I wanted to post on my blog at least once more to recap the last few months of my stay in the US, and I figured I'd do it fashionably late, just like I always have. Because I am now back in Denmark and not going right back to the US after this summer, like I did last year, this is probably the last blog post. I don't know if I might re-use this blog again when I come back to the States for visits, but it will still be available online for you to read. Also, this doesn't mean that I'm all done with blogging (I think) - more on that later.
My last blog entry was sometime back in mid-April, and it wasn't more than a few days before I also had my American driver's license. The road test in Arizona was surprisingly easy, since I was only required to do a three-point turn out of a parking lot and then drive around the block and do a couple of lane changes. I don't think I was driving for more than 15-20 minutes, max. It was way overdue that I became able to drive around on my own but it was nice and practical for the last couple of months, especially for when my parents were visiting and we went on a roadtrip. Not only that, but it also makes it easier for me to transition to a Danish driver's license. The testing is more rigorous and driving lessons are mandatory (and pricey), however, I will only be required to pass a written test and a road test with an instructor. Denmark doesn't use permits. I will be able to save at least $1500-2000 that way.
I can't get my license until I turn 18, so it's quite odd to be back home and dependant on my parents or friends to drive me around again. The biggest challenge is probably learning to drive stick (manual) shift and adapting to kilometers/hour rather than mph.
Later in April, we were all preparing for our Senior Prom and we had our day activity for the dance as well. We decided to go to a park and set up a long slip-n-slide by buying plastic tarps and spraying water down them. It was a bit windy and even though we tried to fasten it with pegs that kept coming out, it worked pretty well.
The tarp was a good couple of hundred feet long, down a slope in Mesa's Harmony Park.
We tried our best to keep the pegs in the ground.
One of my friends, Austin, trying to get a head start from the top of the hill.
Eventually the tarp started breaking and got muddy and it naturally evolved into a mudfight.
Did I mention this was a day activity for Prom? Well it wasn't the day of, incase you're wondering. It was the weekend before.
The group for the day activity was a little different than the actual prom group, as you can see here. We took our pictures in beautiful Freestone Park.
My date for prom was a good friend of mine, Lindsey, whom I got to know through Model UN. Here's a picture of the two of us.
What's great about taking pictures for dances is that you can have tons of fun with different poses and such. I think someone is being a little jealous here.
Here's a picture of all the guys in our prom group, and yes, I am the one rocking the magenta/pink vest!
Our dinner reservation wasn't ready for us on time and we spent much longer at the restaurant than we expected, so we arrived late at the dance with only about an hour left, but other than that it was a pretty fun night.
The other nice part about Prom was the fact that it was late in the month of April, so before all of our IB exams which were in the beginning of May. Most of our classes had stopped with homework weeks before and I had already begun studying to prepare for the exams, so Prom was a nice break from all the work to have a last bit of fun before the tough stretch of exams. I even quit track so that I could focus on my studies more. I had 15 exam sessions crammed into about two weeks, so it was going to be pretty intense. It all started with English, which went surprisingly well although I suffered from some pretty bad hand cramps from all the writing. As the exam sessions went along, it became easier to study because I could focus on fewer and fewer classes, although I sometimes had just one day to study for another session. I wasn't worried and I felt really good about every single one of my exam sessions afterwards, there's no doubt I have passed them all. IB sends the scores out to a large number of graders around the world and then goes through a long process to come up with a grade. The IB scores are released on the 6th of July, so I can't wait to finally have my diploma.
The week of my final IB exam was also the IB Banquet, on a Friday. This was the week before Graduation (I should mention some of my classmates still had IB Exams the week of Graduation!), and my parents arrived in Phoenix on that following Monday.
Their flight was delayed by almost two hours and they were pretty jet-lagged, so it was handy that I had my driver's license so that I could drive them to their hotel in our rental car. Not only where they too tired to drive, they were also unfamiliar with the Phoenix freeways, so it was much easier for me to do the driving. The day after, one of our neighbors in Mesa took my parents and I down to the Westwood campus for a reception for our principal, who's leaving the school. It also gave me an opportunity to show my parents the campus.
