This post has an over riding theme, which is football (again). The cockroach only comes in at the end, so hang in there if you want some more skin crawling bug antics. Firstly, my new experience of this week was that I attended my first ever home football game at USC's William Brice Stadium, which was very exciting. Everyone had told me in advance what a big deal "game day" is, but I hadn't realised it was to such an extent. At about 2pm on Saturday afternoon, us girls all started getting into our black dresses and doing our hair - for games here, a lot of the girls go quite formal in black dresses with garnet accessories (our school colours) and wear nice make up and shoes. We accessorised with tasteful USC logo temporary facial tattoos and cracked open the vodka and orange - even for me, being fully made up, dressed in evening wear and drinking vodka at 2pm on a 
Saturday was a little strange! After a few (too many) we headed off to go tail-gating on the shuttle bus the university runs to cart all us rowdy students to the stadium about twenty minutes away. Tail gating is a massive deal here, and is nothing like we have in England. Everyone parks up their massive SUVs, gets out the bbqs and six packs of beer and all sit around outside their open car boot doors, drinking, eating meat, watching the pre-game commentary on TVs in their boots, and just generally being very, very american. And usually drunk. And wearing a lot of black and garnet. By no means is this just students; rather the opposite. Some of the best tail gating spots in the car park outside the stadium can cost $10,000 a season - even by London standards, that is one hell of a car park fee! A lot of the crowd are alumni, families and just locals who all come along for the ride. College football here is just as popular as league football, and the entire area support the local university team, paying a lot of money to buy tickets for the 80,000 seater stadium. Once we'd battled our way in, past all the fast food and drunken college students and settled into our seats on the "bleachers" I began to realise just how vast our stadium is. To put it in context; the O2 arena in London holds about 20,000. Wembley holds 90,000. The Gamecocks's stadium is huge. And it was a sea of garnet and black, all cheering and chanting and smelling of beer and sweat and excitement. The cheerleaders were fresh out of Bring It On, complete with midriff exposing tops, massive white bows in their hair and painfully excited smiles. I'm not going to lie - when the game was actually in play, I had no idea what was going on. I just cheered when everyone else d
id, and still didn't grasp the concept of why the teams keep swapping over every five minutes. But it was still so so much fun - the Alma Mater (USC anthem) and National Anthem were sung - both of which I knew not one word of, there was the school's massive marching band at half time (who practise outside our Halls every Sunday morning, so I already knew their repertoire inside out), and a girl twirling flaming batons. The Navy cadets from the military base on campus (yes, apparently it's fine for military bases to be on university campuses here) unrolled a huge American flag, and it was all very red blooded and patriotic and good fun. Unfortunately we ended up leaving just after half time, as the combination of painful shoes, heat, screaming and early-afternoon drinking had got to us all, so we bailed and went to Bojangles for buckets of diet Coke and piles of fries.
Saturday was a little strange! After a few (too many) we headed off to go tail-gating on the shuttle bus the university runs to cart all us rowdy students to the stadium about twenty minutes away. Tail gating is a massive deal here, and is nothing like we have in England. Everyone parks up their massive SUVs, gets out the bbqs and six packs of beer and all sit around outside their open car boot doors, drinking, eating meat, watching the pre-game commentary on TVs in their boots, and just generally being very, very american. And usually drunk. And wearing a lot of black and garnet. By no means is this just students; rather the opposite. Some of the best tail gating spots in the car park outside the stadium can cost $10,000 a season - even by London standards, that is one hell of a car park fee! A lot of the crowd are alumni, families and just locals who all come along for the ride. College football here is just as popular as league football, and the entire area support the local university team, paying a lot of money to buy tickets for the 80,000 seater stadium. Once we'd battled our way in, past all the fast food and drunken college students and settled into our seats on the "bleachers" I began to realise just how vast our stadium is. To put it in context; the O2 arena in London holds about 20,000. Wembley holds 90,000. The Gamecocks's stadium is huge. And it was a sea of garnet and black, all cheering and chanting and smelling of beer and sweat and excitement. The cheerleaders were fresh out of Bring It On, complete with midriff exposing tops, massive white bows in their hair and painfully excited smiles. I'm not going to lie - when the game was actually in play, I had no idea what was going on. I just cheered when everyone else d
id, and still didn't grasp the concept of why the teams keep swapping over every five minutes. But it was still so so much fun - the Alma Mater (USC anthem) and National Anthem were sung - both of which I knew not one word of, there was the school's massive marching band at half time (who practise outside our Halls every Sunday morning, so I already knew their repertoire inside out), and a girl twirling flaming batons. The Navy cadets from the military base on campus (yes, apparently it's fine for military bases to be on university campuses here) unrolled a huge American flag, and it was all very red blooded and patriotic and good fun. Unfortunately we ended up leaving just after half time, as the combination of painful shoes, heat, screaming and early-afternoon drinking had got to us all, so we bailed and went to Bojangles for buckets of diet Coke and piles of fries. Remaining on the topic of football, we went to watch an away game at a house party last week in the Woodlands, which is a local student housing complex - though nothing like ones in Britain, bear in mind. These ones have an on-site gym, outdoor pool, tanning parlour, wide screen tvs and bare wood floors in the apartments. As expected, most of us got bored of watching a game we had no understanding of ,so we all ended up reclining in the super sized hammocks 
by the pool. Unfortunately, the sophisticated and relaxing evening turned into havoc when the boys arrived. Men's minds are obviously wired in such a way that this is their thought process; Water. Jump in. Throw everyone who looks vaguely dry in with you. So one minute, we were all made up, well groomed and wearing cute, well thought out, outfits. The next, there was a lot of mascara running and rusting jewellery. Still, it was more amusing than being inside drinking warm beer. Luckily we left approximately three minutes before the police came and busted the party. Somehow, I think we may have looked a little suspect had we attempted to blend in with the general, non-partying population. "Honestly Officer, this freak raincloud came out of nowhere and soaked us. Pool? I ain't seen no pool....."
