Go Cocks

 

(the frat guys from the movie went to my uni. the more you know am i right) 

If anyone wonders why I picked Borat as a reccuring joke for this blog, it's because my experience in the US relates a lot to the movie. And if you have not seen the movie, I'm so sorry sweetie. 

As a starting point, I'm going to talk about my university, the University of South Carolina, home of the "Gamecocks". The very first thing that really struck me was the school's team spirit. In fact, South Carolina is often reffered to as "football country" by locals, simply because football, or even more generally, the school's sports teams, are what really drive the school spirit. 

From what I've seen during football games against other universities, being supportive of your team is the key to your integration. The merch store in unis are incredibly profitable. People pretty much only dress in the merch, they drive cars with stickers on them, their moms drive cars with stickers on them, people who graduated 40 years ago have flags with the school's logo and hang them on their front porch. Long story short: people are proud to be/have been part of the school. 

The campus itself was a big shock. In France, my home uni is one building. That's it. But when I got to USC, the first thing I thought was "it's just like the movies". And all I'm going to say is that I thought that a LOT throughout the year I spent there. The gym was massive and free for all students, there were dozens of residence halls, fast foods and restaurants in the middle of campus, and of course, the Greek Village, aka the frat den. I will do a more in-depth post about Frats and Sororities later, don't worry. 

I'll use the end of this first post to kind of give you a table of contents and tell you what I'll be talking about in the next few posts. I mentioned football, and more generally, sports, in the first part of this post, so I will go more in depth about this in the next post, where I'll give more details on football, basketball and baseball games. I'll also talk about the people there, since they were obviously one of the main reasons why my experience was just amazing, but also about the student and dorm life. Writting a blog about America would make no sense if I didn't talk about food, so there will be a post about this as well. Lastly, and I'm saving the best for last, I'll be telling you about all things party related, Frats and Sororities, etc. 

In the mean time, thank you for reading my first post, and if you haven't done it yet, please do yourself a favor and go watch Borat. 

K.T