It's been too long since I last posted on here. Way too long. As always, homework has kept me busy (I'll go into details about exactly how busy later).
I left off right before Christmas. Christmas in America was in many ways different. Of course, there's the obvious change of family members. But it felt weird to be opening presents in the morning on the 25th, instead of doing it in the evening on the 24th, like I'm used to. The food was different too! I've never had turkey for a Christmas dinner before, I'm used to pork. Noodles? That's another first.
Traditions were different too. The American equivalent of Pakkeleg, White Elephant, is just not the same. There's no dices or anything, it's more of an exchange than a game. We didn't decorate the house with Christmas decor either. Still, I had fun experiencing an American christmas.
Christmas, as usual, is fun when you're the one getting most of the presents! Thanks a lot to all of those who sent me presents, especially from back home in Denmark!
Winter Break provided some time to relax. So my host brother Vasa and I decided to go hit the movies. We went to watch the new Mission Impossible movie. It was a pretty intense amount of action. Great movie. Later that day, we went to Target (Tar-jay, Targhetto and whatever Americans call it over here), a large store. Finally I could do some shopping. And I needed to. I had no more than one pair of long pants for when we would go to Utah, for New Year's, to visit family. It was very embarrasing that my credit card did not function at the register, so I had to go to an in-store ATM to withdraw cash to pay with.
On one of the days before going to Utah, we had a chance to go see the Mesa Mormon Temple's Christmas lights. The Temple lights are a tradition here in Mesa, the Mormon Temple grounds are lit up by a bunchload of Christmas lights. Lots of people come to visit the lights. We were among those visitors. Since I'm not Mormon, I'm not allowed to enter the actual temple, just the Visitor's Center.
Just a few days later, it was time to head to Utah. The drive from Mesa to Huntsville, not far from Ogden, (where a bunch of my hostfamily's uncles live) was about 12-13 hours. Most of the drive was just desert and plains, with a few towns in between. That doesn't mean the scenery wasn't breathtaking. Shortly before approaching Flagstaff, we saw snow. I honestly had never thought that I would see snow in Arizona before any snow fell in Denmark.
Yes, that is indeed a sign warning you against deer. In Arizona.
For a whole bunch of the trip, this is what you would see looking out the front window. A never-ending road continuing straight (literally, straight) ahead.
Up ahead is Colorado City (not in the state of Colorado). This is also the border between Arizona and Utah. What is special about Colorado City is the people that live there. Well over a 100 years ago, some mormons practiced polygamy (having multiple wives). When the church banned polygamy, a group of people broke off from the church and settled, among other places, here in Colorado City. In other words, this city is full of polygamists! Their houses look special too. In essence, they are never finished. Since these men have several wives, they get a lot of kids, so it becomes necessary to expand their houses along the way.
This is a pretty good example of a house that has been expanded, several times.
Once we got in Utah, the scenary was very similar to that of Arizona. Instead of the lonely desert, we'd see plains as far as the eye can see.
This really surprised me. Out in the middle of the plains of Utah, we'd see almost as many billboards as in Phoenix. My dad explained to me that this highway is one of the most busy highways running through Utah, connecting several states and cities. I still couldn't make sense of the billboards though.
Once we got nearer to Provoo, we'd see several mountains, covered at least partly in snow. Here's some of them.
I really wanted to have taken pictures when we were in Provoo (home of BYU - Brigham Young University) and especially driving through Salt Lake City, but by then it was nighttime and too dark for pictures to be taken, sorry. There wasn't much to see from the freeway anyways.
This is the place where I stayed in Huntsville. It was so awesome. I had a bunch of fun staying there. I played a bunch of pool and ping pong games with my cousins, especially Tanner and Brigham, who were my age. We were in Huntsville for New Year's. I must admit though, that New Year's Eve itself was slightly disappointing, especially in terms of fireworks. Utah does not allow aerial fireworks (rockets and such, anything that explodes in the sky) on any other day than the 4th of July.
Here in Huntsville they have horses - some of which are wild horses that have been tamed. You can't visit Huntsville without going horseback riding, so of course, I had to try as well.
Riding our horses around Huntsville (a small town, as you can see). Left to right is Tanner, Vasa and Brigham. They gave me the easiest and most calm of the horses. Thus, it was also slightly slow. I was always behind.
The McKay's in Huntsville (I should mention that there's 3-4 McKay families living in Huntsville. All related) that I stayed with have a basement with marker-writing all over the walls. Everyone leaves a little message. I left one of my own.