by the pool. Unfortunately, the sophisticated and relaxing evening turned into havoc when the boys arrived. Men's minds are obviously wired in such a way that this is their thought process; Water. Jump in. Throw everyone who looks vaguely dry in with you. So one minute, we were all made up, well groomed and wearing cute, well thought out, outfits. The next, there was a lot of mascara running and rusting jewellery. Still, it was more amusing than being inside drinking warm beer. Luckily we left approximately three minutes before the police came and busted the party. Somehow, I think we may have looked a little suspect had we attempted to blend in with the general, non-partying population. "Honestly Officer, this freak raincloud came out of nowhere and soaked us. Pool? I ain't seen no pool....."We had another run in with football when our first all girls flag football match came around last week. Suffice to say, we weren't the best team USC has seen. To the extent that the referee had to tell us what the rules were...and how to play the game. But we had a lot of fun, and we worked as a team which is what counts, right? So what if the only contact I had with the ball is when Anna threw it in my direction and it hit me right on my left cheekbone? I burnt a LOT of calories running away from the ball, and from the scary, serious freshman girls on the other team. Unfortunately for my team, I was injured this week - they could hardly cope without such an esteemed athlete as myself. Ahem. My injury was caused by trying out another American tradition (I'm pretty much a US citizen now, I swear, I've done all the initiations), a "batting cage" i.e. one of those machines which fire baseballs at you and you hit them (in theory), as if you're playing the actual game. Racheal and I were treated to this fun, but ultimately painful, experience at a classy establishment named "Frankie's Fun Park", where I also experienced my first game of crazy golf. The only crazy thing about it was how aggressive we were at hitting the golf ball, resulting in losing four and only completing 11 holes... then stealing another few balls because they were fuchsia and really quite pretty for such a mundane object. We also had a near death experience on go karts. Racheal passed her driving test the day before leaving for America. The go karts went very fast. There was a strong smell of petrol. And no helmets. And some arrogant man behind us kept bumping our kart. This time, I'm not even exaggerating much when I say near death. Apart from this exciting new experiences, the last couple of weeks have been dominated by a sudden and unwelcome influx of study. I wrote the first "response paper" of my life ( a bizarre concept, in which the general instruction is to read an essay, then say what you think/feel about it. In two pages. Hmm.), and took my first ever one-word-answer Politics exam. The marking system here is crazy -I got 86% in this test, which is a B+. For any British university stude
nt, you know this is completely different from our system.... where are my three hour essay exams, thirds, two ones, firsts and 40% pass mark now huh?! Finally; the cockroach. Wow, these things are getting waaaay too frequent an occurrence in my life. Basically, there was a cockroach in my room this morning. It was dead. When I got back from class a few hours later, it's legs were moving. It was definitely, definitely dead this morning. But it didn't just move a little bit, then die again. It got more enthusiastic and started trying to flip over. You can probably imagine my reaction. I'm ashamed to admit it, due to my (obviously flimsy) feminist ideology, but I did get a heroic man to deal with the miracle cockroach. Seriously, SINCE WHEN DO COCKROACHES COME BACK TO LIFE?! Only in America.
nt, you know this is completely different from our system.... where are my three hour essay exams, thirds, two ones, firsts and 40% pass mark now huh?! Finally; the cockroach. Wow, these things are getting waaaay too frequent an occurrence in my life. Basically, there was a cockroach in my room this morning. It was dead. When I got back from class a few hours later, it's legs were moving. It was definitely, definitely dead this morning. But it didn't just move a little bit, then die again. It got more enthusiastic and started trying to flip over. You can probably imagine my reaction. I'm ashamed to admit it, due to my (obviously flimsy) feminist ideology, but I did get a heroic man to deal with the miracle cockroach. Seriously, SINCE WHEN DO COCKROACHES COME BACK TO LIFE?! Only in America. 
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