Skating, Sport and Tea

I apologise for how massively neglected this blog has been. I have been pretty busy integrating a little bit more into America. I've been spending more time with American friends that last semester (seeing as I had to spend last semester actually making them.) In the process I've tried a lot of new things that I wouldn't normally, like, for example, folk dancing. I was skeptical about going along to a folk dancing class, and I can't say I'm ever going back, but it was fun.

 On the same night as the folk dancing I then went roller skating for the first time. It was difficult and I spent most of the time holding onto the side, then a couple of weeks later I went ice skating which is somehow easier but more terrifying. I think the ice and the blades make it scarier. Everybody I was with was better at it than me, and I was tempted to lie and say we don't have skating in England to explain why I was so bad. I don't think I'll be joining roller derby or an ice dancing team anytime soon, but I really enjoyed myself.

 Last weekend I went to an Indian dance competition in the IU auditorium, which was between competing American universities, and last night I went to a basketball game. Apparently it wasn't an important game (and IU lost) but the amount of fanfare surrounding games is insane. There was a packed stadium, cheerleaders who did a different dance during each time out, a band, IU flags, screens which showed the players, the game and the music video for the Indiana basketball song. During half time they were handing out prizes to spectators and throwing t-shirts into the crowd. I missed the beginning of the game, but at a women's basketball game I went to a few weeks ago a choir came on stage and sung the Star-Spangled Banner, so I'm sure that happened at the beginning.

One thing I really don't understand is cheerleaders. They can do about five backflips in a row from standing. At least I can officially now say I have been to watch sport and enjoyed it, although everything surrounding the game is a lot more interesting than the actual game.

 I hardly ever drink the English Breakfast tea here any more because it's disappointing, so I've started drinking stuff like Earl Grey and Chai. Today I decided to try a Chai Latte from Starbucks and it's basically spicy, watery coffee-tea milk which I wouldn't recommended to anyone.


Americans have, at last, learnt my name and no longer think I'm called 'Adam' or 'Alan', but this may be because I always get food from the same places.

Snowpocalypse

A week ago I returned from a fortnight in Canada (another place where they don't have the word 'fortnight'). I can finally tell the difference between an American and a Canadian accent, and I now have Canadian Winter Olympic mittens, a Canadian Beaver Canoe t-shirt, a Beaver Canoe hat and a Canada hoodie with another beaver on it.

Aside from getting lots of clothes as presents, I had a really great Christmas. I thought it would be weird to be away from home, but I was with family and recieved a recorded birthday message from my grandmother. The first night I arrived, Toronto was hit by an ice storm which damaged the power lines, cutting off electricity. I spent a few days pretty much in one room because it was the only one with a gas fire. Fortunately my Kindle battery lasted.

Once the power was back, I went to a cottage that my cousins own, which is by a lake. I had been there in the summer before but never the winter, and it was completely different. The snow was so thick that walking to the cottage from the car was difficult, and because the pipes were frozen there was no running water. The highlight was walking to a nearby island across the frozen lake, which was eighteen inches thick. I then played ice hockey (I say 'played ice hockey', I ran around with a stick for a bit) on a pitch that the people at the neighbouring cottage had made by clearing an area of snow. I was playing with an eleven-year-old and a ten-year-old who were both significantly better at hockey than me, and with a mischevious dog who kept stealing the ball. There was also another dog there that my relatives were looking after, who was blind and kept bumping into things and crying. I spent a fair amount of time in a sauna with a seven-year-old pouring orange juice on snow and then eating. I'm not sure if I really like saunas that much, but it's great to be able to walk back through the snow in shorts and a t-shirt afterwards.

My flight back to Indianapolis was delayed by a day because of the polar vortex, which is an amazing name. On the day I left Canada the polar vortex shifted east, so that it was -23 in Canada and -12 in Bloomington. It was nonetheless so cold in Bloomington that I was panting after dragging my bag the two minute journey to my building from the point when the bus stopped. Yesterday it was a freakishly warm 10 degrees. 

It's good to be back in Bloomington. The two new professors I have had so far are extremely eccentric, and I have once again rented textbooks from someone called 'Chandler', and resisted the urge to say 'Could I BE buying any more books ?' or doing an impression of Janice from Friends every time I see him.

Recent Questions From Americans:

1. Do you watch Sherlock? Have you been to the places where it's filmed? Like...London? 

2. Alan? (In response to me saying my name. I personally preferred 'Adam.')

Thanksgiving and Finals

I apologise for the extreme lateness of this blog post; I have been very busy with Thanksgiving and finals.

