Carolina News.
Sadness in Sport. 

So, we're out. 

We smashed through into the Sweet Sixteen, even made it to the Elite 8, but Sunday saw the Tarheels out of the game...

We did, however, beat Duke. 

I was so so hoping that we'd get to rush Franklin if we won. I hear that it just goes crazy, I've actually seen pictures from the last time we won... people start fires, get very drunk, dance around in the street, sing...people throw mattresses out of windows. I feel it would have been a carolina experience to have remembered. humph. I think if we get into the championships next year there will be a lot of excited englishies flying back over to NC..... we wish .....

The Weather

With true pathetic fallacy, the Carolina Sun has really let us down this week...Its gone from the 80's to full blown English-style windy rainy big puddles sopping wet days. And unfortunately, as an exchange student, I have no rain boots. (wellies to the English folk). So I get wet walking everywhere I walk; it's been the sort of rain that the wind blows all over you even if you have a brolly or a waterproof jacket, where your toes get wet even if you avoid every single puddle or stream of water on the way to class...

Sunshine, please return.

DTH
This week I wrote about a dutch dance company: The Nederlands Dans Theatre. They came to UNC to perform, and the Dutch ambassador came to watch. It was a pretty cool thing to cover, except for my editor sent my shell (the outline of my story and the contacts) to someone else, so I had to do it all in a mad panic. That's fine really, I didn't mind, but at that point no-one would talk to me or return my calls. I prefer to e-mail people and set up interview dates, because then you know people are free and will want to talk. The 2 men I spoke to on Monday told me they were busy and would call me back. One said 20 minutes. This was 3pm. He called me at 6ish literally as I was leaving my room to go over to the office and write. The other one didn't call me back.And didn't answer his phone again. Another lady just had an answer phone. Another replied to my email the next day.. Another did reply in time but said she was the wrong person to talk to. The lady she suggested me to speak to was Julie Walters. SO exciting. Except for it wasn't that Julie Walters. I was still excited when she called me said her name... Anyway, that lady didn't have much to do with the UNC performance, she had seen the dance theatre years ago, used to dance with one of the old choreographers, and now works at Duke.
So, it was a bit hectic. But hey, another one in the paper :)
http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.php/article/2011/03/dutch_dance_group_to_perform_at_memorial_hall

All Homo's go to Hell.

Yep, Gary's been back. I stopped by the quad for a little while yesterday, to hear him giving his views on gay sex and doing some demonstrations that to be quite honest made me feel a little uncomfortable, standing in the middle of campus and all. He also gave a spiel about who is going to heaven, (only the pure and Godly people), and had the audacity to point to a black girl watching and tell her she wouldn't get to heaven. "Why?"someone asked.

"Because she's black".

Just like that.

Plain and simple.

Just because.

Where has he been the past 50 years of his life whilst people have dies for the color of thier skin, children bullied, harassed, children like Emmett Till mutated beyond recognition. Since the 1950's we have come a long way regarding racism and civil rights, I know America has made huge leaps -- but why does religion excuse people like this to go around still saying things like this? Why, through everything that causes conflict in the world, does someone believe that their reading of the bible makes them superior to those around them. How can people bring themselves to a student campus and openly discriminate against the students because they are not all white... Why is it acceptable for someone to walk into a campus and tell one girl that she is unable to be holy, the descendant of Cain, or not going to heaven...? Luckily she took it better than I think I would have done. I suppose we grow up in a culture with an extreme sense of the politics of language, ever fearing the mark of speaking out of turn, or "politically incorrect". If someone came to the strand campus at kings and started saying such things, I feel like they'd be removed, for sure.

Here, its a history that people still engage with, a scary amount of people who invest their beliefs in such discriminatory ideologies, a place where I might honestly be wary to travel in certain areas alone if the colour of my skin were different...

~

Planning 

 So, as much as I hate to admit, I've been here a long time. 

The time has passed where I can say i'm 'new' and still acclimatising to southern culture; 

I can truly say I'm a Tarheel;

I know what grits are;

I've eaten a philly cheese steak; 

I know my Washington from my DC, my Houston from my Austin, my Miami from my Malibu...

What is exciting about the end of semester though, is the prospect of what comes next. TRAVELLING. woo. I have got a couple of friends who I'm sticking with, and then we'll meet up with some others on the way if we bump into them... So far we're utilising one of the only decent forms of transport in the whole of the US -- Amtrack. Going south from here, possibly to Alabama, to New Orleans, Texas, up to Denver, Salt Lake City, San Fransisco, down California to L.A. and then flying to DC and back down to Chapel Hill for a dollar in the megabus -- by that time I think i'll need all the $1 rides I can get.... 

I am starting to get so excited. Its a bit like coming out here, that I don't think it will really hit until we leave...

~x~

A week of sport.

The Tarheels have seen tumultuous times over the past week so I thought I'd post and wish them luck before the Wake Forest game tomorrow!!


