Dance Marathon Sign Up

Yesterday I found myself a little mind boggled when I had to sign in for the challenge that is ahead of me this weekend, aka the 24 hour dance marathon (which it isn’t too late to still sponsor me for guys!) What threw me at the sign in desk was that fact that I had to give an emergency contact name and number. Naturally, I thought of my mum. But on second thought, I was a little baffled as to why exactly they need my street address from back home in ‘Old Blighty’. I mean, I guess I can understand giving a phone number, although it would be expensive to call, if some sort of disaster happened, I’d want someone to call home. And I can even comprehend an email address considering today’s obsession over the internet and social media. But address? Really? Honestly, what exactly do they need my address for? If I pass out from exhaustion over the weekend from dancing are they actually going to write a letter to my mum and send it in the post to let her know? I think not.

On a side note, if you wish to sponsor me as I stay up for 24 hours bootie shaking like Beyonce, pirouetting like Darcey Bussell and finger snapping like Fosse. All the money raised goes towards a local children’s hospital, and the exchange rate is pretty good at the moment ($10 = £5.99). The link to my page is below, wish me luck! 

http://www.helpmakemiracles.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=263183

Asheville

This weekend I managed to tick off another State by taking a girls trip up to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. Home to the annual electronic-music festival ‘Moogfest’, Asheville is set in the heart of the Smoky Mountains and prides itself on a thriving arts and music scene all year round. Some of the other international students managed to visit this quirky town in the Fall and whilst some went for the fresh mountain air, others visited for the ‘vibe’. Apparently the town is most commonly portrayed as having a ‘funky’ ambience and even after strolling around for just one day you can definitely see why. Maybe it has something to do with the small fact that pretty much nobody in Asheville is actually from Asheville, so this Southern town feels a little misplaced. Or perhaps it’s the mixture of breweries, secret cafes, dozens of art galleries and variety of street performers. After recently having a bit of a cold spell in South Carolina, the sunshine made a welcomed appearance and nearly every street corner was lined with musicians playing their hearts out whilst basking in the sun. We even sat outside for lunch!

One of my favourite things about the city were the individual and unique cafes and shops.  We stopped for a coffee break in a double decker red bus (supposedly all the way from Trafalgar Square!) that had been converted into a one off café – I thought it was pretty cool anyway. Some of the breweries had bizarre names; including ‘Wicked Weed’ and we somehow stumbled into a book shop/bar which was definitely not a place to find shabby paperbacks. The English Lit student in me was thrilled that such a place existed where two of my favourite pastimes (reading and drinking wine) could co-exist in perfect matrimony. Never-read leather-bound volumes of Dickens ($435 for a set!), an edition of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ with the carousel horse cover ($200), and a glass of fizzy Heidsieck & Co. Monopole ($15) would go down a treat! The bookshelves were piled high and you could easily get yourself lost in a maze of book-lined nooks and crannies whilst kicking back in mission-style sofas and leather armchairs hidden amongst your favourite authors. A literature student’s heaven!

Apart from wandering the streets of downtown Asheville, we also took a trip to the Looking Glass Falls in the Pisgah National Forest, which was absolutely beautiful. I felt like I could have been Katniss Everdeen from ‘The Hunger Games’, which was shot in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville.

All in all, a perfect weekend, with lovely company and ever so slightly too much food! When will I learn that the portions out here are almost double in size and I don’t have to eat everything on my plate?!

St. Valentine's Day

Valentine’s Day: similar to Marmite in that you probably love it, or loath it. A day to overspend on loved ones, or indeed, ‘the one’, Valentines can end up turning into a living nightmare for chocoholics, singles or indeed those in long standing relationships. But instead of face planting into a bowl of calories and girlie chick flicks, isn’t it time to just appreciate those we care about?

With so much hype centred around this idea that you have to be in ‘love’ to enjoy Valentine’s Day and if you’re single you must fit the stereotype of being downright depressed, drinking wine by the gallon and tucking into your second tub of Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough by 7pm, it can be easy to miss the point of St. Valentine entirely.

For the past two Valentine’s Day’s my boyfriend at the time completely forgot to even send me a card! Two years in a row! Instead, I had to answer the front door to beautiful bouquets being delivered to not one, but both of my single housemates. That was enough to send anyone out their right mind! So I’ve come to the conclusion that if no one loves you on Valentine’s day, they probably don’t like you any other day of the year either, cynical I know!

I’m overly excited to see how America handles this consumer driven, cliché day. Obnoxious looking cards are plastered in every store, hideous oversized teddy bears and chocolates wrapped in love heart shaped boxes almost make me happy that I’m single. Arguably, being single on Valentine’s Day is actually a blessing in disguise, I’ve been invited to so many themed events that I’m struggling to plan how to fit them all in! From a typical American ‘Singles Awareness’ evening, fit with a piñata (of course!), to a ‘Galentine’s’ evening (girls only) with copious amounts of home baked goodies and films. Other options include, raiding the single population of Columbia’s downtown, watching an annual performance of Eve Ensler's award winning play ‘The Vagina Monologues’ or simply going to IHOP with my best friend for heart shaped pancakes. I’m totally spoilt for choice!

