Life Here & There 
No Comments Rodeo As I Knew It
As I have mentioned before in the past, the differences of life between the Philippines and the USA is about 90% different. Having been living here going on 5 years, I thought I was getting a good grasp on life in the USA. What I found out was Goryo knew of another massive layer of things he didn’t tell me about yet. He was waiting until I was ready for more information. You need to love learning to live here.
What he introduced to me is that different areas have incredibly different interests in hobbies and sports. So when I was being curious a while back, I started asking about words I ran into while surfing the Internet. One word was rodeo. Our discussion started with my assumption that rodeo was that red saddle I saw somewhere that moves quickly to dump the rider off. Wow, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Digging into the topic got me more and more curious. As always, a person can watch videos and read stuff on the Internet all they want but you have to experience it in real life to fully understand it. The problem is I live in an area where rodeo isn’t that popular. Combine that with a limited number of days off available from work, I want to spend my time wisely to see as much as I could see in one shot.
The best option is to go and watch the premier rodeo championship where they do all of the events including bareback riding, steer wrestling, team roping, saddle bronc riding, tie-down roping, bull riding and barrel racing. That option is the National Rodeo Finals or NRF sponsored by Wrangler Jeans (HEY, we got those in the Phils.) and run by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.
Now the trick is getting my supervisor to give me the days off when the NFR is going on so I can properly use my National Rodeo Finals tickets. However, I did get one key bit of information from watching the online videos of a rodeo. I do not want to be seated right next to the arena. Give me a bleacher seat, those bulls scare me.
-Anah