The first few days were pretty light, on the Wednesday of that week we went to the Mesa Natural History Museum, which featured a ton of fossils and old archaeological findings, some of which were from the area. Later that night, there was a party for the local church ward's young men and young women who graduated high school, and I also had my own open house, a chance for my classmates, friends and family to come by and say goodbye and meet my parents.
There were a lot of people who showed up, which was really nice. I was worried that we could fit everyone into my host parents' house, but it worked out well.
Eventually the party moved outside to our back porch.
It seemed as if everyone had a good time and I certainly enjoyed the opportunity to spend some time with all of my friends together, so it was really awesome. It was a little atypical in that it was before Graduation, which was the day after my open house.
I had to get up early for a graduation rehearsal, but I had the day off from school. Before getting ready for the graduation ceremony later that night, I took my parents to downtown Phoenix, making a stop in Tempe to hike up A Mountain by ASU to get some nice views of the Valley.
While in Phoenix, we went to the Heard Museum, which is one of the top sights of Arizona. It has a huge collection of exhibits dedicated to Native American history and culture.
After spending most of the day in Phoenix, it was time to get ready for Graduation. We had dinner at one of our neighbor's house before the ceremony. My parents were able to get tickets for a seat on the field (they took the picture above).
My host parents were in the stands and were able to see me as I walked by in my cap and gown onto the field.
All the students had to stand and wait for every line to fill in the seats, before we all sat down. I was in the second line in the right section, but it's hard to tell where I am from the picture.
I am walking up to get my "diploma" (you got a case where your diploma would fit inside, and I didn't even get a regular diploma, since I'm only getting the IB diploma).
Looping around to get back into the line, walking in front of where my parents were seated.
My IB medallion, which I received at our banquet the week before. IB students were allowed to wear them during the ceremony.
I took a bunch of pictures after the graduation ceremony, here's one right in front of the 2013 sign mounted on the crossbar of the football field goal. It's also a closer look at my cap and gown for you guys.
Back at home, here's a picture with my parents.
And my host parents.
The day after Graduation, a Friday, we went to the small Mesa Historical Museum, which had an exhibit about the Spring Training baseball that the town has hosted (including the A's) and the Boeing factory by Falcon Field.
I actually was unaware of the Boeing factory in Mesa. I guess you learn something new everyday.
Later that day, we went up to North Phoenix to take a look at the Musical Instrument Museum, which my host mom, Jana, recommended. It's a pretty unique place that displays musical instruments beyond imagination and they have exhibits that try to pick certain instruments coming from each country.
Here's the part of the exhibit that focuses on Denmark.
Before heading home, we made a stop by the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix, which showcases plants from the desert landscape, particularly that of Arizona.
You guessed correctly, they sure had a lot of cacti.
My parents and I also attended open houses for some of my friends in the last few days that we were in Mesa. Saturday went by mostly with packing, but there was time for one last dinner together with my host family:
My host brother Kade was able to join us, but Caleb, my other host brother, had left to Georgia the night before to go to his girlfriend's college graduation.
Sunday I was assigned to speak in Church. It was also the day that I truly said goodbye to my host family as my parents and I went on the first leg of our roadtrip, heading north to Flagstaff. It was quite surreal and hard to say goodbye to my host parents and everyone else that I had gotten to know so well over the past two years, especially with the fact that I wouldn't be living there anymore and I wouldn't see them everyday like I had gotten used to. It's now been a month and I still have moments where I have to stop myself to think that most of my friends and my host family is on the other side of the world.
On the way up to Flagstaff, we drove by Sedona to go for a hike at West Fork.
The bridge that spans across a creek from where you park to where the trail begins.
West Fork is in my opinion one of the prettiest natural sights you'll ever find.
