Spring of 2013

Hey!

As always, it's been a while since I last updated my blog. And as usual, I must apologize for that.

Now that I've taken care of that, let's get started on what has happened since I last posted something in January.

Toward the end of my last post, I had described how my old iPhone had been in a bit of an "accident."
While I was hoping for it to dry out completely, it never did, and it worked irregularly to say the least. It was time for an upgrade. Taking advantage of the decreased sales tax in the US, I bought myself a new iPhone 5.

At this point of course, I've had it for some months. It's a really neat device and it's definitely much better than the old iPhone 3G that I had. So I guess it all turned out well in the end.

Also back in January, I was starting to find out how everything was turning out with colleges and scholarships. I was accepted into every school that I applied to, but I received half-tuition scholarships, at the most. With tax-subsidized education in Europe, it wouldn't make sense for me to work up a debt going to school in the US. I'm still set on doing air traffic control for a living, but that presented me with another opportunity. Given that IB and air traffic control are both very stressful, and the fact that with subsidized education in Europe, I wouldn't have to enter into the field right away, I felt that it would be beneficial for me to take a break before starting my training. I have thus decided to become a tourist guide, and work with that for a few years, because I love traveling. That would also enable me to relax and do something less stressful.

Also in January, myself and some of my classmates had a presentation for one of our IB classes, Theory of Knowledge. The presentation pretty much marks the end of the class. We had worked on the presentation for a few weeks, but weren't confident with where we were at, even when it was Saturday and time to present. So we all woke up around 5 am on a Saturday morning and met up at a Starbucks to finish our presentation. We got it all done in time and had a great presentation. We earned a score of 19/20, which our teacher, Mr. Bowman, told us was the highest for any of the groups that presented.

In late January, I received my class ring. A class ring is an American high school tradition, where you purchase a ring that has your name, the name of the high school and high school class year on it, as a memory of your time in high school. Mine looks as follows:

The beginning of February also meant the beginning of the 2013 track season. For this year, I had decided to join the distance group rather than the sprinters, in the hope that I would be better capable of competing in those events. This meant that I would be running in the 800m and perhaps the 1600m or 3200m events. For the first few track meets, the results were pretty promising and I could see progress as I was training to get better, althought the first week or so I was quite sore from just getting back into the rhythm of working out again. I'll have more about track later on.

Now, perhaps the most important events of the Spring were related to Model UN. First off, my last American conference was the MCC Model UN conference. I was representing Libya in the General Assembly. I drafted resolutions for both topics and led most of the process of working on those, however, I was not rewarded with a best delegate award, but I was given a distinguished delegate award, which are awarded to all the top 20% point-scorers in each committee.

Only a week after the MCC conference, it was time for our international trip of this year, going to Italy. We were going to land in Rome, where we would go sightseeing for a couple of days, and also, where I would get to meet my parents, which I was very excited about! After sightseeing in Rome, we would head up north to make a stop in Florence for the afternoon and then continue onward toward Genoa, where the conference would be held. And of course, I took tons of pictures:

Before our early morning flight from Phoenix, my friend Austin and I tried to stay up all night so that we would sleep on the plane instead. To help us do so, we got ourselves some Filiberto's (Mexican food) drive-thru food late at night. I successfully pulled an all-nighter but Austin fell asleep.

After an early morning flight to Washington D.C. and then a red-eye night flight to Rome, we were in Italy! It was early morning, and despite the fact that we were all tired, we went straight into Rome and got started with our sightseeing.

One of the first sights that we saw were parts of the Roman city walls that are still standing, built during the time period of the Roman Empire. On the picture above, you can see one of the city gates, that looks almost brand new (other parts of the wall were partly broken down).

One of the main attractions of Rome is without doubt the Coliseum. Here it is seen from the outside. This was the first stop that we had in Rome, after driving around the city for a couple of hours.

A look inside the Coliseum. The corridors that you see at the bottom are actually the basements of the Coliseum, where they used to have the dressing rooms and keep their exotic animals as well. The floor would have been at the same level as the far-side railing. It should also be noted that the actual Coliseum used to be higher than it stands now, some of the top floors and sections have been removed since.

Looking at the opposite side of the Coliseum, across the floor.

My dad and I inside the Coliseum. It was so nice to see my parents again.

Another one of the main sights in Rome, and another remnant from the Roman Empire is the Forum Romanum, the great marketplace which used to be the center of trade of merchants in town.

