layground and a pool for the whole estate, which everyone drives around in their golf buggies instead of cars. (We even saw them parked in the car park in Walmart....). The next day was Thanksgiving day, so after waking up and being wished "happy thanksgiving" for the first time in my life, we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade on TV. This is run every year by Macy's department store, and consists of hundreds of floats with massive, eight storey high inflatable figures on various themes - pilgrims, pirates, santa claus, dogs, Pokemon, disney characters, princesses, M and Ms, etc etc, with people singing and
dancing on the floats, and children riding on them waving, and marching bands with majorettes, dancers and cheerleaders. It goes through New York City, and it's very exciting and festive, and very American. And then finally it was thanksgiving dinner time... we went to Anna's cousin's grandparent's house (the whole extended family, about 20 of us, were there), which is beautiful, and all decorated inside with turkey figurines, autumnal themed tablecloths and leaves... and a ridiculous amount of food greeted us! After saying grace, us (being the honoured visitors) were allowed to dig in first. There was a whole table stuffed with green beans, mac and cheese, brocolli salad, two types of stuffing, sweet potato souffle, the biggest turkey I've ever seen, plus two other types of meat, two gravies, hard boiled eggs, redcur
rent sauce, bread rolls, cheese cake, angel food cake, brownies, pecan pie, and my new favourite thing in the world, strawberry pretzel cheese cake. Which consists of a layer of crushed pretzels mixed with butter, a layer of strawberry jelly with strawberries in, then a layer of whipped cream. I could eat it forever. And so we spent the next three hours just eating and eating and eating.... and then we napped on the sofa, when everyone else watched the NFL american football on TV, and then woke up and ate more, and then went back to Anna's aunt's, and ate cold leftovers whilst watching The Santa Clause. It was incredible. I could eat that food everyday and never get sick of it. I am bringing Thanksgiving back to England, I swear! The rest of our evening was spent in the outdoor hot tub, under the very starry and bright sky, seeing our breath in the cold air and drinking white wine and talking about anything that came into our heads. The next day we had to return to Columbia, as the big football game was the next day. The journey was uneventful except I had my first ever Taco Bell... and listened to the same songs over and over again! Saturday dawned with bright blue skies and sun, and Anna and I caught the bus at 9 45am (possibly the first time I've seen that time on a weekend in about a year) , dressed in our Gamecock colours, to go tailgating before the game. We wer
e playing Clemson, who are the other South Carolinian university, and our biggest rivals, who have beaten us for the past seven years, so the game was bound to be intense. We met up with Anna's friend from
high school, who took us to her family's tailgate, which was in a private, gated area, with proper toilets and speakers playing The Beatles (made me feel at home). We had mini muffins and fruit salad for breakfast, and drank mimosas ridiculously early in the morning, watching the pre -game on the two wide screen TVs they'd set up from the boot of their 4x4. And then it was game time... the atmosphere in the student section of the stadium was insane. There was 89,500 people in attendance and every single one was vocal, especially the
students. Everyone was chanting, singing, dancing to Sandstorm, making the gamecock hand sign, waving towels around and jumping up and down on the bleachers screaming. It was intense for the entire three hours the game lasted, and as it became more obvious that USC was going to win, we got even more over excited, to the extent that there were shoulder to shoulder police along the edges of the pitch to stop us rushing the field. Fans starting waving their keys at the Clemson fans (code for go home), and when we won there was fireworks, music, screaming and dancing on the bleachers, complete strangers jumping on each over, hi
gh fiving and hugging... it was amazing. It was so intense, so exciting and so much fun, I finally fell in love with american football! And the celebrations afterwards were equally good... some people from Clemson were over, crashing on our bedroom floor, and drinki
ng games, Pop's Pizza, and going downtown dancing ensued... I woke up on Sunday, walked into our living room, and saw four fully clothed (including shoes) students passed out on our floor, with Smirnoff Ice bottles, beer cans, half full cups of vodka coke, and empty wine bottles lined up along our counters and filling our sink. What a weekend.