My parents in front of some of the trees and the cliffs that surround the trail. We drove on towards Flagstaff later in the evening and it eventually turned dark before we made it there. I had forgotten all about Memorial Day Weekend, but I was quickly reminded about it again when we had to try three different hotels to find a room. We had decided to not book our hotel rooms in advance to allow for more flexibility, but later on during our trip we just phoned ahead or booked online while driving towards the city we were going to.
The view from our hotel room in Flagstaff.
We only spent one full day up near Flagstaff, mainly for the obvious reason of going to visit the Grand Canyon.
I wanted to once again take my parents for a hike and I picked the Bright Angel trail because it's less elevated than some of the other main trails.
This is closer to one of the first way points, where we turned around. It's far from the bottom of the trail but we didn't carry many large bottles of water or had much food (I was carrying a backpack though), so I knew that we shouldn't go down too far.
We have a wildlife sighting! A squirrel on the side of the trail. This wasn't the only squirrel that we saw, as far as I recall. The year before, when I went with Gunn, we also spotted a bunch of squirrels. They're seemingly invading the Canyon.
Incase we look a little tired, this picture was taken after we were done with our hike, which lasted at least 2-3 hours.
After hiking, we went along the Desert View Drive, which is a 30 or so miles long stretch with several viewpoints along the way. It didn't disappoint.
The glare in the middle of the picture is the sunlight reflecting off of the Colorado River, which runs in the bottom of the Canyon throughout.
Another viewpoint, where I tried to take a panorama shot.
The Desert View Drive ends at the Desert View Visitor's Center, which also has the Desert View Watchtower at the Canyon rim. It doesn't make much of a difference, but this picture was taken from a platform right by the tower.
That night, as we made it back to Flagstaff, we went to the Lowell Observatory, the home of Pluto. They had an exhibition about space travel.
A real meteorite was also on display. If you think this is small, try lifting it. It's only 500+ pounds (200+ kilograms) heavy. They also had some telescopes there. The telescope used to discover Pluto was closed when we arrived and it was too dark to get a good picture, but they had one telescope working, focused in on Saturn. We only spent two nights in Flagstaff, the next morning we were off to Las Vegas.
We made our way to Vegas driving by the Hoover Dam, which also functions as the border between Arizona and Nevada.
New to the Hoover Dam is a bridge that spans the Colorado River in front of the Dam, providing some great views of it.
The Hoover Dam as seen from the Memorial Bridge. This picture doesn't do the Dam justice, because it's huge.
We drove down to the Dam itself, this is the bridge as seen from the bottom.
Standing on top of the dam and looking down the river. To give you an indication of the size of the dam, the arch of the bridge ends in both sides at about the same height as the top of the dam. So if you look from where the arch ends and down to the height of the river, you've got a good estimate for the height of the Hoover Dam.
Las Vegas was only about an hour drive or so from the Dam, and it wasn't even that long before we could see the casinos.
What was really funny about Las Vegas is that we probably had our best but cheapest hotel stay there. The casino resorts make their money off of gambling so the food and hotel rooms are cheap. We stayed at the Monte Carlo.
Not long after checking in, we went on a walk down Las Vegas Boulevard, otherwise known as The Strip.
The Bellagio's water fountains putting on a show.
My parents in front of the New York - New York and MGM Grand. It was really awesome that it got dark as we went on our walk. Obviously, Las Vegas awakes at night when the neon lights come on.
A look inside our casino. The grand jackpot was a new car (seen in the center). It was kind of funny, there is a Nevada state law that makes it illegal for a minor to use gambling machines or loiter in a room where gambling is ongoing, but we had to go through the casino itself to get to the breakfast restaurant.
After spending only a single night in Las Vegas (it's honestly not much else than The Strip) we were back on the road going to San Francisco. With my license I was able to do a lot of the driving. Both of my parents had licenses that were also valid in the US, but I was more comfortable with the American roads and the directions, particularly on freeways and in cities. We had a GPS but my dad was sometimes more confused than helped by it. We quickly reached a compromise that I would do almost all of the driving in and around cities, while my dad and I switched off on stretches between cities.
