Thanks for food, stupid people & UGA jokes...

Last weekend was the thanksgiving weekend. The last thursday in November is always the thanksgiving holiday in America. I was lucky enough to be invited home by my American buddy (I could use the term bro for sure but in this context, buddy or mate seems right) to share Thanksgiving dinner with his family. His family home is up in Lawrenceville (about 30-45 mins north of Atlanta) but we drove another 45 odd minutes from there to the rest of his family so we're a decent way out into the country. It was a interesting drive because it feels very country/small town vibe very quickly outside of Atlanta. Plenty of forestry, lots of stand alone little strip shops next to a massive supermarket, scattered little homes and communities. With the sun setting, it was actually reasonably beautiful.

First things first, that stereotype of the American suburbia with their little neighourhoods and cul-de-sacs? Completely true! It felt so American pulling up to different people's houses sometimes in this perfect little neighborhood with all the houses looking the same. I was disappointed that I didn't see white picket fences but close enough sometimes, close enough.

Now the dinner I went to, we counted roughly 22 people there which is a fair amount. And everyone always says all you really do on Thanksgiving is eat...a lot. So can you imagine how much food there was? For starters (or appetizers as they say here) there was about 6 or so different types of finger foods. Mini quiches, spring rolls, little dumplings, things like that. Then for main (or entree here which is really backward. My theory is that because American's servings are so big that their first courses were getting so big that most people were just having a starter and so that became the main course by default) they had not 1...not 2...but 3 turkeys! Plus a honey glazed ham! Oh my mouth practically melted over them after months of microwave meals! And to go with the choice meats was sweet potatoes, potato bake, mac & cheese, broccoli and couscous i think it was, green beans, some green noodle type thing, stuffing, chicken nuggets, corn mix, mash potato, cranberry sauce, gravy and 2 types of bread. That is a lot to fit on one plate! I didn't try it all but I gave it a good shot. Finally dessert (at least this is a universal term this time because who doesn't like dessert? Side fun fact: The trick I remember being told in year 4 to remember the different spelling between desert and dessert is that desert has one s because you don't want to spend long in the desert and dessert has two s's because you always want more of it!), there was pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie (had to try these two types of pie. There were alright but I couldn't have too much of them), cake, banana cake mash thingy, peanut butter brownies (I really don't get the American love affair with peanut butter. Like the week before I went to a free thanksgiving dinner on campus for exchange students and they asked us to bring some food item so it could go to charity for thanksgiving. The top of the most wanted items was peanut butter? I never would have guessed the homeless would want peanut butter more than anything else!) plus a ton of chocolates. By this time, I was seriously full so I don't remember what else there was. Needless to say every one was in a food coma by the end. I can imagine there'd be leftover for days...

Another fun fact, I had to go all the way to country Georgia to try Fosters for the first time. That's definitely a fun one to tell to Americans and the Brits. Fosters is actually brewed in Texas "under the supervision of people from Melbourne". It's an ok beer, I guess kinda Australian-ly tasting but there are much better beers in Australia for sure. Why can't we export more TEDs, a beer Australian's actually drink? Or even VB or XXXX, beers that are actually super local?

One of the kids in the family hosting the dinner does some short films as a hobby and apparently he did one called "Australian chess" which they had to show me. The whole joke being the aussie goes "check....mate" and the yank thinks he's saying "checkmate". Yeah, I guess their's potential humour in that but the funniest/worst thing was the attempted Australian accent! I burst out laughing and asked the people next to me, "Is he trying to go to Hogwarts?". Heads up, British accent != Aussie accent...

Of course the other big feature of Thanksgiving weekend is the Black Friday sales. It's the official start of the christmas shopping period. Some people plan their entire weekend around these sales, some even camp out! The shops open at 8pm on thursday night and often go straight through to midnight friday night! We went to this massive mall (was the largest in Georgia for some time apparently) around 11, 11:30pm. It was crazy busy! Like busier than I've ever seen Indro easily. I was just baffled by how many people there was. And all sorts of people, young, old, families, teenagers by themselves. We saw some people with 8 bags from the one store! The Gamestop store (EB games in USA) didn't open til 12am and there was a queue 20,30m long before it opened with a policemen just for that store for crowd control! Pink (the normal clothes arm of victoria secret) blocked off an entire side of the mall for their queue and told people to go around. The food court did not have a free table! How can people be eating at midnight after these huge thanksgiving dinners??? It was just absolute nuts! When people told me that fights can happen sometimes over items, I physically couldn't imagine it but after going there...these people are stupid!! Some of the sales were decent sales but lots were pretty bad deals (buy one and the get 2nd half off...? That's a little rich I think) I did snag a little 7 inch galaxy tab for $160 (normally 200, normally 230 in australia) which was pretty cool.

