College football and thanksgiving!

Hey all!


I've got a bunch of exciting stuff to tell you about.


First off, as you probably know, our church arranges a bunch of activities, one of them is called "mutual", on Wednesdays. Once in a while, they'll do career nights, where we will visit a company or a workplace.
Since one of the men at our church works at Channel 12, doing technical maintenance and repairs, we went there on a visit. It's near downtown Phoenix. It was pretty cool!

The Channel 12 news studio

They had turned on their greenscreen, which they usually use for weather reports. So we played around with that for a while.

This guy is the last man in charge of what is being broadcasted out of their studio.

One of several control rooms with a bunch of screens and buttons.

If you want to keep your job, you don't unplug any of these cables.

Channel 12 shared the building with the Arizona Republic newspaper, so we also got a quick look at their floor of the building too.

Now, time for the really fun stuff! Ever since I decided to go the U.S., I knew that I wanted to go see a football game, college or NFL. Well, last Saturday gave me that opportunity! The Arizona State University Sun Devils, the local Division I football team, hosted their in-state and Pac-12 rival, the University of Arizona Wildcats. Safe to say, I couldn't wait for Saturday to come around. 

I went to the game with two of my good friends, Delaney and Monica. Delaney and her dad has ASU season tickets, so whenever they go to games, they tailgate with a bunch of her dad's friends. So I got the tailgating experience too! 

We got to the parking lot at around 3.15, a good 4+ hours before the 7.30 kickoff. First off we just had to find a spot and claim it! The parking lot would get pretty crowded with tailgaters, especially when it's ASU - U of A. 

Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona.

Told you a bunch of people would show up (these pictures were taken a few hours later)

After then, basically we just hung out and waited for the rest of the group to show up and for the food to be cooked. It gave us plenty of time to practice our cornhole skills! I'll get back to that game later on.

There was a bunch of crazy stuff at the tailgate parking lot. Some guys had bought an ambulance and turned it into a "Sun Devil Wagon". Yes, they kept the siren. And of course, there were a whole lot of drunk college students. And all the very serious tailgaters. This guy had mounted a TV in the back of his truck and a grill, also with space for beer kegs. The picture is dark, but you should be able to at least notice the screen:

As you can see, we tailgated right up until game time!

But, we didn't leave the parking lot until at least getting in a good game of cornhole. It seems to be a tailgating tradition since a lot of people were playing this game.

Cornhole is a game where you throw beanbags at a board with a hole in it. 

You team up with a partner standing across from you with another board, around 15 or so meters from you. Then, you gotta outscore the other team! For each beanbag that lands on the board and stays there, you get one point, for each bag that goes through the hole, you get three points. Each team has four beanbags per round. The points cancel out too. First team to 21 points wins.

Me and Delaney played against Monica and one of their friends. 

Since Monica hit pretty much as many trucks, tables, little kids, bypassers and their beers as she hit beanbags on the board (I'm not even kidding), this turned out to be a pretty easy win for Delaney and I.


Game time was coming up, so we headed to the stadium. We made it in just in time to see the teams run out before the opening kickoff.

If I remember correctly, ASU won the coin toss (above) and chose to kick off.

Opening kickoff!

So, the Wildcats (wearing white) start out with the football. Their quarterback (passer) is #8 Nick Foles, if you see the two players standing almost next to eachother behind everyone else, he's the guy on the left.

ASU's student section. Student sections are always loud.

ASU's marching band back in the stands.

Blurry picture, but the Wildcats' Nick Foles completed a deep pass to Juron Criner who got tackled at the 1-yard line. Criner is pretty good, he's probably gonna play in the NFL some day.
That set them up for a fairly easy touchdown:

I was too busy watching the actual play to look at what I was filming, so you're missing out on the actual score, but yeah.