We arrived in San Francisco after a 10-11 hour drive, so it was pretty late. When we went out for dinner, I knew that I wanted to get some of the great seafood that's available in the city. I ordered a mix of seafood items, which included a surprise. The pink meat that you see in the middle are tentacles from a squid. Tentacle meat is very tender.
We were very fortunate to find a hotel that was within walking distance of Fisherman's Wharf, which has the harbor/bay tours and lots of great seafood restaurants.
This was great to know, I mean, just in case.
One of the first things that we did, in the morning after we arrived the night before, was to go on a bay tour. This included sailing up to and underneath the Golden Gate Bridge.
The other main attraction of the bay tour was the Alcatraz island, the former high-security prison. There were tours of the island but they were sold out for the duration of our stay in San Francisco, so we had to settle for the bay tour that sails around the island.
San Francisco's skyline of the Financial District as seen from the Bay.
After getting off of the bay tour, we walked a little bit around the harborfront. Pier 39 is the most famous of all the piers in the San Francisco waterfront. Not only does it have a lot of shops and restaurants, it also has sea lions. They can be heard from the streets running along the waterfront. There's a bunch of platforms in an area that's shielded from the seawaves. There's many more platforms than needed but the sea-lions still like to fight for the spots on a few of them, perhaps to put on a show for all the tourists.
After being near the seaside we took a bus down to Golden Gate Park and walked around. Here's a panorama shot from inside the park, with the California Academy of Sciences on the left and the De Jong Museum in the center, with the black structure.
We wanted to get another look at the Golden Gate Bridge, which can be seen really well from Chrissy Field, a former military airfield, which is beneath the bridge.
Before heading back to our hotel, we went to the Muir Woods that are just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Muir Woods is a forest of tall redwood trees, which are unique in their longevity and height, being several hundred meters tall sometimes.
Muir Woods was really pretty and amazing.
This picture might give you an idea of how tall these redwood trees are. The parts that you see are probably about a third of them.
Nevermind my mom waving her blurry arm in front of the camera, this gives you an idea of how old these trees are. This was a tree that fell in 1930, and the signs mention huge historic events that occurred during the life of the tree. If I recall correctly, the middle sign mentioned something in the range of 800-1000. So the tree reached an age of about 1000 years.
Being north of the Golden Gate also meant another opportunity to check out some great food. Sausalito is a small, cozy little town with a mix of rich people and fishermen. Our first choice was a Michelin-rated sushi-restaurant but a quick glance through the window made it very clear to us that we couldn't get any food without a reservation, so we settled for a different restaurant, but it was pretty nice, since it was right there in the harbor tucked in next to some of the sailboats.
The next day, we wanted to explore more of the city itself. Not far from our hotel room was Lombard St., "the crookedest street in the world". This one-way downhill street winds around to help the cars manage the slope. Tourists will line up their cars to drive down the hill, not to mention the intersection just below usually having several dozens of tourists.
After seeing Lombard St. which is on one hill in the city, we walked over to Telegraph Hill to go up to the top of Coit Tower, to get some great views of the city and the San Francisco Bay.
Here's one example of the views from the Coit Tower. Here's Pier 39 (the gray-roofed houses that stretch onto the water) and Alcatraz. Alcatraz appears to be pretty close to the harborfront, but it's much further away than the picture makes it seem.
What made driving in San Francisco really annoying is that, beside the many one-way streets, a lot of the city is built on hills. Some of the hills are so steep that the cars are required by law to park perpendicular to the road, and some of the sidewalks have stairway steps carved into them!
Next up, we walked down to the TransAmerica building in the Financial District, which fortunately was downhill.
Only a couple of blocks from the TransAmerica Pyramid was Chinatown. It was really interesting to see the culture change and hearing conversations in Mandarin (the main Chinese language) and other Asian languages, with signs and stores being in Mandarin rather than English. It really is a Chinatown, because you have all these Chinese people living with a similar culture of their native land, speaking their native language and buying imported Asian products in stores that advertise them with Mandarin signs.
