At the risk of admitting how behind the times I am:



Thanksgiving is over, and I have fully recovered from a long weekend of travel, socializing, eating, playing and just plain fun-having. It was hard being away from my family for Thanksgiving, but being in Phoenix with 30 or so fellow JV's and playing football under a beautiful blue, sunny sky and 70 degree weather was a great distraction! Oh and let's not forget the spread - TWO banquet tables' worth of food wonderland!



We even got to take a hike (literally!) up Camelback Mountain the next day, which was a great way to work off the pumpkin pie-bread pudding-Irish candy smorgasbord of desserts that graced my pallet the previous evening. The hike up was demanding - we were essentially rock climbing without ropes at one pound - and the hike down was twice as tough. It took us about 3 hours to complete the 3 mile trip. The sore legs and scraped hands were definitely worth the view!



By Saturday most of the JVs had left (they had 14-18 hour trips back up to northern California. Talk about dedication!), but the guy who rode down with us went to the border on Saturday morning to help an organization called "No Mas Muertes" (No More Deaths) in their efforts to provide water for people who have crossed the border and are trying to find their way, so my roommate and I hung around until his return on Sunday.



I had gotten sick on Friday night and so spend most of Saturday laying around, trying to stop the room from spinning. It felt like such a waste of a day - I could have done some serious site-seeing in that time - but not being sick the next day was worth it.



We went to the church that the Phoenix JVs frequent on Sunday morning and (at the risk of sounding ethno- and lingo-centric) I realized how much I miss masses in English and, more specifically, how much I miss Newman. Sometimes it's just easier to connect to God on a "worship" level when you're familiar with what's going on (not to discount the value that struggle and discomfort offer to spirituality, by any means...).



But perhaps comfort is destructive in church too: I was so comfortable that, as a short, 12-year old boy wearing glasses and a green shirt dragged his feet up to the lecturn to read the first reading, I put my own feet up on kneeler in front of me. It was put up and out of the way and looked like the perfect place to put my feet (you can't tell me that you've never taken advantage of these convenient foot rests). The rest of the congregation settled into silence to hear the first proclamation of God's word and as I settled my feet on this combination of wood-and-metal in front of me, a loud "squeakBOOM" echoed through the church. The kneeler had come loose under the weight of my feet and crashed to the tiled floor. I did my best to play it cool, but the young woman next to me (a fellow JV) couldn't help but look at me and laugh - as everyone else looked around to see who had committed this act of vandalism - she might as well have stood up, waved those glowing sticks airtraffic directors use to tell red eye planes where to go after they land at my head and shouted "IT WAS HER!"



Anyway, I guess I was sort of like Jesus in that moment: I walked in and destroyed the temple. Oops. :)

That afternoon we packed the car and headed back to LA. It was smooth sailing for the most part...until we hit traffic so bad that we were going 25 mph for 3 hours! It was a pretty annoying situation, but fortunately I had brought my portable DVD player (living simply?), so we at least had a bit of entertainment.

And with the end of "Being John Malkovich" came the end of our Phoenix Thanksgiving. We dropped off our passenger and headed home, anxious to get out of the car and into our own beds.