While the Forum doesn't stand nearly as beautifully and maintained as the Coliseum does, it is still a very magnificent sight, and the entire Forum encompasses a large area.

Found inside the Forum Romanum is the grave of Julius Caesar. It is quite modest, and it's a dirth pile behind a wall with an inscription on it. Underneath is his ashes. I didn't expect to see that inside the Forum.

What's really interesting about Rome is that a lot of its sights are found squeezed in between narrow streets and buildings or at the end of little alleys. We were walking around town and all of a sudden the Spanish Steps appear. The picture above shows the steps as seen from the top.

Not far from the Spanish Steps, I tried some Italian gelatto. Italy is known for its gelatto ice-cream, so I had to try it. But I avoid eating ice-cream on a regular basis so I limited myself to just that one time.

Speaking of randomly coming across attractions, the Trevi Fountain is nestled in between apartment buildings and houses. I should mention that at this point in the sightseeing tour, we were walking around Rome, because so many of its sights are quite close to each other. Here's Mr. Buck having some fun at the fountain.

My parents and I at the Trevi Fountain.

After a pretty long day, we all went back to our hotel rooms, tired and longing for some sleep in a bed at last. We all needed to recharge before the second day of sightseeing, which started with a trip to the Vatican.

The Vatican City is surrounded by a large, tall wall.

We spent about an hour or two walking around inside the Vatican Museum, with its long halls displaying the Vatican's vast collection of art pieces.

One of the most famous paintings inside the Vatican Museum is the School of Athens. It displays a lot of well-known philosophers and artists from the ancient time period of the Roman Empire.

Perhaps the most famous attraction of the Vatican City is the Sistine Chapel, where the Conclave is held for papal elections.

This picture is taken from one end of the Chapel, looking down at the other end. It is slightly blurry because I had to sneak it with my iPhone.

After having been inside the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel, it was time to check out St. Peter's Basilica itself. Here's a look at St. Peter's Square.

The balcony from which the Pope adresses the crowd on St. Peter's Square from time to time.

This is inside St. Peter's Basilica, the largest basilica in the world. Needless to say, it's huge. Comparing the people to the size of columns, walls and the height to the ceiling might give you a better idea of how big it is.

What I found quite remarkable is that the Catholic church embalms some of their previous popes, if they lived a life full of devotion to the church. Here's one of them. This is a dead pope in his actual body, embalmed. Pope John Paul II, the guy before the pope who resigned, has been given the status of "Blessed", meaning that he will be embalmed as well.

Here is a picture of my parents and I at St. Peter's Square, in front of the Basilica.

As mentioned before, one of the neat parts of Rome is the fact that you can walk along some of the smallest alleyways and come across some of the most important and amazing sights. That is perhaps the case with the Pantheon more than anywhere else in Rome, it is literally crammed in between apartment buildings and small streets.

The Pantheon, a large church/temple, is perhaps most known for its large hole at the top of its dome. Yes, this hole is never closed, so it even rains or snows into the Pantheon, but the floor is slanted so that the rainwater will flow into drains.

This is quite a palace, Altare della Patria (Altar of our Father/Savior), which is in memory of Victor Emanuel, the first king of a unified Italy. It is a magnificient structure.

It is possible to walk up onto the palace by going around the back, where the city's courthouse is. It only requires you to walk up a slanted set of stairs, that are much tougher than they look.

The Altare della Patria happens to be on a hill right behind the Forum Romanum, which I described earlier. So here's an alternative view of it.

My new phone does panorama pictures, so here's one of the Roman skyline, as seen from Altare della Patria. Can you see the Coliseum?

Another panorama shot, this one from the other side of the palace.

After having toured the city for two days, the adults let us teenagers out on our own to go explore some of the shopping opportunities in the city, after which we all met up again to go back to the hotel. On the way back, we ran into a t-shirt store that sold shirts with the print that you see above. Given that we are from Westwood High School and our mascot is a Warrior, this shirt was perfect. There are tons of t-shirt/souvenir stores in Rome, but it was the first one that we came across with this t-shirt.

After having spent the first two days of our Italy trip in Rome, it was time to head up north to Florence, which also meant saying goodbye to my parents who could only join us in Rome. We didn't spend the night in Florence, opting to leave early in the morning and instead spend most of our day there. What you see above is the Florentine Cathedral, Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (The Basilica of Saint Mary of the Flower).