You know we had to eat lunch in Chinatown at a Chinese restaurant. Lonely Planet recommended this restaurant - for a reason. It had some of the best chinese food I've ever had!
We also took a bus to get down to Haight and Ashbury, the neighborhood were the hippie-culture emerged during the 60s and 70s. My dad in particular wanted to see it. It's not quite the same but it does have some stores that leave somewhat of a remnant of the culture and art that stemmed from that period.
Later in the afternoon, we wanted to go on a guided sightseeing tour of the city, to catch up on sights here and there that we hadn't yet seen. Some of the tours start near Fisherman's Wharf up by the piers on the seaside, so to get from Downtown up north to the harborfront, we wanted to try the famous cable cars. They're very expensive and only three lines are running. The lines are 30-45 minutes long just to get on, and it's safe to say they're used pretty much only by tourists.
The sightseeing tour took us across the Golden Gate Bridge (this was our 2nd time going across) and we stopped where you had a great view from just north of the Bridge. On the left side you see San Francisco and its skyline, while the Bridge still appears on the right side.
Our sightseeing bus ran into Critical Mass - a bicycle protest organized monthly. A huge number of bicyclists gather to disrupt traffic to promote more respect and better conditions for bicycles and public transport, rather than cars. If you haven't already, try to find the naked guy among all the people.
We got off of the tour just a block away from a street that runs parallel to the seaside, below the Bay Bridge, the main bridge linking San Francisco to the cities of Oakland and Berkeley in the East Bay. We had dinner in the Ferry Building, which houses a bunch of specialized food shops, cafés and restaurants. While we had another full day in the Bay Area, we planned to spend the next day outside of San Francisco.
While we were in San Francisco, my favorite baseball team, the Oakland Athletics, were actually playing against the San Francisco Giants, but the games were played at San Francisco's AT&T Park. I wanted to watch a homegame, so we went to a game between Athletics and the Chicago White Sox. Time for some baseball!
My parents and I had great seats. We weren't far from field level but still in shade. It was a hot summer day. My parents didn't know baseball too well but as the game went along, I tried to explain most of the basics and they seemed to grasp at least some of it, so they had an idea of what was going on.
One of Oakland's stars, Cuban Yoenis Cespedes, at the plate.
My dad, not being the biggest baseball fan, was asleep for half of the game.
After watching the A's earn a 4-3 win in extras (10th inning), on a bases-loaded-walk walk-off, and watching the A's tradition of throwing a shaving cream pie in the face of the walk-off hero, we went up north to Berkeley, the home of the University of California Berkeley. We didn't walk onto campus but looked at it from the entrance. Berkeley is just north of Oakland. We took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport) train from San Francisco to the O.co Coliseum for the baseball game, and we could also take the BART up to Berkeley, and then back home. It was really convenient.
After 4 nights in San Francisco we went on the last drive of our trip, going to Los Angeles. We decided to go down the beautiful coastal route Highway 1, which offered some great views of the Pacific Ocean.
North of Los Angeles is a small town called Solvang, which was founded by Danish pioneers and remains today as a resemblance of Danish culture and heritage. It's well-known in Denmark, so of course, we had to make a stop there.
It sure doesn't look like an ordinary American town.
Tons of places would indicate the side-by-side cultural mesh of America and Denmark.
A mini version of the Little Mermaid, one of Denmark's landmarks.
It was around dinnertime while we were in Solvang, which fit perfectly because it gave us an opportunity to try some Danish food in the US. My parents, having only been away from Denmark for about two weeks at this point, probably weren't anywhere near as excited for it as I was. I had planned on ordering our food in Danish too, but it quickly turned out that our waiter was simply an American who didn't speak any Danish. It was quite amusing to hear other American guests at nearby tables have conversations in English about what to order, complete with Danish names for dishes here and there.
When we told the waiter that we were from Denmark he took a step back and went "woah...you guys can rate us then. I guess we better do a good job then." I ordered a meal with a Danish sausage, meatball, mashed potatoes, red cabbage with gravy on top. It was pretty good, but I'm sure I had craved Danish food for long enough that I could have eaten anything.