Early in the morning, a few days after New Year's, it was time to head back to Mesa. For our trip back to Mesa I slept for most of the way. It was boring, mostly. I say mostly because there was a somewhat funny episode not long after we had re-entered Arizona. So as I showed you earlier, there's just an endless road leading through the desert. Once in a while, rarily, you'll pass through a small village or town. Right as we entered such a town, Fredonia, there was a US Ranger parked on the very edge of town with his speed camera, so we got caught going 60 or so miles per hour (~100 km/h) in a 35 mph zone. So we got pulled over. Now, the fact that we got pulled over wasn't the funny part. When the US Ranger went back to his police truck to run a check on the information of my host dad, he had to double-check it. What he told us, when he came back to the car after double-checking, was that the first results came back as "armed and dangerous." My host dad is anything but armed and dangerous! Luckily, the Ranger didn't react to the first results. No guns were pulled or anything. In fact, he was so relieved that my host dad was not armed afterall, that he let us off with a warning. Not even a fine.
Now, as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, I have been busy with homework. Partly because I have become quite a procrastinator too. We were preparing presentations for our English class, analyzing a piece of literature or something satirical. I decided to analyze The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, we had worked a little bit on the Daily Show in class too (yes, we have watched comedy as part of our English class assignments!). I had been assigned this presentation before Winter Break. I decided to start the day before. It took me 6-7 hours to just watch through the episodes to find clips that were really useful to analyze and then it took me another few hours just to download the clips and put them in my video. And of course, I had to do the actual analysis and prepare a presentation. So I was done at about 6.40 AM. I usually wake up at 7. So that night, I never went to sleep. Never. I went to school without having slept a single minute. So of course, I was tired. My friends have set up a facebook page where they upload pictures of classmates sleeping during class. I had a bunch on there from that day:
Fortunately, my history teacher, Mr. Buck, after hearing about my all-nighter, actually allowed me to sleep in class! He's awesome.
It hasn't been all homework though. For our history class we had a poster project where I hung out with my friend Austin a lot. We rarely got much work done. But, one day however, we did something that I have wanted to try for a long time. We went to Taco Bell. Doesn't really seem as much, it's basically just a Mexican fast food restaurant. But we don't have any Taco Bell restaurants in Denmark, so I always wanted to try those.
I also went to Jumpstreet to hangout with some friends of mine. Jumpstreet is an indoor trampoline park. It's a fun place.
And, not more than a few weeks ago, it was Super Bowl Sunday! Since I'm living with a Mormon host family that is not allowed to watch TV on Sundays and the fact that I don't have an abundance of sparetime, I didn't get to follow the NFL as closely as I used to. But I was definitely going to go watch the Super Bowl. One of my friends has a projector screen in his living room, and he invited me over. I had a blast watching the game and eating lots of good food. Any times there's quesadillas, I'm having fun.
Quite a lot has been going on at Westwood too. First off, there was our Cultural Assembly. We had a week where we focused on diversity and different cultures. So at lunch one day, Native American dancers performed:
And on Friday, we all gathered in the Auditorium for a series of culturally inspired performances.
I took videos of most of these, but I apologize for the low quality, I used my cell phone.
First up, Westwood's Marching Band's Drumline. This squad can be heard at every football game too:
Next up, Navajo (A local Native American tribe) basket dancers:
Korean hip hop:
Polynesian dancers:
Haka, a Polynesian war dance:
A Latin American band:
El Cañelo, Latino dancers:
And then a rap battle at the end:
About 2 weeks ago, I showed up for Westwood's JV baseball tryouts. Like I have mentioned before, I always wanted to try out for the baseball team. Showing up in football cleats, running shorts and shirts and an ASU hat plus a borrowed bat, I stood out just a little from the other players who mostly had baseball gear. Tryouts were Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Monday we ran 60-yard sprints to measure our speed, and I set a 6.99 seconds mark, which is pretty good. I've heard even the professional Major League Baseball teams look for players that can run 60-yards in under 7 seconds. That was about the only thing that I stood out in during tryouts. I did an average job with fielding, throwing and hitting. I didn't make the team but I had fun trying out. Out of 26 players they only needed 13 to form a team, so 50% of the players didn't make the team. Having only practiced for a few weeks, and going up against players who have played for years, I couldn't really expect much anyways.