The inside of Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. It was also quite large, but nowhere near as big as St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

The basilica here in Florence is known for its colors and its dome structure.

Florence's medieval-style town hall, the Palazzo Vecchio.

While walking around in Florence with a friend of mine, Austin, we ran into a parade that had a medieval theme to it as well. We were told that it was due to a holiday, but we never found out which holiday it was. It was quite a surprise, as we were simply walking down the shopping streets of the city.
It was quite extraordinary, but apparently very popular.

The Arno river flows through Florence, and this one of the more famous bridges that span the river, the old Ponte Vecchio. People actually live in those apartments.

A panorama shot of the Florentine skyline, taken from the top floor terrace of a department store.

After spending the day in Florence, we continued our journey further north towards the city of Genoa, where our Model UN conference was being held. We made it there late at night, got something to eat, checked in, and went to bed, basically. The next morning, we had an arranged tour of the city, starting with a trip to the port. The ship that you see above, with a Tunisian flag for whatever reason, is a restaurant, but it was a pretty dominant sight in the harborfront.

A view of the harborfront in Genoa. The palmtrees aren't natural.

Part of the tour of the city included visiting the city's acquarium.

The city tour also took us past the "headquarters" for the conference, where most of the meetings were to be held; Palazzo Ducale. 

Piazza de Ferrari with its fountain in the heart of Genoa. This was also the beginning of the city's shopping streets, that you can see behind the fountain.

A reconstruction of Christopher Columbus' house in Genoa, where he lived.

One of the remnants of Genoa's previous status as an imporant city for trade and being its own state during Medieval times. This is part of the old city walls, dating back numerous centuries.

One of the narrow alleys that are very characteristic for Italian cities.

A look at Genoa, near the harbor (from the other end of the harbor compared to previous pictures). Notice that a lot of the city is on a hillside.

The inside of Palazzo Ducale, where meetings like the opening ceremony and all General Assembly sessions were held, in this very room. Sadly, my committee, the Mediterranean Conference, were meeting in an old library. The building itself was kind of lame but the room had some old bookshelves and old maps. Didn't get a picture of it, but the room was pretty decent.

Being one of only three Americans in the committee, and having shown up with a ton of clauses to debate for our resolutions, I became very active and without being narcisstic, I literally dominated the committee, speaking more than any other delegate and passing the most clauses and amendments. I cooperated with another American to form a strong duo and we were so active that the Italians called us out on it - claiming that we were being inconsiderate of others. In fact, I got into a heated debate with one Italian delegate, making the argument that we could not cooperate with people who weren't paying attention (as they spent most of their time in committee on facebook and texting), while she kept reiterating that we didn't take input from other delegates. She would not accept the fact that there quite simply was no input to consider.

While this heated debate was ongoing, the conference's General Secretary happened to enter the room and she, being Italian, quickly appeared as quite biased. What did not help the cause was that one of the committee's chairs was a good friend of mine from Westwood. When I was the only one volunteering to speak and she had no choice but to call on me to speak, it was quickly perceived by others as a bias. She received complaints from the General Secretary as well.

All in all, the conference was poorly organized from a Model UN standpoint. However, piecing all of our committee's clauses (instead of debating resolutions as a whole, we debated and voted clause-by-clause), most of which I had submitted, together for one of the topics dealing with the environment, led to the creation of the longest resolution I've seen in Model UN conferences. It was a good 3-4 pages long. When three or four committees convened for the Development Commission, a forum for inter-committee debate, which looked at resolutions passed in each committee regarding the environment, I was picked to read the entire resolution and give a little speech. For all other resolutions, there were several speakers for and against, with several other delegates posing questions. When I was finished presenting our resolution, everyone were speechless - the chairs had to pick people at random to get up and speak, all of whom spoke in favor. The vote was even more decisive, the only 4-5 votes against the resolution out of 80-90 odd votes were from people who were laughing, sarcastically voting against the resolution just for the fun of it. With such a decisive victory, I couldn't have ended my time as a Model UN club member better, and winning the Best Delegate Award was a great way to cap it off.

After a week in Italy, it was time to head home. Being up in the northern part of Italy, we flew out of Milan's Malpensa airport. And it was snowing at the time.

With Milan being up close to the Alps, the flight provided us with a great view of the largest mountain range in Europe.