We arrived in Los Angeles late at night on a Sunday, and it was raining and somewhat foggy. Somehow, the 6-8 lane freeways were still almost full at 11 pm. We (well, myself. My dad didn't even dare to do any of the driving while we were in LA) certainly would come to learn all about how crazy driving in Los Angeles is. Our first morning was spent going to Universal Studios in Hollywood.
What is really cool about Universal Studios is that they have a humongous backlot of all their settings, stages and backdrops that they use for different movies and TV-shows, and that it is open for tours (even while they use some of them for filming). Here's some of the houses used in Desperate Housewives, for instance. They don't use these specific houses for just the TV-show, they've appeared in several movies as well. Our guide said that the usual trick is to paint the buildings a different color or remove/add a signifant feature so that viewers won't instantly recognize them from another movie.
The Simpsons area was easily my favorite part of the theme park.
Bart, Lisa and I.
One part of the park was used to promote one of their new movies, Fast & Furious 6. I wanted to get a closer look at some of the cars and spotted Vin Diesel. I uploaded this picture on Facebook but I never told anyone that's it's just a figure, not the real guy. Wait....what?!
My mom and I getting a picture at the sign before heading out of the park.
We finished off the day by heading down to Hollywood Boulevard to see the Walk of Fame. There's hundreds if not thousands of tiles with stars' names on them for a good 3 or 4 mile stretch.
I don't know which is funnier; Charlie Sheen in Two and a Half Men, or Charlie Sheen ranting about his contract after leaving the show.
Chuck Norris. That's all I have to say.
Grauman's Chinese Theatre is famous not only for it's easy-to-recognize facade but also for having foot- and handprints from celebrities on their sidewalk-tiles. A lot of Hollywood Movie premieres take place here too.
There's a saying that goes "When in Rome, do as the Romans do", in other words, try to assimilate to local culture. Well, when it became time to eat and we were in Hollywood, Hard Rock Café seemed like the obvious choice.
Our hotel was in a part of LA called Marina del Rey, which is home to a big sailboat marina. We went for a morning walk down to look at it.
After our morning walk, we went on a guided sightseeing tour of LA. Among many other things, we went by Paramount Pictures.
We also drove by the CNN building.
We were also driven up to one of the hilltops over-looking the city. The skyscrapers are Downtown LA.
One of the main attractions of the tour was Sunset Boulevard, which is also home to a lot of famous sights. One of them is the Laugh Factory, a comedy club that has produced a ton of the comedians that you see on movies, TV-shows and doing stand-up today. Jim Carrey started here.
Most of the sightseeing tours in Los Angeles, particularly Hollywood, also take their time to go through the celebrity neighborhood of Beverly Hills. This was one of the better pictures that I got, this one being the home of Britney Spears.
Rodeo Drive is famous for being one of the most expensive shopping streets that you will ever find. There are numerous designer stores here with prices through the roof, but the rich Beverly Hills celebrities have the wallet size to do their shopping here.
A storeowner's Bugatti Veyron, which is several million dollars and one of the fastest production cars ever, just sitting casually by the curb.
Even the Beverly Hills Police Department tries their best to look extravagant and sophisticated.
On Wednesday, we just another two full days in the US, we started out by going to Griffith Park Observatory. We didn't go to the observatory itself, but the hilltop offers great views of the city and the Hollywood sign, which you will find in the background behind me.
Looking at the city with human eyes was a lot better than the picture's smog would indicate. But the air pollution was horrible, which isn't surprising considering that 18 million people live in the metropolitan Los Angeles area.
After being at Griffith Park, we went on a slow, rush hour drive down to Santa Monica Pier, which has an amusement park.
Pacific Park is the amusement park on the pier.
