Welcome to America!

Welcome to my blog! I'm finally here in America, and have finally set up a blog in an attempt to track my progress across the pond. I'm only two weeks in, and am already sick of telling approximately three million different people the same information, so y'all can just read it on here instead :)

Firstly, America is just what I expected - everyone told me NOT to expect it to be like in the films, but it actually is. I feel weirdly at home here, mainly because I feel like I've seen everything before, but only on the big screen. The roads are ridiculously wide, to match the cars that are ridiculously big - both my American room mates drive massive SUVs as if it's the most normal thing in the world, which I suppose to them it is. The absence of round-abouts is odd, as is the

**(Above is me in front of my Halls!)**

fact that you don't have to have a licence plate on the front of your car in South Carolina!You pretty much can't do ANYTHING without a car - I haven't seen one bus or sign for a train station, and even getting a "quart" of milk results in a twenty minute drive to Walmart. The food is also ridiculously stereotypical - especially here down South. I've experienced burritos, pancakes, tacos, sweet tea (which actually nearly beats English tea) and the craziest "ice cream" called Dippy Dots, which are like Millions, as in the sweets, but instead of being chewy inside, are filled with ice cream. I didn't know whether to be impressed or alarmed when I was told they were originally made using a freeze drier designed for creating cow feed....the food in general is insanely unhealthy. Walmart doesn't seem to believe in anything natural...even the sliced apples come with a pourable caramel sauce. At the moment I'm surviving on Special K and pasta in an attempt to avoid the American trend of obesity!The photo on the left are coloured nachos....

I took advantage of America's economic depression last week in a trip to the "mall", and managed to buy lots of American labels for about a third of the price I would have paid in England - Abercrombie & Fitch hotpants for $30 and Haviana flip flops for $13! Despite my friends' jibes that I would be teetotal for a year, luckily we've managed to get our hands on plenty of alcohol out here. My friends from Australia are both over 21, and house parties are a big deal here. My first experience of a Frat party was intimidating - never have I experienced so much testosterone in a room! It was packed out with very muscular frat boys with their caps on backward, playing beer pong, watching American football on TV and chatting up every girl in sight. I thought I'd actually stepped into 'Mean Girls'.... Whilst not at class, we've been spending nearly every waking second at the pool, sunbathing and swimming. The gym is also incredible; a entire floor each of weights and cardio, a massive climbing wall, an inside running track and about five squash courts - although the fact you have to scan your fingerprints to enter makes me a little scared of what the American government can pin on me now!

Unfortunately, though, I actually have to do some studying....Classes started nearly two weeks ago, and they're very different from English university classes. Firstly, you don't have seminars and lectures, you just have "class", which is a group numbering anywhere between 15 and 100 people, in which the lecturer talks, and student occasionally contribute. Classes are compulsory, and attendance is taken - failure to turn up means your grade is reduced, meaning that skipping Civil War lectures at 9am on a Monday morning is just not possible like it is back home, damn it! The tutors are far more into teaching than those at Warwick, whom I think are really there just to research. This means that they explain things better, but at the same time they appear less intelligent and dynamic.... and are more prone to setting tests three times a semester as they can actually be bothered to mark them! ALL text books have to be bought - no one ever thinks of using the library, and you are only expected to read about two or three whole books for each class over the semester, compared to at Warwick, where you would read a couple of chapters from about twenty books. Classes are really interesting, and I'm just about getting used to being taught in an American accent - though whenever I speak the entire class turns around to stare at the girl with the funny voice! I've already been asked (both by tutors and students) whether I can carry a handgun in London, if we still eat steak and kidney pie, and queried as to if London is near England. I got off lightly; an Irish boy was told he spoke English very well!

Although in theory we speak the same language, I spend half my time asking people what they mean... Americans use so many different words to us, and the ones they use that are the same they pronounce wrongly! "Lolly gagging" is dawdling, "flannel" is a man's shirt, not a washcloth, a "jumper" is a Babygro, a "tramp" is a slut, a trolley is a "buggie", a "sham" is a pillowcase....duvet is pronounced "doo-VAY", pecan is said "pee-KAAN" and they don't say "bugger"!