Gamecocks vs Commodores

This week we struck lucky and managed to get tickets to the USC vs Vanderbilt game! When I say struck lucky I mean we spent the most stressful hour and a half trying to get tickets online, admitted defeat, and then suddenly half an hour later realised that some were still available! It made trying to get Beyonce tickets a positively enjoyable experience.....

Before the match starts everyone tailgates at the stadium which is pretty cool. Having a massive pick up truck is standard here, there are absolutely no small cars! Anyway everyone brings their SUVs down to the car parking lots near the stadium, as well as copious amounts of food and drink. They go all out. I didn't get any good pictures but everyone has proper barbecues, and often a wide screen TV to watch the match on!

Everything is garnet or black, and it seems like a big family day out. It's actually really nice and makes a good change from the slightly more laddish atmosphere at English football games. Another thing that takes place at the tailgate is playing 'cornhole'. This game is so popular, it's crazy. I'd say every other family tailgating had a set. The aim of the game is, essentially, take it in turns to chuck a beanbag in the hole. However, having played it I can now confirm it's not as easy as it sounds and there's all sorts of tactics. Although I still think that it looks like someone's nicked it from the local village fete.

Me and Helly didn't manage to get tickets in the student section which is lower down so we were high up, in fact about as high up as you could go! We still had a great view though and the atmosphere was amazing. People are very openly passionate about the game here and everytime points are scored fireworks go off, the song sandstorm gets blasted out, and everyone whips out their game teatowels (they almost definitely are not teatowels and probably have an official name but I have no idea what) and waves them around like mad. I didn't realise until very recently that Norwich City was unusual in having a goal celebration song (the best celebration song ever) but it's definitely something all teams should take on, makes scoring so much more exciting for those of us who don't know any of the rules of the game.

We stayed until the half-time show, which was the school band, the cheerleaders, the dancers and one (very good) baton-twirler. We've watched the band practice before but I still have no idea how they all know where to go, they are constantly moving into different formations and do it all perfectly, it's really impressive.

I was pretty sure that the commodore was a type of bird and was going to make some sort of lame joke about a chicken taking on a commodore but I just googled it and it turns out in fact that it's a naval officer of high rank. Anywaaay USC won 35-25 so a good first game for us to go to! woo go cocks.

 

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mind your manners

Even though it's been about 30° every day for the last two weeks, I have managed to catch myself a cold. In England this would be no big deal, and it's no different here except for when you sneeze in class. I had my first in-class sneeze today and I would estimate 5-10 people swung round and shouted BLESS YOU in my face. No exaggeration. It was as if they had some sort of reflex reaction to my sneezing or that there was a prize for whoever could say it quickest and loudest. It was hard not to laugh as it was so unexpected but I did somehow hold it together. In my next class I sneezed twice and this happened both times, so it's definitely a thing here. Which brings me to the point that, from what I've seen so far, English manners and American manners are very different.
South Carolina has actually been voted the most polite state in the USA so maybe I'm experiencing extreme levels of it, but people here really are polite, sometimes overwhelmingly so. I've definitely questioned the genuineness of some people's 'southern charm' but that's probably just my inner British cynicism.

I'm not sure why the stereotype exists about British people loving to queue, as unsurprisingly I've found that Americans do also have the ability to stand in an ordered line and wait to be served. However, in England, it's kind of an unwritten rule that you don't talk to other people in the queue, unless it's a necessity. About a year ago I was waiting to pay in Topshop and the girl in front of me suddenly projectile vomited everywhere and admittedly on that occasion I turned to the person behind and suggested we get out the way, but that was an exception. Here on the other hand, it is totally normal for the person next to you in the line to strike up conversation. The worst thing about this is that because the weather is always nice you can't use it as your default discussion topic and instead have to actually engage in real life conversation with a total stranger. Not very english at all.
Another thing, and this one I'm not complaining about, is the somewhat chivalrous nature of most of the guys here. You will always have the door held open for you, and I'm still getting used to the fact that people call me ma'am!
Staff in shops and restaurants are also unreservedly chatty; last week when we went out for a meal our waiter invited us to go and see him perform in Hamlet that evening. However, tipping here is very different, and you're expected to tip between 15 and 20 percent, and even tip bartenders. At first this was a big shock, as a tapwater-ordering vouchercode-hoarding student, voluntarily giving this much extra just didn't feel right. However, they do go all out on the service, and the food itself is a lot cheaper so I'm slowly getting used to it.
Perhaps as a contrast to American manners, I've noticed now how much I automatically apologise, just out of habit. Although repeatedly saying sorry, oh thanks, sorry etc is inherent to most exchanges in England, here it's not and I am constantly getting told by shop assistants that, 'it's ok, you haven't done anything wrong'.