So it was time for the Sun Devil offense, led by #17 Brock Osweiler (left most guy) to see if they could get a score. I should mention that the receiver at the bottom of the picture, #4 Aaron Pflugrand, made one of the most amazing one-handed catches I've ever seen, on a comeback route (you football people know what I'm talking about). And he's not wearing any gloves!
ASU failed to really get much going though, and they punt the ball back to U of A, who gets their second touchdown fairly quickly, so they have a 14-0 lead.

Here, they are lined up for the extra point kick.

The ensuing kickoff. 

Fumble! An ASU player lost the ball, but the Sun Devils recovered it, so they kept their drive going. By now, the 1st quarter was over. Because Monica and Delaney had a friend who was also at the game, we walked over to the other side of the field.

This might give you a better view of Sun Devil Stadium on the inside too. It seats more than 70,000.

ASU got going on this drive though, and they later scored a touchdown. They scored two more touchdowns before the halftime. U of A added another field goal:

So at halftime, the score was 21-17 Arizona State. Time for the marching band(s) to take the field:

On this last picture, both the ASU and U of A marching bands play together.
After the halftime performance, it was time to play some football again!

Opening kickoff of the second half.

ASU came that close to scoring, but they only managed to come up with 3 points on a field goal.
After the Wildcats couldn't do much on offense, ASU drove down the field again.

Again, ASU came very close to the endzone. And again, they only came up with a field goal. That didn't keep them from showing off their fireworks though:

They do that after every ASU score, even just extra points. This was the only decent picture I got of the fireworks all night.


As it is often the case in college football, games aren't done until the final whistle blows. ASU had 27-17 lead in the fourth quarter, but U of A fought their way back with two scores to take a 31-27 lead. ASU got the ball back, but Osweiler threw an interception with about 3 minutes left of the game. However, the Sun Devils managed to get the ball back once again before the game was over....

The ASU offense is huddled up during a timeout.

With about 9 seconds left, ASU was right outside of the endzone once again. They had two shots at the endzone, but like a few times earlier in this game, they were unable to score a touchdown. Two incomplete passes later, the game was over, with the University of Arizona Wildcats winning 31-27. As you can see, they were pretty happy to have beaten their rival:

It was a fun night, and before we left, I bought a "Fear The Fork"-shirt and an ASU hat.
It was a long game though. I didn't get home until midnight.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Basically, Thanksgiving is all about two things, food and football. I got up quite early to play in our church's Turkey Bowl, a game of two-hand-touch football (no pads or helmets, so no tackles). It was Priests vs. Elders, basically everyone below 19 years old against everyone over that age. We were about 25 kids and only 8-10 adults. Still, we only won by a single touchdown. Don't ask me what the score was, no one kept track of it haha. We just know we won!

Later on, it was time for the Thanksgiving dinner, at one of my host dad's cousins. There's quite a lot of relatives on that side of the family, since we were well above 20 people, almost 30. I was too busy eating all that great food to take pictures of it, sorry about that. We played another game of football. I caught the winning touchdown, so that was pretty neat. 

That wasn't the only dinner of the day though, as later on we went over to our grandma's house to have a Thanksgiving dinner with my host mom's side of the family. It was a lot smaller though. After this, I was well beyond stuffed with food. But that's the point of Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving also meant a two-day break from school, Thursday, the actual day of Thanksgiving, and Friday. Now, Friday after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday. A lot of stores open at midnight, or even late Thursday night with a plethora of discount prices and cheap items. People stand in line for hours waiting to raid these shops. Some don't even celebrate Thanksgiving because they're standing in line on Thursday instead. I wasn't crazy enough to join them. 

I haven't mentioned earlier that I'm uploading a lot more pictures on facebook than those you see here on my blog. If you aren't friends with me on facebook or you don't have a facebook login, you can still see them via this link:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150391932456959.433416.819821958&type=1&l=51a0c30b81

Enjoy!


Take care!
Thomas.

Halloween, the end of football and the Arizona heat.

Hey all!

It's been too long since I last posted something on here. Sorry about that.

