After 10 days of sunshine, a rare thing in Wellington apparently, the rain has come and with it time inside to write.

Every year around this time Wellington hosts the Sevens. Named for the 7-minute halves and 7-player teams, it is an international rugby tournament that draws massive crowds, and encourages massive amounts of partying. My lovely boss gave William and me tickets to the first day (of two), and some advice: “Watch where you step.” Along with those words of wisdom, we realized that costumes were an absolute necessity. Because we are Coloradans, natives even, we both have blue jeans, cowboy boots, and western gear in general. So the obvious choice was to dress up as cowboys (cowpeople?).

We spent $8, some on our authentic sheriff accessories, including our very own plastic pistols and bullets. Although they were very obviously fake, I still felt apprehensive about taking our mock-weapons into a huge, public event. But in a country where nobody carries guns, not even police officers, you don’t have to worry about a plastic toy gun being confiscated or mistaken as a real firearm. The gun violence in the USA seems more and more absurd and horrific watching from a distance, hearing how people in another part of the world view the shootings. And though the Sevens was probably never thought of as a place to discuss gun “rights”, we were very proud to dress as American cowboys who would never ever own handguns, or agree that everyone should be able to.

On a less explosive topic, or maybe more of one, here are some of the lovely costumes and sights from a day at the Sevens. And rugby is quite a cool game, by the way. We were lucky to go.