It was quite windy that day but we wanted to at least walk around on the beach and down by the water; but we never made it into the water. It seemed as if it would be a little too cool, and we had plans for later in the evening:
My mom's cousin, Karen, and her husband, Ted, live just north of Los Angeles. They invited us over for dinner that Wednesday evening. We were slightly late because we got stuck in the typical Los Angeles afternoon rush hour, but we were able to find it just fine. We had a great time, and it was actually the first time that Karen and my mother got to see eachother in person, but they had written letters and e-mails to eachother in the past. It was awesome that we had the opportunity to not only contact them but also to meet them.
For our last day in Los Angeles, Karen and Ted gave us a tip to go to the California Science Center to view the space shuttle Endeavour. They had flown the shuttle into LAX, the airport in Los Angeles, and then driven it through the city streets for over 10-12 miles to get it to the California Science Center to have it on display. It was super cool to see a space shuttle up close that had been on several missions into outer space. If you think the nose of the airplane looks like it's deteriorating and in need of repairs, then you're thinking the same thing I did at first sight - but that's actually all the panels of the heat shield, which makes it more of a rough-looking surface.
Just outside the California Science Center is the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the home of the 1932 Olympics and University of Southern California Trojans football games. I like the Trojans so it was cool to see their stadium, but the gates were closed so we couldn't do much more than peek through a fence.
We also went to Downtown LA just to walk around for a bit.
Outside the Staples Center, Magic Johnson was wearing a Kings jersey. Los Angeles' hockey team, the Kings, were playing a playoff game later that night. Our last day in Los Angeles ended with that, because we had to get back to pack our bags and get ready for the next day. We had an early morning flight out of LAX to get back home. I think we woke up around 3-4 am just to get to the airport in time and to return our rental car.
The time had come for our trip back to Denmark.
This nice little restaurant under the arches is an LAX landmark.
Waiting in our plane at the gate for the start of our journey back home. We had three flights, from LAX to Washington-Dulles, then on to Copenhagen and a smaller regional flight to get to an airport closer to our home. We started at 7 am, Friday morning. But it turned out that we were in for a surprise when we made it to Washington:
As we landed in Washington, we had about an hour and a half to make it to our connecting flight, but we learned that the plane from Copenhagen was delayed so we were stuck in the airport for 5 hours. We had to switch terminals, and we were walking down the terminal that we had landed in, and we actually missed the signs pointing to the shuttle trains going to the other terminal, so we kept walking. It wasn't much more than a few hundred feet beyond where we should have turned, and all of a sudden I hear a familiar voice yelling "Thomas!!". Airport terminals are full of people so I didn't think more of it, but turned my head around to check anyways - and I spotted my friend Austin.
Austin was on his way back from a trip to France to see the French Open and the country. They were waiting for their flight to Phoenix and had another 3 hours or so. All of a sudden, it was actually great that our flight was delayed, and unbelieveable that we had walked the "wrong way" to run into Austin. It was nice to catch up with a great friend of mine for one last time before leaving the US for good. We spent a good bunch of our time just talking about how crazy it was that we found eachother, haha. His flight left an hour and a half before ours, which gave us plenty of time to still make it over to our gate.
The old terminal in Dulles has a lot of international flags hanging from the ceiling, including all the Scandinavian ones.
Our plane had finally made it to Washington, so that we could return.
Yet, it turned dark before we boarded the plane, at some time around 9 pm. Starting at 7 am and with the time difference, it had now been 11 hours.
Not too long after waking up, I had my first sight of Denmark, with this being the northwest coast.
With a delayed flight to Copenhagen we also missed the first flight to Billund, a regional airport in Jutland, but we were re-booked for a later flight. It was almost funny that my journey back from America, which had started at LAX, one of the busiest airports in the world, would end with this small propeller-plane that had maybe 15-20 people on board. After taking a bus and then a taxi from the smaller airport in Billund, we were finally home at some point around 6-7 pm, Saturday. Thus, our travel from LAX to home took a good 26-27 hours.