When I last wrote on here, I was on a holiday, my October break. That provided me with some time to go to the lake! My qourum (group of guys my age and a few adults) from church had arranged for a Saturday trip to a lake outside of the Phoenix Valley. Back in Denmark, usually that meant going fishing. Arizonans are a little cooler than that - over here, going to the lake means wakeboarding, surfing, diving and tubing. I tried wakeboarding. If anyone has ever tried it before, they'll know what I'm talking about when I mean it's difficult to get up on that board, especially for a first timer. What happens is that you lay down in the water with the board fastened to your feet, and a rope tied to the boat will then pull you up onto the board. This boat was a leisure boat, it kind of looks like a speed boat, just slower. It takes some practice to stay on the board and not get thrown forward as the boat starts to pull you. I think I tried at least 7-8 times and I didn't get up once. For those of you that haven't seen a wakeboarder before, I'll leave you a picture of one of my friends. He had no trouble getting up on the board.

My forearms were pretty sore so I passed on surfboarding, even though it was done in a very similar way and I was told it was easier. The boat would pull you up via a rope again and then you'd throw the rope back to the boat and ride the waves from the boat until you lost your speed.

Instead, I joined the rest of the guys in diving off a cliff. We found a perfect spot to jump off from, it was a good 30-40ft (10m+) high too. The climb up there was pretty steep though and climbing the rock barefoot wasn't all fun. I should mention we had to watch out not to step on a few cactuses too. Here's me on my way down.

We stayed on the lake until it turned dark. Before leaving, we did some tubing. I'm glad we did, because it's awesome fun! Most of you are probably wondering what I'm talking about. Tubing is riding on a raft dragged around 15-20 yards or so behind the boat. Since the boat is doing above 20 mph (30 km/h), you're clinging on to a few handles on the raft just to stay on. It doesn't help that it bounces and flies off the waves   and there's two other guys on there that get thrown around just like you. Especially when they got thrown to my side and my feet started hitting the water. I flew off the raft and hit the water face-first. My jaw got sore, and also, my swimtrunks and underwear came almost half-way off. Good thing I was under water.
I didn't get any pictures of the tubing, but it was a lot of fun.

After the lake trip, we went back home to Mesa and had pizzas at the house of one of the adults in our qourum.

Monday, it was back to school (Ugh...). After school, showing up at the locker rooms for practice, I was told by one of my teammates that only varsity players, not JV, had meetings before we all had to do some weightlifting before finally practicing at 6. When I came back to Westwood ready to hit the weights, several of my teammates asked me where I had been. I quickly learned that I should have been at the meetings instead of going home. Even more, Coach was thinking of starting me for offense and defense. I was literally scared that I had lost that opportunity since I wasn't present at the meetings. I apologized to my Coach, and he accepted my apology. With a slight chuckle, he added "...don't ever trust that guy again."When it became gameday, I found out that I was still starting. Phew.

Our game was against the Brophy Broncos. Brophy is a rich catholic boys-only private school near central Phoenix. Rich is actually an understatement, I don't think I've seen a school with it's own full-size church on campus before. They had a three-floor Arts Center and we had to go a few streets further than the school entrance just to get to their sports fields, on their self-proclaimed sports campus. The campus had several fountains and was just plain amazing. Their JV team had their own football field with turf and a digital scoreboard that was a little more than just a scoreboard. It could show computer-controlled graphics too. Their varsity team plays in a stadium that belongs to a college team. Why is that necessary? Because their football teams are usually ranked in the top 5-10 in all of Arizona, often ending up at #2 behind Hamilton High, a school that is too dominating in football. Coach Whisenhunt from the Arizona Cardinals' son goes to Hamilton High, which is also a private school.

There is a reason why the private schools are good, they can recruit players from around the country, which is banned for any public high school. For instance, I was told that their running back (a player that is handed the ball and runs forward with it) came from Florida. Since I was starting on both offense, as a wide receiver, and on defense, as a cornerback, whenever we were on defense I was tasked with covering their receivers. Did I mention that they recruit some very fast kids? I did okay though, playing almost the entire game on both offense and defense. As a team, we did surprisingly well. Since Brophy can recruit, we thought we would have a tough game at our hands. It was a back-and-forth shootout that ended 48-43, a Brophy win however. When looking at the pictures, incase you've forgotten, I'm #84.