Instead of doing baseball this spring then, I have decided to join the track team. Track & Field (Dansk: Atletik) has a lot of different sports you can do. I'm running with the sprinters, so we'll be doing the 100m, 200m and 400m sprints at track meets, and perhaps relays. I'm hoping that running track will help me get even faster. Joining a new sport meant getting some new shoes too:
Also Westwood-related, I went to my first Model United Nations Conference about a week ago. I probably haven't told you that I joined the Model United Nations club at Westwood. We meet at conferences with teams from other schools, and the Conference tries to re-create an actual United Nations meeting. We all represent a country, and I was representing Tanzania. So I had to represent Tanzania's policies, not my own ideas. I was sitting in meetings with the General Assembly. We tried to come up with resolutions to the issues of Western Sahara and Palestine (so actual World issues). Delegates would hold speeches about their policies, other delegates could comment or ask questions, and then we would meet in caucuses to attempt to write resolutions that we would then vote on. It was really fun!
My history teacher, who is also the advisor for our Model U.N. club, Mr. Buck, is such a fun guy.
Group picture! I'm in the back, sort of to the left.
Dinnertime. I'm in the very back to the right.
The Model U.N. Conference started Friday (we left during school) where it ended at about 9 p.m., and then it started again Saturday morning at about 9 a.m. and lasted for most of the afternoon too. This first conference was a good way for me to learn how to behave and act during a Model U.N. Conference, which prepares the rest of the club and I for our international trip to Russia in late March. If I'm going, that is. I expected to be going with the rest of the club all the way up until we had to apply for Russian tourist visas. My application was the only one that got rejected. Apparently, the Russians will not accept my application for a tourist visa because my current American visa is not valid for 6 months past our trip, which would be until September. It is valid for several months after our trip, so no doubt will I be able to return to America after a week in St. Petersburg. If you ask me, the Russian's demands are pointless. However, as some of you may already know, I am returning to America next year to finish high school. So I will eventually be applying for a new visa anyways, I just haven't yet. There's a way of applying for an extension/change of visa. Only problem? It takes 2-3 months for the U.S. Immigration Services to process such a request. And we're leaving in about a month. After calling the Russian Consulate, the Russians might accept my tourist visa if it is sent with an official letter from the school district that states I'm enrolled at school next year, implying that I will apply for a new visa. They might, no guarantees. So we're still working on getting it fixed. Fingers crossed.
Right after our Saturday Conference was over, some of my friends and I went to see a movie. We went to go see the Woman in Black, a scary movie. Before watching the movie, we met up at Rubio's for some mexican food. We asked one of the other guests to take a picture of all of us. For some reason only my arm made it onto the picture...
Also at Westwood, we just had our Love Week. Valentine's Day at a high school is kinda crazy over here. Everyone's walking around with "I love you"-balloons and teddy bears and other gifts. Our student council made Love Week even more special. Tuesday they handed out paper hearts to girls, and they were not allowed to talk to boys at all. Not even a word. If they talked to a boy, they had to give the boy their paperheart. I made a girl talk but she wanted to keep the heart to give to her boyfriend later. Wednesday they did the opposite of that, boys weren't allowed to talk to girls. I managed to keep my heart all day!
It all ended on Thursday with "Stoplight Day". You had to wear colors that signaled if you were in a relationship or not. Red=Dating. Yellow=Talking to someone. Green=Single. I wore green.
February 14th is Valentine's Day in most parts of the world, but in Arizona, there's another significance to February 14th. It is Arizona's birthday! Arizona was given statehood on February 14th, 1912 (how romantic, they did it on Valentine's Day). That is exactly 100 years ago. So of course, Arizona had to celebrate it's Centennial. There was a large exposition/exhibition near downtown Phoenix. I went:
A look inside one of the many tents at the Centennial celebration. This is one is portraying Arizonan history.
They had an actor that acted as George W. P. Hunt, Arizona's first governor. You might be able to see the actual portrait of Governor Hunt below the stand. They look alike don't they?
Old military airplanes flew over the part where military history was displayed.
Inside the tent that exhibited some of Arizona's sports history.
The Cardinals' 2009 NFC Championship ring.
University of Arizona Wildcats history.
Arizona State University Sun Devils history.
Outside of the sports tent, the Cardinals had set up a stand where you could pose for a picture with some of their cheerleaders and their mascot. So I figured that would be fun. Below is the final (edited) picture:
And at last, a picture I took from their science tent. University of Arizona students had turned Lego into a robot that could pick up a soccer ball and, if you had the skill, release it into the net. It was a lot more difficult than you'd think.
That's all I have for now. I realize that this became a marathon-post. I'm sorry that you had to wait so long. As I always say, I hope I will be able to update my blog sooner next time around. Well, we'll see...
Until next time, take care!
Thomas.
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