The final huge event for that weekend while had nothing to do with Thanksgiving was the final home college football game of the season. And this was a big one. The UGA (uni of georgia) vs Tech game. Huge rivalry, check out one of my earlier posts, it's titled #THWG, it explains the story behind the rivalry. Either way, UGA has had the upper hand in recent times in the football, I was told Tech hasn't won Georgia game at home since 1994 (it alternates between tech and UGA each year hosting it). So because UGA is only an hour or two away, there are pretty much equal UGA/Tech people about, in some parts of town, you would swear UGA was the home team. Couple all this together, last game + rivalry + sellout crowd = massive tailgate!

When we finally got to the game Tech we were up 20-0 which was amazing! The atmosphere was nuts, all the Tech fans were in disbelief that we were playing so well. Of course, I'm sure you can start to see the cruel story about to unfold, UGA get a touchdown just before halftime to go into the major break at 20-7. Blows are exchanged in the 3rd quarter and finally UGA level the game with 90 seconds to go in the final quarter. And of course, they win it in overtime. To be ahead the entire game to lose it in over time is the most cruel way to lose. The cries of "UGA! UGA!" were disheartening....such a depressing end. So close yet so far. The only solace we can take is in the fact that the UGA football team got straight As last semseter...next semester they're working on their curved Os. Hiyooooo!!

Like a true local from Atlanta I say "Next year will be our year..."

Random Videos

I have a few videos that I want to share but they're from random different events so I'll just push through and introduce each one.

The first lot is all the way back from the Homecoming concert on Halloween. The student council put on a concert for Homecoming/Halloween and the two people who performed were Dev & Turquoise Jeep. Dev is most famous for singing the vocals on the song "Like a G6" which is probably the only reason people turned up to see her. I thought she put on a decent enough show considering her relatively unknown-ness, she just cycled through a whole heap of poppy electronic songs that can get a crowd excited.

However, I thought the crowd was pretty poor for her (despite the obvious lack of knowledge by the crowd on proper concert etiquette which I blame the 21 age going out limit meaning there were a whole heap of people there that probably haven't gone out before), which latter became apparent because most people turned up to see Turquoise Jeep. The south loves their hip hop and Turquoise Jeep are as about stereotypical as they come. 5 black guys rapping, dancing and doing other hip hop stuff...It made me feel very white...But it was fun because I just started to make fun of it as I do. Though I don't really approve of the "get 5 girls up on stage, put them on chairs and pretty much give them a lap dance" type thing (just because Chris Brown does it, doesn't make it right)

The next video is from a friend of mine's birthday. He favourite DJ group, Krewella, were in town on the night before his birthday so naturally a huge group of us went and saw them. I knew of Krewella but always wrote them off as mainstream. So it was pleasantly surprising when they put on a rocking show. They had excellent support from CandyLand and Seven Lions (I really liked Seven Lions). The show was at the Tabernacle, a 3 story version of the Tivoli pretty much. It's an awesome venue. Here is Krewella playing out their most well known song, Alive.

The next two videos are from a country music concert I went to. A chance to experience some true southern music. The place was called Wild Bills and apparently has the largest dancefloor in America... I actually enjoyed the country music more than I thought I would although don't see me going to Tamworth any time soon. The one quote I remember that one of the artists said was "There are 3 things I expect to see when I walk into Wild Bills on a friday night. 1) Lots of beautiful women, 2) A lot of rednecks and 3) A lot of drunk people". I figure this sums up the southern attitude pretty well. The first video is country cover version of the song Royals by Lorde which is actually not bad.

The second video is from the headline act for the night, Joe Nichols. I actually managed to snag one of his guitar picks that he threw into the crowd but it must have fell out of my pocket so no dice I'm afraid. The funniest thing about the whole night though was after the last act had finished, they started to play like dance music/hip hop music over the sound system and the entire dancefloor just started dancing. It felt weird to see all these rednecks getting into their country music and then swap it up to dance. We ended up staying dancing for another hour probably, the crowd had thinned out substantially by then but we were just being silly and having fun.

The last video I have is from the college basketball game I went to this week. Georgia Tech vs Illinois. Students get in free and if your one of the first set amount of students in, you can sit courtside as well which we did. It was a lot of fun because the courtside seats meant you had to stand the whole time and get into the chants and everything which I loved (although I'm not sure how much the two girls I was with loved having to stand the whole time...). The best part was Tech coming from 12 points down to win it in the last 30 seconds. Made the finish really exciting which was awesome, great atmosphere. Each timeout, the big band would play one of the chants and all the cheer leaders would be out there doing their thing. It felt like something out of Bring It On! Of course they sang the national anthem at the beginning of the game (sorry Mum, I didn't know how to time the words of Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport to the Star Spangled Banner) and they had an odd halftime show of these big dolls coming out and dancing,etc. The video is of the starting 5 for Georgia Tech being announced so you can get a feel of the atmosphere (the crowd filled out as the game went on), see some of the cheerleaders and see how much the players get into it.