick. Shhhhh, don't tell anyone. As with any event concerning politicians, the schedule got behind almost immediately, so we had a lot of waiting and standing around. Which is fine, because really, who is going to chastise the Leader of the Free World for being late? Also, Greg was able to convert a hedge into a cup-holder.

A helicopter came and circled the area a few times to make sure everything was legit. It was. I can only imagine how many pictures of this helicopter some of the nearby embassies took. Probably only two or three less than us.

When he arrived, the excitement was really building. The Ambassador gave a short opening address. He's a really good speaker, and a great guy, but I felt a little bad for him, since everyone clearly just wanted him to stop talking and give up the podium.

There he is! We were literally within 20 feet of the President of the United States. All we had to do was move to another country.

We were about one row too far back to shake the President's hand . . .

 . . . but this picture makes it look like we totally did.

Ah, don't leave! Melbourne and Sydney had a point. Darwin is lame, you should totally stay here. Sadly, he did not listen. Stupid future marine base in Darwin. Always making President Obama go visit it.

Now, you may notice below how smartly dressed Laurel and Greg are. They look good (and patriotic). They put some effort in to looking their finest, since how many opportunities like this do you have? And if you aren't going to suit up for the President, who exactly are you going to suit up for? Strangely, we would estimate that only about 40% of the crowd followed this philosophy. There were quite a few people in shorts and sandals, which just seemed weird. Suit up, America, suit up.