Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Springapalooza

My freshman year of college, I met my best friend Liz.
We had all kinds of fun, from role playing to gain confidence in situations, to experiencing "Caf Panic" when we don't know where to sit at dinner, to making Facebook rules of what is NOT acceptable.
We also are obsessed with Pinterest, Taylor Swift, and sewing high-waisted, elastic skirts.

Liz's friend Ty works at Lenoir Rhyne University in Hickory, and he was working to set up a big festival called Springapalooza. Interested, we eagerly agreed to go.

We drove the hour drive down to Hickory with our friends Noah and Will. Noah, the Narcoleptic Runner, can fall asleep anywhere anytime. We hadn't driven five minutes out of the town of Montreat before he was snoozing (To be fair, before he actually fell asleep, he managed to break off the ceiling handle that older people use to pull themselves out of the car. He HAD to be tired from exerting all the energy). Meanwhile, Will told us a story about how his car hasn't worked right since he hit a dog.

In Hickory, we pulled up to this one red light intersection and there was a full car beside us that was listening to rap music. From the moment we pulled up, they were staring at us. Noah, now awake, smiled and waved. They responded by never breaking their glare at us, even once. We eventually all looked forward uncomfortably, glancing over ever so often at the car, and saw that they were all five still staring. "Man, this red light is taking forever," said Will, voicing all of our concerns. We nodded in agreement.
Finally, the red light changed, and we drove away, glancing backwards as our friends turned and gave us the middle finger.


Arriving at Springapalooza, we spend far too long deciding if we should bring in sweatshirts or not. Deciding against it, we walk inside, sit down, and have fun. There were great speakers, great stories, and great people.

Then, the time comes for some live music.

The band starts playing, and they are great. We become total fan girls and geek out. One of the highlights of the concert itself was the band playing a song that everyone in the crowd knew. Pumping everyone up by TONS of crowd participation, repetition, and running/jumping around the stage, this was clearly quite the crowd pleaser. Somewhat bewildered, I look at Liz, Will, and Noah and they all return my look. Clearly, the four of us have never heard the song before. We had fun, but we were literally the ONLY people in the whole room who never heard this song. And I mean, they knew EVERY WORD. We were a little confused, but went along with it.

At one point during the song, Ty runs over to us and yells something along the lines of "ISN'T THIS AWESOME!?!?" and sings along. We all nod eagerly.

Noah suggests "Maybe they all came last year and bought the cd!" (This was the second year it was produced, and they used the same band). We aren't totally convinced, but we go along with it and enjoy the rest of the night.



We later learned that the song was "(I'm Gonna Be) 500 Miles," by the Proclaimers.

I can honestly say that I have never heard that song before in my life, and now I hear it on a regular basis, forever reminded of the day that I was successfully cultured.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The last time I ask about culture.

Every year at Montreat, we have two new Korean exchange students.

Last year, we had Cheol and Jo. We met Cheol on his birthday, and got to talking.

He went on to tell us about how they celebrated birthdays in his friend group. They get many types of alcohol, ice cream, and some "treats" (We never really learned what he meant by "treats") and put them in a bowl and mix them together. All the guests put the mixture in their socks and filter it through them by squeezing it out (we later learn that people do it with their underwear and wash their hair in it too). They also throw in whatever else they want. Then, the birthday boy gets to drink it all and passes out.

After gagging and telling him that we couldn't provide that kind of birthday, we went and bought him a birthday cake from Ingles. It was a lot of fun. We started singing him "Happy Birthday," and when we got to the name part, we had forgotten his name already. From then on, we called him Crash.

(Our first option for a nickname was Chuckie, but he told us if we called him that, then he would kill us.)



Anyway.....


This year, we have Seong-ho and JaeYong.


We always ask about their culture (they actually do the birthday alcohol thing too...).
They started telling us about this Korean soda, called Milkis.
Apparently, it's a soda made with milk. MILK. From a cow.
We were disgusted, and upon their insisting, they made us some by mixing three parts Mountain Dew, and one part skim milk.
After much coaxing, we actually drank it, and you know what, it wasn't terrible.
It was kind of like a cream soda, or something. They also said that it wasn't as good as real Milkis.


it's real. who would have thought...



Note: I was also told that I have a CD-sized face, which is very attractive in Korea.



__________________________________________________________________________
Edit: These same Koreans were absolutely disgusted when I told them about carrot cake. 
"CAKE MADE FROM CARROTS!?!?!?!"

Monday, September 12, 2011

NOT my brother.

So, there is girl named Meredith who lives down the hall from me. 

She's not a new student, but she's on her first year here. We've gotten to know each other recently.

Today, on the way to dinner, she asks me if I have a brother. Here is how the conversation went:

Meredith: Hey, do you have a brother?
Me: No, why?
Meredith: There's this guy here who really looks like you and you have the exact same personality.
Me: Really? What's his name?
Meredith: I'm not sure. He's in my history class though. 
Me: Gotcha. Well, point him out in the caf when we get there.

and we walk to the caf.

We walk in, and separate to get our food. When I return to the table, she is clearly excited and goes "HE'S IN HERE!!!!" and I look to where she's pointing.

It was Jesse. The guy I dated for nine months and broke up with over the summer.

OF ALL THE PEOPLE!?

It's not like she could have seen us together, even! We don't really talk at all since the breakup.
She wasn't being a jerk either, she didn't even know his name, and clearly she didn't know the situation.

Note: Jesse has dark brown, curly hair, blue eyes, and a butt chin. I have straight, blond hair, hazel eyes, and no butt chin.
Maybe it's just because we're both small people? No idea.



jesse and myself as daters


Meredith then corrects herself to say that we don't look like twins, but there could be a family resemblance, and it's really our personality that made her think that.

Whatever you say Meredith.

-H