It was almost weird to be back home again, and I have had to get used to it. As I mentioned earlier, it's surreal that all my American friends and my host family is still in Arizona, in a totally different timezone on the other side of the World. But it's also been nice to be back home again. As I have heard about hot temperatures and disastrous wildfires in Arizona, we have had some cool, rainy weather mixed with some sunny days. We haven't made it higher than 75-80F/25C degrees but the heat here is pretty humid.
Since I have been home, I've had the opportunity to see some family members and friends of mine again, but I have been anything from busy. Other than cleaning up my room a bit, all I've been doing has been practicing football with my old teammates and I've gotten into a routine of working out at a nearby gym again, trying to get into and stay in shape. I have started the process to apply for a Driver's license here, and I was told that I can indeed skip a lot of the otherwise lengthy process. Rather than taking the usually mandatory driving lessons, all I have to do is pass a written test and a road test. That saves me almost $1500-2000/10.000 DKK. My parents also told me that I could send out some job applications, which I did, but no one wants to hire a guy who's leaving again in October. Given that I didn't find a job, I'll have quite a long, relaxed summer break until then.
In October, I am leaving for 5 weeks to Costa Brava, Spain, to go through training to become a tourist guide. After I finish the training, I will be interviewed by travel agencies and then hired to be sent somewhere. Rather than being a guide in Denmark, the job is basically to be a guide for Danish tourists abroad. I could go anywhere in Europe, mostly near or around the Mediterranean, or as far away as Asia, Africa or even the Americas! Wherever there are Danish tourists with travel agencies are an option. I love travelling and having done IB at Westwood over just two years means that I have graduated at age 17. I have some time to spare, so I really wanted to go travel around the World, hopefully to some places that I've never visited. After working as a tourist guide for a couple of years, I plan to begin training to fulfil my goal of becoming an air traffic controller. I still don't know where I will apply to for that, but there's a good chance it's ouside of Scandinavia. It's nice to have options available.
Just yesterday, I got some great news that I had been waiting for. The IB Organization released their exam scores online, and it turned out that I got the following scores (out of 7):
English Higher Level - 5
Spanish Standard Level - 6
History Higher Level - 5
Physics Higher Level - 6
Biology Standard Level - 6
Mathematics Standard Level - 6
And then for a big research project, the Extended Essay, and a two-semester class called Theory of Knowledge, which are graded with A, B, C, D or E, and then combined to give anywhere up to 3 points. I received 2 points for Bs in both. Thus, with 34 points from my classes and the 2 points from EE/TOK, I got 36 points in total (out of a maximum possible of 45). The minimum to pass and earn the IB Diploma is 24 points, so I certainly earned my IB Diploma. All of my scores are above the average grades from last year's May exams, so I'm really glad about that. 36 last year was better than 85% of the IB students. I am now simply waiting for my IB Diploma to be mailed to me from my Westwood IB Coordinator sometime later in the Summer.
That is all for now, this may be the longest blog post I've made yet. Given that my adventures in Arizona are overwith, it's very unlikely that I will update this blog again, unless perhaps when I come back to visit my friends and host family again. However, I am not done with blogging. Despite getting into the terrible habit of not updating my blog and writing long blog entries every 2 or 3 months, I will try to keep a blog of my experiences as a tourist guide as well. I am planning on it, at least. It will be a seperate blog name, but I will post an update with a link and more information on here, when I've set it up and my trip to Spain to begin my time as a guide comes nearer.
Let me just close by giving a thank you to any and all of my American friends and family members that might be reading this. I will never forget these past two years, they have been the greatest years of my life for sure. I have had so many great memories, fun times and met so many incredibly nice people, all of you whom I hope I will be able to stay in touch with. I wish the very best for you in the future and I would just like to thank you for welcoming me into your life and contributing to my amazing experiences in the US. I will always cherish these past two years, I have really grown and matured by them. A special thanks definitely goes to my host parents for making so many sacrifices to make it all possible, and for letting me stay in their home. It's unusual for a host family to have a student staying for a second year, but they were willing to and open to the idea. I will always be grateful and thankful for all that you have done for me, Gunn and Jana.
Take care.
Thomas.
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