We made it back! This picture was taken in Mr. Buck's room (he's our club advisor/teacher, and the history teacher for most of the IB Senior members of the club), with most of us wearing our Roma Warriors shirts. I should mention that this is just a small fraction of the entire group that went to Italy.

Not long after we came back from Italy, a rather unusual weather phenomena came to Arizona; hail. It is not often that it even rains in Arizona, so to see hail is even more rare. We were all ordered to stay inside our classrooms during the hail, so I was stuck inside my math class during 4th hour, and more.

I've seen in hail in Denmark some times, but this was some pretty thick hail, even compared to that.

Right outside Mr. Blevins' classroom, my math teacher's room, there are grass lots. Now, I'll admit that they were still growing the grass (hence the caution tape), but as you can tell, it was all flooded. And the rings in the water might tell you how big the hail was.

I took this picture not realizing that the hail would be visible in the air. That's not dirt on a window, because I'm looking out the doorway, that's the hail.

Being stuck inside, and because it was the last day of school before Spring Break, we didn't want to do schoolwork, opting instead to watch Saturday Night Live on the classroom's projector.

I took this picture while I was walking home, and it had stopped hailing. None of that is snow, that is all hail. We got quite a lot of it.

Speaking of unusual events; this happened to me. I was out riding my bike (that's how I get around) at nearby Mesa Riverview, which is an outdoors shopping/marketplace, and I had stopped to lift the bike over a curb. Most of the bike did make it over, except the front wheel as you can tell. That's just more proof that I need to get my license before I leave. I'm working on it (more on that later).

As I have already mentioned, my track season has started back up again. Running with the distance group this year has provided me with some new opportunities; attending invitational track meets. Invitational track meets are arranged so that each school are assigned a 3-4 spots in each event, no more. Last year with the sprinters, I never made the cut. This year, I've been able to go to two of these track meets so far, Chandler Rotary and the Sun Angel Classic.

Chandler Rotary is perhaps the biggest meet of our season except for the State Championships. Chandler neighbors Mesa. Schools come from out-of-state, with several schools from California and Texas and some as far away as Oregon and Wyoming coming to the meet. It is one of the largest in the Southwest. The meet is run over two days, split into three sessions, Friday night, Saturday morning and Saturday night. I was originally told by my coach that I would only be running in the 4x800 m relay, which was Saturday morning. Coincidentally, this was around the time of Major League Baseball's Spring Training, which is in Arizona every spring. The Oakland Athletics were playing their only night game that same Friday night, so I bought tickets to go to the game. Thursday at practice, coach told me that he had entered me in the 3200m (2 mile), which was run on Friday. It was kind of bittersweet, since that obviously meant that I couldn't go to the baseball game.

A look at the Chandler High School track and field during the Friday session. 

There were quite a lot of people there, even though the Friday session was "open", meaning that the coaches could enter any top 3-4 of their athletes. The Saturday events were limited to those that had the top 10-20 or so personal records for the season, depending on which event it is.

I think my number might give you an indication of how large this meet is.

I took a panorama shot on the second day of the track meet. Both days were long, with us being there for at least 10-12 hours. It was especially bad because I had the very first event on both days, and then I'd be done for the rest of the day, with nothing to do! You'll notice that there are a lot more people here, since this is the Saturday evening session, also called the "elite session".

During the elite session, as I was watching some of the events, they ran the girls' 100m sprint (not the race on the picture). One girl got out of her starting blocks and raced past everyone, winning easily. The announcer then went on to say "Ladies and gentlemen, I have been informed that is now the new #1 fastest high school time in America for the girls' 100 m dash". It was pretty impressive to witness a new record being set.

For myself, I was just glad to be able to participate, even though I finished near the bottom in both the 3200m and the 4x800 relay.

Before moving on to the other track meet, I would like to talk about a pretty successful April Fool's prank that I pulled off this year, since it occurred in between the two track meets. With April 1st being just over a month away from our first IB exams, everyone is beginning to feel the stress of exams luring around the corner. I announced on Facebook that I am dropping out of IB (All just a joke of course), and some people believed it! April 1st coincided with a huge assignment, finishing all of our online journals for our sports activities and volunteering service hours, so-called CAS hours, one of the key elements of IB. The fact that this assignment was due Monday made it easier to pull off the prank. Some people got worried and one or two of my classmates even went and advocated to the IB coordinator that I wouldn't be thrown out of the program! I didn't envision it to go that far. Later in the day I posted on Facebook that it was all a prank and although most people found it funny, a few were kind of upset. But hey, it's all for the fun of April Fool's, and I love humor.