I'm still not sure how much detail I'm meant to go into when the lady at the bagel shop asks me how my day's going, and I don't think I'm ever going to be the one who initiates conversation when waiting to pay, but maybe when I'm back at Warwick and someone sneezes mid-lecture I'll yell my blessing at them and see how it goes down. (or maybe not)


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ps. having just googled the origins of saying 'bless you' when someone sneezes, the wisdom of wiki has told me that it likely comes from one of three things.
1) when you have the plague a key symptom is sneezing so you are literally being blessed in the hope you will survive
2) when you sneeze your soul can be thrown out of your nose, or the devil can sneak in and saying bless you acts as a shield against this evil
3) when you sneeze your heart stops and people saying bless you gets it going again

so maybe it's not politeness but just that people here are more wary of the plague/the devil/sudden cardiac arrest than in england, who knows?

I haven't been very organised with this blog so am yet to write a post about the first few weeks here but hopefully I will get round to that some point soon. Anyway, today was Labour day and this meant a 3 day weekend so three of us from warwick decided to venture off into North Carolina and spent a few days in the mountain town of Asheville!

Getting to Asheville was my first experience aboard an infamous greyhound bus and it did not fail to impress. Having almost acquired heatstroke walking to the greyhound station we picked up our tickets and began to wait until our bus arrived. Looking round the decidedly dodgy station, I couldn't help but notice a large number of weird net bags placed on random chairs. They were like fishing nets with various objects in; usually some letters and some clothing. There was also an absolute abundance of slightly rough looking men in blue shirts and beige trousers. After pondering the situation for a while I concluded that 1) the men were bus drivers and there was just a lot of buses that day and 2) net bags were all the fashion in South Carolina. Feeling glad to have worked out these mysteries I told Helly, rather loudly, about what (I assumed) was going on. It wasn't until I was boarding the bus, along with about 25 of the blue shirt men that someone in front of me mentioned the words 'release day' and the penny dropped. Not bus drivers at all but freshly freed prisoners! What fun. And so our four-hour journey was spent on a coach with a convict-citizen ratio of about 5 to 1. Good times.

Anyway Asheville itself was really good and I would definitely recommend it if you are in the area. The town is nestled at the foot of the blue ridge mountains and has a completely different feel to Columbia even though its only around 3 hours drive away. It's a pretty hippie town with lots of kooky gift and clothes shops and some amaaaaazing places for food. We got to experience our first 'biscuit' which does not look like this....

But in fact like this!

Which may seem a bit underwhelming for such a popular food thing of the south but once you get some blueberry jam on it, it is actually lush. Though still not quite a hobnob.

We spent the first day wandering around downtown including spending an inordinate amount of time in urban outfitters (but it was nice to have some familiarity!) and on the second day were kindly given a lift by some other people staying at the hostel up into the blue ridge mountains. 

We walked up the 'Craggy Gardens' trail.

This was amazing and the views were insane. The photos don't do it justice...

The blue ridge parkway is pretty famous round here (and I think in North America in general) for being a really scenic drive and we saw tonnes of motorcyclists and also lots of mental cyclists - the inclines were massive. As well as the road itself, there's trails everywhere and we spent a few hours surrounded by bees and butterflies hiking through the woods which was a nice change to the traffic and humidity of Columbia.

Asheville is a pretty cool town and prides itself on being the beer capital of North America. There are breweries everywhere, lots of good places to eat, and lots of cool murals on many of the street corners.

There was also a lot of street musicians around the town, including this absolute ledge of a spoon player...

After three nights in our hostel (it had a dream diary for guests to write in and a paper mâché giraffe as the centre piece of the lounge, so not sure we quite qualified as alternative enough to stay there but hey ho) we said goodbye to Asheville (for now) and boarded the greyhound home (no felons this time).

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