That same week, on Saturday, I had to get up at 6 a.m. to help clean up the alleys of our neighborhood, which was a church project. Good thing that the breakfast cooked for all of us included pancakes. If not, I would have dreaded waking up that early.

The next week of school, and football, was special. For school, I had to go through AIMS (Arizona Instruments to Measure Standards) testing. There's three days of tests, one for writing, one for reading, and the last day being math. It's not an exam or anything, it's a test meant to show how the schools of Arizona compare to eachother, in terms of how capable the students are. However, if you exceed a certain score on 2 out of the 3 elements, you qualify for having, at least part of, your tuition paid if you plan to attend universities or colleges in Arizona. I missed a bunch of classes, but that also meant less homework. So even though the tests were long (they'd take 2-3 hours, with math being an all day test), I didn't mind taking them. For football, tt was the last few practices of the season, and the last game of our season. On Wednesday, after practice, we said goodbye to our senior teammates. Thursday, with our record standing at 4 wins and 4 losses, the Mountain Pointe Pride was our last opponent. Again, I would be starting. I managed to get an interception on a nice sideline tip-toe catch. But I was unable to haul in a touchdown pass later in the game. I must admit, of all the plays I've been through in the few years I've played football, that one might just be the one I want back the most. It was not a pleasant feeling, let me tell you that much. I was sooooo mad at myself. I guess you learn from your mistakes and move on! If it wasn't for the interception I did catch I would've felt horrible about that game.
We lost 44-21 at home.

Immediately after the game, we had to clean up our locker rooms and turn in our equipment. We did get to keep the helmet stickers though. That is the last time in too long that I will be playing football, as practices don't start up again until sometime late in the spring. Here's our last team photo.

That weekend, it was time for Halloween!
Although we do celebrate Halloween back home, it is nothing like what people do over here. A lot of people decorate their houses and front lawns for Halloween. Some of them look more like a graveyard than a lawn! And there's several groups of kids going trick-or-treating. One of my good friends had her birthday that same weekend, so she held a combined Halloween/Birthday party. And of course, I needed a costume.

So I went to a local party store. I found a costume that was just too awesome to pass on. This:

It's a pimp/gangster-costume. The party was a lot of fun.

Just as fun was wearing the costume to school on Monday! We were allowed to wear our Halloween costumes since it was October 31st, officially the day of Halloween. You have no idea how many comments you get walking down the hallways of a high school dressed as a pimp. It was so much fun.

There's one thing I don't like about this time of the year, even in Arizona. Although I am thankful that Arizona doesn't get any snow (except if you live in Flagstaff and the mountains up there) during the winter, it still gets cold! It's in the 50-60s Fahrenheit (10-20 Celsius). It doesn't really seem that cold when I think of some of the winters we had back home. I guess I got too used to the 110F/40C+ degrees during the summer. I never thought I would have to put on a jacket during my time here in Arizona. The other day, I did! It's not that cold though. Whenever my friends tell me they're freezing, I let them know how cold it can get in Denmark. They all seem baffled, wondering how it is possible for me to live through that at all.


With the football season being over, I'm not doing any sports during the winter, as I'm not much of a wrestler, I don't like playing soccer and I didn't favor my odds of making the JV basketball team (according to my host brother, who did try out, out of the 100-120+ players that tried out, they had to select a team of 10.). I'll be enjoying some time off, meaning I can regularly go to bed before midnight, instead of past it. And I'll have to get ready for whenever baseball comes around in the spring, I'm trying out for that no matter how many students show up for the tryouts. It also means that I'll have some more time to write blog posts, so hopefully it won't be several weeks between each one.

Until next time, take care!