The other invitational track meet that I have gone to so far is the Sun Angel Classic, arranged by Arizona State University here in Tempe, at their Sun Angel track stadium. I ran the 4x800 once again, and even though I ran at my personal best time for the 800, which is 2:27, our relay team still didn't get a good finish.

The Sun Angel Classic is a pretty big event but it's not as large as Chandler Rotary. Here's a nice picture of the view from the opposite side of the bleachers, with ASU's Sun Devil Stadium for football and A Mountain in the background.

A look at the bleachers at Sun Angel Stadium.

Just like Chandler Rotary, this meet continued throughout the late evening. I thought these two logos, ASU's pitchfork and the PAC-12 athletic conference logo were pretty cool, on the grass infield.

At Chandler Rotary, the track meet coincided with an A's baseball game. ASU's Sun Angel Classic was run on Thursday and Saturday, with no events Friday. We had Friday off for April Break (the week after Good Friday, but it's not recognized as a religious holiday by our school district, which is why it's named April Break). That same Friday, the my favorite NBA basketball team, the Golden State Warriors, came to play the Phoenix Suns. The Warriors are going to the playoffs for the first time in 6 years and are doing pretty well this season, so of course, I had to go.

I bought myself a seat quite close to the court so I had a great view. Here are some of the Warriors' players during pre-game introductions.

Time for tip-off. Seen for the Warriors are #12 Andrew Bogut, #11 Klay Thompson and with his side turned to the camera, All-Star guard #10 David Lee.

At every Suns game, their pizza vendors run a promo where they drop off pizza boxes with parachutes from the top rafters. One of them came down near my seat and I snatched it out of the air.

No, they're not parachuting down pizza. The box had a coupon for a free pizza inside of it.

Pay off! It was only an 8 inch pizza, but any free pizza is good with me.

It was pretty much my lucky night because I also won this free Suns bag, because my seat was randomly selected and they had put a flyer on it saying "You're a winner!". The bag had their Slovenian guard Goran Dragic's name on it. I'm not a Suns fan but it was mighty kind of them to give this to me for free.

The inside of US Airways Center, the home of the Suns.

Warriors on defense.

After being down by as much as 18 points (which was surprising), the Warriors battled back to re-take the lead in the 3rd quarter.

The Warriors star player, #30 Stephen Curry, talking to a teammate, with coach Mark Jackson right behind them.

The Suns tried to make a comeback and made it quite a close game towards the end.

Coach Jackson talking to his players and making some adjustments.

In the end, the Warriors kept the lead and the Suns had to keep fouling the Warriors to try to get the ball back, which didn't succeed for them. Golden State got the victory, 111-107.

That same weekend I took some driving lessons with a licensed instructor, driving around Mesa and parts of the Valley for 3 hours each on Saturday and Sunday. I hadn't been out driving enough on my permit for my host parents to let me take the license test, so they wanted me to take driving lessons so that I would be better prepared. The instructor was very pleased with my ability to drive and was confident that I can pass the test, so now all I have to do is simply take the license road test.
Even though I don't have much time left in the US, it makes a lot of sense to get an American license because it will mean that I can skip a lot of the process of getting my license in Denmark, which also makes it cheaper (and they can cost up to $2000!).

That was all for now. As I just mentioned above, I don't have much time left. My first IB exam is May 2nd, graduation is the 23rd May and my flight back to Denmark is on June 7th. My parents are coming over for graduation and then we are going on a road trip around the Southwest, which I'm looking forward to a lot. I will be back on here to recap that experience for sure.

At this point, our class workload has eased up a bit. I still have a few weeks left of track season, but it's about time to start reviewing all my notes from these past two years of IB to start getting ready for exams. And try to take make the most of the time I have left in the States in the meantime. One event that will help me do so is Prom, which is coming up on the 27th of April. The theme is Midnight Cruise, and I asked a girl, Lindsey, to the dance using a ship-themed piñata and a poem, with my name being a "message in a bottle". I filled up the piñata with chocolate too, and hung it in her first hour classroom. This is how she answered me:

As you can tell, school dances in the US are a pretty big deal, and the whole process of asking and answering dates is a special part of American culture, particularly for Prom. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

That was all for this blog post.

Thomas.