A Town With 18-22 Year Olds Sounds Like A Good SciFi Novel – USA Day 2

Sorry, slightly late on this post, I’ve managed to acclimatise to the new time zone, but it means when I’m tired, I’m practically asleep, so wasn’t exactly able to write this post when I got in last night.

Today (June 6) I was given the abbreviated tour of Dartmouth by Emilia, who showed me all her favourite haunts (and got me to take photos of her at various spots too). I’ve spent some time at various universities (Imperial, Oxford and Nottingham for various reasons) and it’s quite similar to Nottingham as they’re both campus universities, but Dartmouth is HUGE. It’s connected to the town of Hanover and it basically is a town, there’s about 5,000 students and then the professors and staff etc etc. So it’s a town of 18-22 year olds in term time, and I really noticed the lack of kids, because they’re such a huge rarity. I think it’s because I’m so used to the hordes of school kids in London, not having to step around crowds of people under five foot surprises me! Hmm maybe Dartmouth would take a few of them….

 

In the evening there was a big family dinner (big being the operative word) with Emilia’s family and her roommate Katelyn’s family (and me). So we had thirteen people squashed into an area in a restaurant meant for ten, and two+ languages being spoken. It was lovely and noisy and generally celebratory (which is the norm for Emilia’s family). They’ve pretty much adopted me now, and they’re working on teaching me Greek and finding me a Greek husband.

 

Then we went to an actual American college frat house, and played Dartmouth beer pong (not the normal beer pong you know, this involves ping pong paddles and about a million rules). As expected for anything involving small bouncy balls, I was decidedly not good when we started out, but I had an extremely patient partner who was so good we ended up winning anyways! I was getting the hang of it by the end, but as I can say I am currently undefeated, I think my pong career is over. It was good fun though, might be worth bringing it back to the UK. But not the beer, because that is disgusting.

 

Here’s a better explanation of Dartmouth beer pong…

http://www.businessinsider.com/dartmouth-beer-pong-guide-2013-11

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On the Road Again – USA Day 1

Current Location: somewhere in Boston, on the road from the airport to Hanover

So I’m blogging again because my life is suddenly interesting, namely I’m travelling. And the first stop on my Great American Adventure ’14 is Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. It is my absolute best friend in the whole world’s college graduation and I am a) ridiculously proud and b) ridiculously excited to party.

We usually get up to generally insane things when we’re with each other so there should be a good story or two. But today’s just been a travelling day, so here’s day 1 – Why Fi Is A General Idiot

1) Currency – I forgot that dollars come in $1 denominations, so I handed the cashier two 5$ bills to and was completely flummoxed when I got my $2 back as bills. I spent about twenty seconds just staring at the change….ticking it over in my head…”Ohh yeah”. Derp.

2) Communication – I did live in America, I have American friends, I went a school with Americans, so I know things like “restroom”. So I asked someone at the airport “Where do I get DaRRtmouth coach?”
*bemused face* “Where?”
“DaRtmouth? DaRtmouth college, Hanover??”
“Ohh, DaHHtmouth.”
Gahhh.
I think either I’m going to have to try and fake an American accent to make people laugh (trust me, it’s bad. Like, really bad) or go really posh and proper British as a novelty factor.

3) Courtesy – people keep telling me to have a nice day and I keep saying sorry to them when it’s not my fault. It’s confusing everybody.

I’m eating a PB&J sandwich and drinking Minute Maid lemonade (it is my crack, seriously) so I think I’m blending in a bit better…as long as I keep my mouth shut.

So about seven minutes then!