One of the things I love about Valentine’s Day is that if you look carefully enough, there’s a particular facial expression that you will only ever see on February 14^th. It’s the smug look of guys exchanging shrugging grins with other males clutching flowers and boxes of chocolates. Whilst everyone recognises the innate ludicrousness of a single day where guys are expected to buy their secret admirer or better half flowers and/or chocolates (conspiracy spearheaded by Hallmark?). If you look past all the consumerism, you’ll see blokes jumping at the chance to tell that said person how much they mean to them, and who said romance was dead? A bit of guts and glory chivalry can go a long way!

So whilst we can’t all be treated like a princess for 24 hours and expect Ryan Gosling to come sweep us off our feet, maybe it’s time to step out the comfort zone, if only for a moment, to tell that person in your Chemistry class you actually would like to grab a coffee together.    Instead of staying camouflaged behind the safety net of your iphone, impassively swiping through apps like Tinder, or spending hours on Facebook day dreaming about the girl who lives next door. I’m sure Shakespeare is rolling in his grave at the lack of grand gestures and manly courage, maybe we should take a note out of his book this V-day and simply remember that ‘The course of true love did never run smooth’… 

Swimming Stateside

Symptoms of a swimmer: sweating chlorine, dry scaly skin and permanent goggle marks.

As a ‘retired’ swimmer, 5am starts and endless training sessions are a thing of the past. But it appears that some habits die hard. With my dorm room beginning to smell more and more like a swimming pool every day and chlorine chemicals becoming embedded into my skin, the competitive swimmer I used to be seems to be making reappearance with my thirst to get back in the pool and get in shape.

The phrase “I can’t, I have swim training” is one I consistently over-used growing up. Parties, days out, trips to the cinema and endless other weekend activities were always put on hold when swimming was on the cards. Now, I find myself stumbling over the exact same words when other students ask me to grab dinner or go down town. What is happening?

One of the biggest differences between the University of Kent and the University of South Carolina is the sports facilities. The fact that I can train 9 times a week, every week, with an actual team and go as much or as little as I want is amazing! Kent up your game! I cannot articulate clearly enough how big college sports is in the USA. A business worth billions of dollars, it makes its money from attendance at sports events, sponsorship and TV rights. It’s no wonder that the Universities here have the money to invest in top athletic facilities and coaching for their students.

With all these extra training sessions I decided that competing may not be entirely out the picture. At the weekend I travelled to Athens, GA where The University of Georgia campus is situated. The pool was undeniably amazing (yet another small reminder of Kent’s lack of facilities)! I swam in both the Free and Medley Relays and surprised myself in ranking second in both the 50 and 100 Breast. A worthy effort for an ‘old timer’!

Whilst I haven’t quite got to the stage where my swim suit is constantly rubbing my neck and giving me obnoxious looking ‘love bites’, I know that my childhood sport will probably always stay with me. Even when I can no longer go sub 27 seconds for 50 free, I am constantly reminded by the fact that I can never fit into the tops I want to wear with my ‘swimmer shoulders’ and always seem run out of conditioner before my shampoo is half empty. #swimmerproblems.

#neknominate

Binge drinking seems to have taken a step too far this week with social media going crazy over a so called ‘game’; ‘neknominate’. The game reportedly started in Australia and has since gone global. It encourages friends to ‘nek’ or ‘down’ a beer, (or in some cases a dirty pint filled with all sorts of concoctions) film it, upload the video to Facebook and nominate two friends to do the same thing. If you break the chain and don’t succumb to peer pressure you lose respect from these ‘supposed friends’. By nominating friends online, the videos spread like wildfire with people creating short films of themselves drinking half naked in the Alps, underwater, upside down or even ‘neking’  a pint right before doing a bungee jump. While some may see this only as a game, and call me boring, a spoil-sport, a push over, or any other name for that matter, drinking large volumes of alcohol in a short period of time can have very scary and very real consequences. In the UK this weekend, two boys aged 22 and 19 have died after taking part in this ‘game’. We should be questioning this!

Trust me, I like to go out and have fun like many other students my age, I do not condone drinking alcohol in proportion. But binge drinking? Drinking to excess? Drinking past your limits? To show off? Something doesn’t quite add up here. The really scary part is that because this ‘game’ is all online, the added peer pressure is enormous. Everyone on Facebook can see your nomination and how you respond. If you fail to complete the challenge, make it funny or different, then suddenly you become the characterless, dull friend in your friendship group. Moreover, because you have to respond to the nomination within 24 hours, there is an added time pressure. Not only do you have to decide if you want to give in to your bullying friends, you also have to think of a way to be inventive and how you’re supposed to down a pint in between your classes, rehearsals, sports training, meetings or whatever other commitments you have in those 24 hours.

Surely there is another way for people to show they’re loving life and up for challenges? This game has almost normalised and celebrated the binge drinking culture, forcing people to surrender to nothing more than intimidating friends to make it seem like they are incessantly partying. In my opinion, this copy-cat game is not only pathetic, but extremely dangerous, and needs strong minded people to turn around and simply say no.