Last Sunday was probably the most sport filled day of my life so far. Nick and I went to see UNC play Florida, -- a really good game, and the stadium still gives me chills. We beat them (naturally) 89-69. Though to be honest I can see why any team would loose steam when playing in a stadium crammed full of tar heels and only a few of their own supporters dotted around... There were even fewer there than the first game I saw I think. Everyone gets insanely into it, the standing crowd all reach up to the goal to try and help the players aim and then for the opposition they wave around madly to try and put them off their aim...


Sunday also saw my first Superbowl experience. I feel it was sufficiently Americanized! We went over to my friend Melissa's house, and she made guacamole, nachos, brownies... so good. My friend Anna is a massive Packers fan so we all dressed accordingly in green and yellow and joined her screaming at the telly. I even managed to understand the game most of the time!


The adverts were not what I was expecting, having heard so many amazing things about them. I was anticipating high tech, expensive looking chic clips, when what hit the screens was comical, bawdy and absolutely ridiculous. They are made by fans though, I hear, so that explains the smaller budget. All of their money goes on paying for airing them during the superbowl -- a damage of $2.5 million. Plus.


:o


They're certainly meant to be remembered.


Wednesday saw the occurrence of The Big Game.
UNC v/ Duke.
The infamy of this rivalry was made clear to us from when we first got here, especially at that first basketball game. "Go to hell duke!!" are the screams that end the UNC chant at every game, irrespective of who we were playing... I'm quickly coming to learn the actual hatred of this school when it comes to sport..!


The game was showing at the local cinema, Varsity. They had it on 2 screens so there were loads of students there watching, quite surreal being sat in the "movies" watching a game! And it was a brilliant match. UNC lead most of the way. Then Duke's sneaky 3 point shooting skills got the better of us after half time, and they pulled up and ahead in the final moments..


Its strange after only being here a month but we all feel such commitment towards the teams already. The atmosphere on Franklin street, the main street running through the town and alongside campus, was awful after the game. There were police stationed ready to deal with street fires and general, out of hand excitement had we have won, but there was no need. Franklin was just crowded with dejected fans making their way back to their dorms / houses / cars. It felt like a funeral procession! If I were sitting at home now I would probably think it was ridiculously overblown and dramatic, but the people here are serious supporters. Many of them have been brought up on the Tar heels so they really are life long supporters.


UNC-Wake Forest game tomorrow, we have phase 1 tickets!
So yeah: go to hell, Duke.
xxxx

The Game.

GO TARHEELS! 
So, we ventured to our first game of the season yesterday. Wow wow wow. I have never seen anything like it, and it's hard to believe that this is a college team playing in the middle of a campus. There were fans there from everywhere, and the stadium is HUGE. We got tickets just before and headed on down in all our blue gear, face paints galore :) There were real-life cheerleaders, the pom-pom ones. (Apparently they're not 'proper' & a bit embarrassing according to one of my hall mates Lindsay. She's a competition cheerleader -- bring-it-on-style!). They paraded their award winning gymnasts, had massive advertisements and videos of famous players giving little cheesy emotional speeches about NC during the game, crowd chants, flags... And to top it off, the tarheels won! What a night.

We had an E.A.S.E get-to-know-you event tonight in the music block. Pretty good fun! They were telling us about more events they're organising, and signing up for sports etc. We're going to make a tennis team I think, and do volleyball or something. And touch ball?!? We did international'y activities to find out more about the other exchanges, filling out one of those 'find someone who can....' forms. I filled the 'find someone who is shorter than 5ft3', category hehe. Some of us played this ninja game on the stage too which was so silly, the guys who run E.A.S.E are just so chilled out and fun. Then a couple of us went to jack sprat, a bar/café, afterwards, and that was the most English people I have been with for a very long time it seems! There were 5 of us and 2 Aussies. Felt quite nice to speak to someone with the English accent again, and for someone to actually nod in comprehension instead of utter confusion and stifled laughter when I tell them I'm from Bourton on the water, Gloucestershire!


OOH, and yesterday I attended a DTH meeting.. 
The first day I came here I saw the newspaper boxes around campus and picked one up from outside my halls, noticing it was a student-run one. And it was made out to look like the Mail, called: The Daily Tarheel. It looked pretty good and we had a flick through. Then I went on their website and oh, my, its impressive. Seriously puts Kings to shame!! I asked Nick's mentor about it last weekend and he was telling me a bit about it, its a DAILY newspaper (!!) and apparently the editors of it come out of school and basically straight into a job with the NYT or something. Its rather prestigious. 


So they had a meeting about joining and I took an application form, you have to go in for like a whole day not just submit random articles for it like you can for ROAR, but you can leave for classes etc and just come back whenever, your story must just be in for the next day's edition. Pretty neat. When I walked into the offices I was a little awestruck. They have their own HQ really near to my halls, and it looks like a professional magazine offices of something when you walk in. With plaques spelling: The Daily Tarheel posted on the wall and framed editions of the paper underneath. AH.


First essay due in tomorrow, I hope its ok : / Its really short. REALLY short, like a page. I have to 'turn in' 3 of these one page'rs overall and they make up 10% of one class' grade. So I'm not too worried, and its my first one also, but it would still be nice to do ok on it!


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[[If your interested here's the URL for the paper's website: http://www.dailytarheel.com/ ]]