#cracker barel
Another few weeks since I’ve updated, I’m virtually an old woman now so excuse me if I forget anything! I’ve had so much work to do at the moment, it seems like everyday I remember something I have to do just in time. On the bright side, my grades are staying pretty consistenly good so I’m pleased about that!
So the weekend after we went to Atlanta we had fall break, which meant that we got to have Thursday and Friday off as well that week. We headed to Asheville, North Carolina for the rest of Wednesday, and the full day on Thursday after, which was was really fun! I don’t have too many pictures (and the ones I do have I’ve stolen from Michaela!) but we got to do loads. When we first got there we checked into the hotel and then headed out for dinner. We went to this adorable Italian place where I couldn’t finish my chicken pasta so I took it back to the hotel. Much to the dismay of everyone I then spilt it everywhere and all we could smell was chicken. I got it all over my coat and I can still smell it now! The next day we went to the Nature Center where we saw black bears, wolves, coyotes and loads more, which was pretty fun, although I do find it hard to see animals caged up like that.
After this we went Downtown for lunch and to look around the shops, and much to our surprise, the whole city was completely packed out. Turned out that Mitt Romney was there campaigning! We were shocked that we hadn’t heard that before we left, but was really interesting, lots of Romney lovers, but lots of Obama voters there too. As someone obsessed with American politics it was pretty awesome! We went to all the different shops, and Asheville is really interesting and has a lot of independent, vintagey shops so was great to look around! We went to this cool tea room and it was so hard to decide what to have so I just asked the waitress to bring me anything. She came back with this lovely Jasmine Tea. I’m trying to force myself to actually try these things, even though I’m used to standard English breakfast tea (milk and two sugars!).
We spent the rest of the weekend in Bluff City back with Michaela’s family which was super fun again! Although we went shopping and my bank balance took a serious hit!
So THIS weekend we the next big game lined up, which I was really looking forward to. I genuinely fear that I’m turning American, I really like American Football and openly admit my excitement for each game! Its a problem. On Friday night we went to a ‘Losing With Dignity’ party, and as the name suggests, we were destined to lose the next day. The party was pretty fun, we learnt some more dance moves and taught some random Americans some British moves! Ironically, despite the title, a bunch of the football players actually turned up? I felt this was wrong in numerous ways, not least because surely they surely should’ve been asleep…
On Saturday we went to watch Lauren’s rugby match in the morning which was great, they absolutely thrashed Alabama so that was good news! Afterwards we went to Cracker Barrel which was so cool, and ate some 'real southern food’! Strangely, they have these giant draught sets outside for you to play!
We then got back and went to tailgate before the game, which is always fun, but we did it properly this time! First we went to the VolWalk which I have been wanting to do since we got here, where all the players and coaches walk through the streets. Its supposed to be really great but was a bit anti-climatic, although I think this was because we got there pretty late so couldn’t really see anything! After this we went through the tailgating stalls where we managed to pick up some great free stuff! They gave all three of us this great picture they took and printed onto a picture of the stadium, which I absolutely love. Also a T-shirt, buff, gym towel and Dierks Bentley’s album! (Here I am, wearing my new jersey, supporting Tyler Bray despite the fact everyone here seems to hate him! haha)
As expected, we lost to Alabama big time! They are the number one team in the country, so I guess its to be expected. It was still really fun though, we were next to loads of Alabama fans and a really drunk Tennessee fan who kept shouting “DIE ALABAMA, DIE!” which was amusing but somewhat worrying. We also become the fascination of some drunk guys who loved our accents and seemed to want to discuss every aspect of English life with us. They even had the nerve to challenge me on Harry Potter trivia! Me?! Needless to say, I came out victorious. On the Alabama game every year the band does the Circle Drill which is a really really complex drill and it was amazing to watch. Everyone told us it was fantastic, but it really was. It must take so much work to make a marching band work, as if one person makes a mistake, the whole thing would go wrong. If you haven’t seen it already, definitely YouTube it!
Heres a few pictures of the stadium. We have the most beautiful sunsets here and I’ve become somewhat obsessed with getting pictures of them!