Thanksgiving, while a completely bizarre and seemingly unecessary holiday (why have Christmas dinner before Christmas? Doesn't that spoil Christmas? Why even have a holiday just before Christmas?), was really enjoyable. Even though the timing was a little odd, and it was jarring coming back for exams, it was about time that I saw Harry, left Bloomington and ate food in restaurants rather than increasingly disappointing food courts. Indianapolis as an actual place to visit is not as amazing as Chicago.

Chicago just looks really good. The buildings are tall (the Sears/ Willis tower is the tallest building in the western hemisphere) and it was snowy and like a film set in Chicago*. Over the holiday I also got to experience Thanksgiving dinner, which is the same as Christmas dinner. I was pleasantly surprised, having a usual hatred of Christmas food served before Christmas day and not by my mother. Luckily the restaurant was really good. After Thanksgiving I had to return to campus and do loads and loads of work. In America there is no such thing as 'reading week' or 'study leave', so its papers then exams one after another with not much time to do either. Now I understand why Americans drink so much coffee.

Tomorrow morning I am off to Canada. I'm really excited about being in a country where, even if they don't serve tea in mugs in the cafes, they will definitely serve it in mugs at my cousins's house. The clueless American phone company AT&T have given me mixed information about whether my phone will work in Canada, so I'll have to wait and see about that.

I had a really great weekend just before finals week, having dinner with the people from Indiana Student Television where I help out and attending a party with all Americans, but in the past week of finals, where nothing has been happening and each food court has gradually closed until only the worst one is left, I have been really looking forward to leaving. I've enjoyed doing nothing (I only had one final and it was this evening), but I'm ready to see family.

*Presumably the musical 'Chicago'

Halloween and Nashville

I have had an extremely American couple of weeks. By actual Halloween I was ready for the month-long celebration to be over, but on the night itself actually enjoyed myself because I went to a party dressed as a Starbucks coffee and got a lot of compliments. Two days later I went to see the Rocky Horror Show on stage, which was fantastic, although not having been born and raised in America I was a little unfamiliar with some of the audience participation.

Last weekend, in probably the most exciting thing to have happened in America so far, I went with a group of the other Brits to Nashville, Tennessee, home of country music. It was exactly what I expected to be only more so. There were plaid shirts and cowboy hats everywhere, people were drinking from mid-morning, country music blared out of machines in the streets and the bars had names like 'Coyote Ugly's' and 'Cotton-Eyed Joe's.' All the under-21s were served in an extremely relaxed karaoke bar, I visited the Tennessee State Musuem and the Country Music Hall of Fame, and in conclusion I really like the South. I'm sure I wouldn't like the rural South with it's extreme right-wing politics, homophobia and racism, but a big, southern city was pretty cool. I ate the world's most disgusting banana pancakes for breakfast (2% banana, 98% syrup) and tried 'grits' which are like dried rice pudding. What I love about the South is feeling like I'm in a western, hearing the infectious accent and just how different it is from places like Bloomington, which is more similar to the UK.

In a surreal moment, two of the British girls (not me) sang 'Party in the USA' by Miley Cyrus and the entire karaoke bar went wild, and some marines bought them drinks. We also decided to have dinner in Hooters, which was extremely tacky but now I've been there once I can tick it off the experience list and never have to go there again. I have also, technically, been to Kentucky, because the Megabus drove through it to get to Tennessee. Also last week I went to a couple of new restaurants in Bloomington, which was great, and saw Thor: The Dark World. This Friday I may be going to my first IU basketball game.

Here's a picture (from Google) of the Nashville skyline:

Cultural Stuff

Recently, and without leaving Bloomington, I've explored some different areas of America and discovered some pretty interesting things. Last weekend there was a Native American Pow Wow held in the building next to mine (everyone here says 'Indian', I've had it drummed into me on holidays to Canada to say 'Native American'). A Pow Wow basically consists of Indians/ Native Americans dancing, singing and drumming. They sang a prayer for an 89-year-old woman, who was some kind of tribal elder, initiated a really little girl into the troupe of dancers, and danced around wearing a lot of feathers. This was a major distraction from work, because I would time my lunch break so I could watch the 'Grand Entrance', which was the main dance, and then it would inevitably be an hour late. You can't do homework when you could be missing a valuable and educational cultural experience (I learnt very little, I just stood there, watched and ate.)

I have made better friends with some guys on my floor who are stepbrothers. One of them is part Potawatomi Indian and dances through flaming hoops at an Indian summer camp in the holidays, so that was interesting. He makes his own moccassins and his Native American name is 'White Lightning,' so that was pretty interesting.

