Eating pecan pie and beating Clemson

Finally the festive season is upon us... and for those of us lucky enough to be living in the Land of the Brave, get to celebrate Thanksgiving before the consumer orgy of Christmas descends. Obviously, this is all of us Internationals' first ever Thanksgiving, which is held in celebration of the food that the Native Americans shared with the Pilgrims when they first arrived in America, enabling them to survive... to then go massacre the Natives. But we don't talk about that. Anyway, basically it's when everyone goes home and eats. Which kinda sounds odd, but it's now officially one of my favourite holidays...mainly because I like holidays, and I love food. So, Anna invited Rachael, Lucy and I to her family Thanksgiving which is held in Atlanta, at her uncle's house. So we borrowed her mum's 7 seater car and set off on the three and a half hour journey...which was largely uneventful, apart from when I started freaking out because I had seen a "genuine red neck!!!" He had a grey beard, camo peaked cap and jacket and was driving a filthy pick up truck, complete with mandatory Confederate flag on the licence plate. I felt like I was on the set of My Name is Earl. But aside from that, we passed the time quite nicely by listening to the radio, which seemed only to want to play about four songs on repeat, mainly Party in the USA, and Fifteen... both of which I now know pretty much every word to. We arrived in Atlanta in the afternoon, after a food stop at the most ghetto McDonalds I have ever come across - in one short Filet o' Fish based meal, I saw massively obese people, black guys in ghetto outfits, the American equivalent to chavs, a lot of tracksuits, and a couple of soldiers in full military gear. Gotta love the South! Atlanta is all very modern, as the Union forces burnt the entire city when they moved through it in the Civil War - and me and Rachael honoured Scarlett O'Hara by running through the streets shouting "Ashley! Ashley! The Yankees are comin'!", but the lack of columned white houses didn't help me get into character much. We wandered about downtown Atlanta, going to the Olympic Park, which had various statues and lots of flags (though no Australian one, much to Lucy's disgust), and a very bizarre set up of water fountains that shot out water at varying heights and arrangements in time to songs such as "Dancing in the Street". I didn't understand this at the time, and I am not going to attempt to explain it. It was dancing water fountains, and that is all. We looked at the Coca Cola factory and the aquarium from the outside (lack of funds), popped into the CNN centre, and then attempted to go to the mall just outside the city. Unfortunately, the directions given to us by a woman who worked in a pizza place sent us not to the mall, but to a row of strip clubs. Bummer. So we gave up and headed to Anna's 'Grandma Ginger's' house, where we met some cousins and an aunt, and ate green beans, chips, coleslaw, pork and chocolate chip cake. Then we headed off to Anna's aunt and uncle's house, where we would be staying. The neighbourhood was beautiful, full of massive detached houses, and covered in trees with their leaves turning orange, and a golf course and p

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, redcurrent 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.