American football!

The day we arrived we went to a American football game. It was Andrea's school's team against another school, called Taylor. None of us had ever seen a American football game, and it was very different than what we are used to here in Norway. As we have mentioned before, everything is bigger in USA, this was no exception! It was filled with people at the stadion, everybody were cheering and it was just like we see in the High School movies!!

Ready for our first American football game!

 

Here you can see the field, the team and some of Andreas friends in front of us. They were very helpful and taught us  the rules. They were all huge fans of Houston Texans which is a football team from Houston, Texas. They are one of the best teams in the proffesional leauge. Jordan, which is the boy with a black shirt, had just met one of the players when he was in El-Paso to visit his family.

 

This is a picture from The Houston Texans website. This is Jordan's favourite player and rolemodel, Quintin Demps.  Jordan told us his biggest dream used to be to meet him, and now that he has accomplished that his dream is to play for Houston Texans," because you get a lot of respect from being a football player", he said. After seeing Andrea's school team play, we understood all the respect. It's a very though sport with a lot of body contact!!
 

After the football game we bought Starbucks coffee before we finished the day off with an hour in the jaccuzzi

 

Downtown Aquarium

On the last day we had in Houston we went to the popular place called Downtown Aquarium. The aquarium was opened in 2003 and is one of the largest underwater aquariums in the world. The aquarium houses more than 200 different species of aquatic animals and was given the price of best museum located in Houston 2004.

 

Nora is waiting for the sharks.....

 

 Picture taken from: http://www.divedowntown.com/

It was very interesting to see all kinds of fish. I really didn't know that it existed so many different species under the sea. We got to learn about how they eat and how they survive shark attacks and stuff like that by hiding and pretend to be an object or a larger type of fish. The aquarium is a very popular place for families because it suits every age. After we had been there we went back to the house and had a delicious meal with seven different types of fish, i swear that i've never tasted swordfish before, but it actually tasted quite OK.
It was a long and interesting day.

Houston, Texas

Now that we are back home, it's time to tell you more about Houston. You've allready got to see what we've been upto, and where we've been, but we haven't written about the city we visited yet.

We went to Houston which is the biggest city in the state Texas. Texas is the second biggest state in USA both in habitants and area, after California (habitants) and Alaska(area). Texas is 696200km² and has a population of  25674681 (source)people.

1.Map of Texas.25,674,681
 

Texas situated in the southern part in USA and it bordes to Mexcico. Over you can see a map of the state. The state capital is Austin and the biggest city is Houston. Other big cities in Texas are San Antonio, Dallas, Forth Word and El Paso.

This is a picture of the state of Texas' flag. It's called Lone Star because of the one star in the blue area. The flag was intorduced to the Congress Of Texas on December 28, 1838. In January 1839 it was adopted as the official national flag of the republic of Texas. When chosing a flag, symbols are on of the main parts. In this flag blue symbolise loyality, white for purity and red for bravery. The star symbolise that all Texans must stand together for God, the State and Country. In Houston there are a lot of roads, huge roads. There are also alot of car reatils, which are situated along the road. Outside each car retail, there were to flags; The American Flag and Lone Star. This shows that the Texans and I think Americans in general, are very proud of their nation, and that their flags meens alot to them.

 

The living conditions in America are a bit different than ours in Norway. Our impression is that everything is much bigger in America. They drive huge cars, have gigantic houses(all the houses we saw in the city were huge, but there are povetry in America aswell), but the biggest difference is the way they live. When we where there, it was early October. Alot of familiys had already started decorating their house for Halloween, and a lot of stores and malls had started decorating for christmas. Here in Norway a lot of people complain about shops that sell gingerbread or christmas soda in October/November, they would probably don't like that part of the American culture.

Good evening. Today we woke up to a wonderful weather, the sun was shining, the clouds were far away, the wind was just right and the pool had just been cleaned. 

After we had tanned for a while we met the neighbours, five boys at the age of eleven. We asked one of them named Kyle some questions about living in the american society. 

What do you do after school?

Well, some of my friends go straight home, but i stay and practice football with the rest of my team mates. We practice two hours every day and on thursdays we play against different schools.

Bryan and Kyle

What are your looking farward to now that the summer is over?

I am looking farward to Halloween, me and my family have already starting to prepare our garden with pumpkins, ghosts and monsters, everyone in texas loves Halloween and it is a great highlight in october. In november we celebrate Thanksgiving. We celebrate with friends and family, we give each other presents and we eat turkey for dinner.

How is the weather when it´s winter here in Houston?

Mostly there is sun, but it gets colder and more windy. In 2008 we actually had snow on christmas eve so everyone in the neighbour hood started a snowballfight in the streets. I think everyone here loves the snow, probably because we get the day off from school!

Later we played some American football with the guys before we ate dinner. After dinner we went out to the pool for a swim, before we jumped in the jaccuzzzi for a relaxing ending of this day. Now we are  going to bed, very tired after a exhausting day!

NASA space center.

Hi guys, here comes a little update from Houston. Today we woke up to a sunless sky and twenty degreess celsius so we decided to drive an hour away to the space center NASA. We were very excited about this trip because we had thought of going there for a few days now.

The Space Center NASA is a museum and was opened the 26th of October 1992. The Center is a year-round open museum. During our time there we learned how astronouts live in space and some facts were more shocking then others. We also went on a guided tram tour where we got to see an original saturn rocket and the room where astronauts test equipment and their reactions with space in simulators. The Saturn rocket was an American human-rated expendable rocket used by NASA´s Apollo and Skylab programs from 1967 until 1973. The rocket has three stages. With every stage included the rocket is 110.6 meters high and has a diameter of 10.2 meter.

This is the training centre for astronauts.

Behind this door you came in to a space ship.

Nora in space, haha :-)

Saturn V

Parts of the Saturn Rocket.

A beautiful day in Texas.

Now we are going to relax with a movie before we go to bed and prepare for a full day by the pool. Nighty from the cowgirls!

Hi!

Today started late. The sun was not present by the pool, neither were we. We had a delicius sunday breakfast with alot of fresh fruit and juice. The weather wasn´t that good today, so we decided to go and get our nails done. The manicure was relaxing and it tourned out great!

When we came home we met som boys in the neighbourhood. It was fun getting to know them, and the differences between our lifestyle and the American´s. This we´ll probably write more about later. We also went to a store called Wallgreens. It is a pharmacy were we shopped for beauty products. It was huge, everything is so much bigger here.

For dinner we had a barbeque with the family. The food was amazing, it was very cosy sitting outside eating and talking together.

Joar.

Update from America

Hi! We are here again with another update from Houston.

Yesterday started early with a delicious American hotel breakfast. The next hours we spent by the hotel pool area were we went for a svim and tanned. It was very hot like it allways is here, around 30 degrees celsius.

The hotel we stayed at, Hilton Hotel Garden Inn 

The hotel pool

After a couple of hours by the pool, we picked up Andrea at her school. We went to a shopping mall called Katy Mills, it was very big!! We spent over six hours there, it was amazing for us shopping lovers. After shopping the family moved into their house. Most of the evening we spent moving in furnitures but also by their pool and jacuzzi. 

Today we´ve spent tanning by the pool, drinking pink limonade. We also went to Galleria which is the biggest shopping mall in Houston. We didn´t have that much time there, so we will probably visit it again.

Limonade by the pool!

Nora and Martha before we went to eat Mexcican at Pappasitos.

This was supposed to be published on saturday (06.10.12)