In the spirit of American Halloween, which, at the time of writing this, doesn't even begin for another two hours but I am already a bit sick of because it's been going on since October the first, we had a floor Halloween social on Monday. We were meant to watch Hocus Pocus but ended up watching Paranormal Activity 3. I expected it to be terrifying but, in my opinion, it wasn't.

I went to a bizarrely premature Halloween party with the guys from my floor on Friday night, and ended up running into nearly everyone from Kent, and two people I knew from the IU TV station and class respectively, 'Meredith' and 'Kurt'. Those are their real names but I put them in inverted commas because I can't get over how people have names I have only ever heard on American TV shows. I also, for the first time in my life, met an actual racist. His name was Hank and he was from Kentucky, visiting Indiana for a volleyball tournament. I can't recall much of our conversation because I was tipsy and the party was very loud, but at one point he said "and that's why I hate black people," gesturing to the crowd of black people who were dancing next to us. I've recently tried to tell this story to a few other people, but it's very hard to quote him directly with the words 'and that's why I hate black people' in a public place. 

Mid-terms and the Weather

I have not blogged in a while because I've had a lot of work recently. For some reason in America there are tests halfway through the term (appropriately called 'mid-terms'). The closest there is to study leave is Fall Break, which is basically having one day off, in which I only have one fifty minute class anyway. Mid-terms are, nonetheless, weirdly relaxed. One girl's phone went off halfway through the exam and she wasn't told off, let alone disqualified. The professor handed out cookies. We also have to write short answers as well as an essay, and it was the first time I've written a short answer to anything since GCSE, so that was interesting.

In other news, some personal bizarre highlights of the past couple of weeks were an American named Colton asking me if I was dating Harry Windsor, a definitely close personal friendship I now have with a girl from LA whose dad is in Breaking Bad, and has been in Modern Family and Parks and Rec*, and a girl in my 20th Century British Fiction class giving a presentation about The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro and making it entirely about Voldemort and Quirrell (don't ask.) I also made friends with some really nice Americans and ate pumpkin bread, because Halloween seems to last the entirety of October.

The most bizarre thing I have seen on campus is the singing abortion man, who stood outside the lecture hall one afternoon and sang a song which went 'It's a baby not a blob' over and over again. He also had an abortion van with giant pictures of foetuses on it. This was bizarre, not only because nobody was having abortions in the lecture hall, but because he, like all the other religious protesters, isn't a student, just an old guy.

The weather has changed dramatically, to the point that it's gone from shorts and t-shirt weather where it's unbearable to be outside to hoodie, jumper and scarf weather where it's unbearable to be outside. People are still wondering around in shorts and t-shirts because they are crazy, and also because they are used to this weather and it's going to get a LOT colder.

A thing that I significantly miss about the UK (as well as all the people) is the cheese. I was asked what type of cheese I wanted in my burger yesterday, and the options were American, Colby Jack or Pepper Jack. Not a clue.


*By 'close personal friendship' I mean we have hugged and she said hi to me and stuff.

Parties, Nutella Fest and Bars

I had a very good weekend.

On Friday night I went to a party off campus, in a student residence building called Smallwood Plaza. When I spoke to an American about Smallwood Plaza, they said 'ooh, don't go to parties there.' At the party (I did not witness this in person) two guys had a fight over a girl and one hit the other around the head with a mug. The security showed up and then the police, and at one point there were three of us unable to leave the party because security was outside. 

Then on Saturday the university had its annual Nutella Festival. Nobody could give me a satisfactory explanation as to why, but every year local bands play and there is free Nutella and food to put it on. I don't think the event is even sponsored by Nutella. I met some nice people there, including someone who looked and acted so much like Mitchell from Modern Family that I struggled to remember his real name, and a girl who probably only likes because I'm British and have seen both Sherlock and Downton Abbey.

In the evening I went to see Pacific Rim with some Americans, because it was playing for free in the union building. On the way to the union I was caught in the worst rainfall I have ever experienced. I didn't think it could get worse than the lightning storm but apparently it can. I was out in it for about ten seconds, with an umbrella, and was completely drenched from head to foot. A wedding reception was taking place at the union building, so I had to walk awkwardly past a load of smartly-dressed wedding guests looking as if I had just dived into the sea with all my clothes on. 

Afterwards I went to an actual American bar and drank pumpkin spice cider, which was fairly disgusting but I drank it all anyway in the spirit of Halloween. 

Also the government has shut down. So that happened. It's not having any affect on me.