Yet another week of activity after event after deadline after party, and I find myself sitting on my bed listening to the BBC From Our Own Correspondent podcast. Yesterday, one of my friends told me that I was beginning to sound American – so I’m listening to the most English thing that I can get hold of here – thank God for iTunes.
The main excitement for me this week was that on Friday I trekked into deepest Philadelphian suburbia to be one of the few thousand that Barack Obama would be addressing. Despite the early morning start, the lack of food, and not really knowing where we were going or how to get there, I ended up in a high school stadium with three of my friends, a handful of Pennsylvania political movers and shakers, Obama, and three thousand other people. And I was blown away.
If you’ve come here for the incisive and bipartisan political commentary, you should really find another blog since this one is about my experiences at an American liberal arts college. Having seen very few famous people in real life, being barely twelve feet from Obama himself was an awesome experience solely in that regard. Never mind the fact that he seems to be the first American politico with policies that even an avowedly liberal quasi-European (me) can agree with, or that listening to him speak makes me want to go out and change the world, or that he seems to have a very real (I’m touching as much wood as I can get my hands on) possibility of winning the American Presidency. Even after the speeches by local and state politicians had sufficiently fired-up the crowd, and the musical interlude had got us chanting and dancing, and the anticipation had become frantic, once Obama appeared we fell silent and clung to his every word.
Enough mawkishness for now – I am British after all, and I did promise last week to tell you all about the Screw Your Roommate Dance. I got screwed, as did everyone who wanted to be. Fear not, this is not sexual, it is merely the act of being set up with someone you don’t know by a mutual third party who then gives each person a line which is then read out in front of an audience of all those being screwed, and then the person with the other half of the line jumps up and shouts out their line, thereby uniting the screw couple into one awkward entity which then goes to dinner together. Complex? Sort of. Horrendously awkward? Fairly. Lots of fun for everyone watching? Of course.
My favourite part was when one guy forgot the words to his line, and stood stumbling over the words “What what in the butt”, whilst his screw date tried to save him from embarrassment by shouting out a line unprintable here, which he steadfastly ignored in his effort to complete his lyric. Dinner with my screw date was fine as a big group of us went out together, and we then repaired to a party where we all had a riotous time. Haverford may make us work our arses off, but they think up some pretty ingenious ways for us to have fun, too.
Next week is my Fall Break (half term – how quaint!), and I aim on being in Washington DC, Baltimore and NYC, so you may have to wait for your weekly dose of slightly confused ramblings on the American college experience. Ciao for now.
