New Year’s: The Perfect Celebration

With all the noise during New Year’s Eve, there was just no way to sleep. Once I got into Junior High and High School, staying up was more fun anyway. Once we were able to receive the Armed Forces Network (AFN), everything fell into place.

The Philippines was advanced enough to have a handful of local TV stations, but their sports programming didn’t show US events. But when we were finally able to tune in AFN, we had access to the big nationally televised events, setting up the perfect New Year’s Eve celebration. Now I’m not exactly sure of the timing here (partly because I lost track of days and times) so there may be a few inaccuracies.

The week of New Year’s usually coincided with the annual conference for all of the Philippine missionaries with our mission. That whole week I turned into a night owl, staying up until 4 or 5 in the morning watching AFN’s broadcasts of bowl games etc. and then reporting the results at breakfast the next morning to all the missionaries who had collegiate allegences but weren’t committed enough to loose sleep over it.

This was the perfect way to celebrate New Year’s. The early bowl games would come on around 10 p.m. followed by a second game that would start around midnight and at times even a third game in the early morning. Staying up, when you couldn’t sleep anyway, hanging out with friends and watching football. Perfect.

So as you fight to stay awake to see a bologna, goat or whatever else is falling on Saturday night, there’s probably a high school kid on the other side of the globe enjoying a bowl game as the clock strikes 12. Happy New Year!