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Published: November 5th 2007
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USA
The flag flies high. Hey!!!!
Well I am not in Riverside at mo inf act I am probably several hundred miles away but this is the first chance I have had to do my blogs so here we go!!
So after San Diego I went to Riverside to stay with relatives. Its a town in California about a couple of hours or so from LA. This was my chance for a slice of Americana, see how an american family lived. Now I have to say this was a few weeks agao now, maybe near a month in fact so my memory is hazy but I'll do my best to recall the interesting parts for you.
So I am staying with cousins, one of which is in high school and its there homecoming which is a big deal here. These schools have big annual events one of which is homecoming, based around a parade, pep rally, fair and football game so I came at a pretty hectic time. Also this was October so t here is the run up to halloween. Yeah a thing about that, I am sure I was there round the beginning of the month yet the house was already
Parade!!!!
The band for the homecoming parade decked out in halloween gear and they weren't the only ones. They prepare for halloween a month early. Crazy business.
So what did I do? Well I caught up on sleep, watched some tv and went for a couple of walks round the town. I also did a hike, went to float building, saw an american high school football game and went to a couple of college parties.
About the town - it had been around for awhile but not by UK standards, it had the historic mission inn where President Nixon got married and the owners are friends with the current President George W Bush - they have Xmas pictures of them taken with the Bushes displayed in the hotel - George Bush does not take a good photo, he looks dumber then people say he is. They also have the theatre where Gone with the Wind premiered - currently undergoing reconstruction. They have a2 colleges there, one a community collge and another bigger more prestigious one where they have goverenment engineered viruses and other medical apparell. Also as they are situationed in like a valley between 2 moutains, the pollution from LA gets flitered through to
over the town, apprently you can shortern your life by 10 years just by living there...
It was quite insightful being there, learning about the culture. Their high shcool years are intense, I am amazed they get free time with the school, work and extcurricular stuff many kids there do. My other cousin seemed to have quite the schedule back in his day. he is now at college there, part of a fraternity - one of the people running it actually and seemed displeased with his college system and aspects of highschool. I was informed that yes what you see in the movies is true and they do go pretty crazy on weed and other such activites - though not all of them do but a sizable portion of them seem to. My cosuin told me the one thing to learn about americans is that its all about competiton. That is everything. It was true as well, the sports here are supported by all and are highlky valued, even tv has compettion with one show purely having a number of sports commentators on the show, competting against each other by talking about sport just so they can get a
A prediction??
An army truck full of young men.....prediction or just an innocent bit of extravagence? few seconds at the end of the show to talk about whatever subject they wanted. The behaviour amongst my cousin and his friends was also competitive. At home we have banter and rib each other sure but these guys tore strips out of each other with their barbs and nothing was a taboo subject either including race - tho I guess they were all friends so its not so bad but still eye opening.
As for float buidling and homecoming, that was strange. They have a float building compettion (again)_ for all the years and my cousin was in her senior year so they gather at one kids house to build a big float to compete. There was a lot of teens there and I learnt that I can never go back..I can't be a teen again. I was so out of place. They were all in there own little circles and 'drama' as its called. The homecoming day was cool to see as well, there was the parade with a band and all kinds of cars and the princessess and princes all in the cars representing whatever club voted for them, then the pep rally was really cool
Princesses and fancy cars 1
In the running for homecoming queen and in a fancy car. with cheer leading and a funny story put to modern day music acted out. They fair was small but the football game was larger with the game and the finals of the homecoming king and queen held on the same night at the arena. The home side (riverside) won luckily enough so good spirits for them.
I guess you want to hear about the college parties? Well the first one was only small and mainly guys just dribnking, smoking and chatting. I learnt a new game thats played here at these kind of parties called 'beer pong'. Basically you have 2 teams of 2 people, with beer cups in the same shape as ten pin bowling set up in front of them on the oppsite end of the table. The teams take a table tennis ball and attempt to get the ball into each cup twice, when a cup is eliminated form your oppsing teams die they have to drink it - the cup cotains beer. So its a drinking game, though I didn't play it was fun to watch.
The second party was larger but had the same beer pong game and after a little bit a whole
Hummer on parade
Hummer on parade bunch of sority girls showed up. Pretty much a jack pot you would think and yup they were pretty most of them but to be honest if your expecting any wild stories there aren't any...all they did was hang togther, chant their slogans repeatedly and loudly and drank....thats it, then amusingly the party was busted by cops....Nothing too major, they didn't come in or owt but the party had to stop and peiople were hiding coz they were underage...by that I mean 18-19, 20 which is underage for drinking here...crazy. There was one amusing fact that one of the guys sat on the roof watching the whole thing and then when the cops left he jumped off the roof...he was fine.
So thats pretty much it really in a nutshell. I hiked to the top of the moutain they had there, was ok, nice view, didn't see any snakes which I looked for.
So next stop was is LA!!!!
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