Hey all I hope you’ve been keeping well, hello again from South Carolina! Spring semester has been a hell of a ride. The second I touched back down in the South I got a Waffle house breakfast, I will die on this hill, there is no better breakfast place than Waffle house! When I leave at the end of May it will be my last meal, and when I return in 2026 it will be my first meal, where else can you get hashbrowns, bacon and eggs at 3am?
This semester I have explored more than fall, it has been excellent. My friends here are big snowboarders, with the mountains in North Carolina 3 hours away. Now I have never been snowboarding or skiing before, hell, I hadn’t seen a real mountain before until I came here, there just isn’t any where I’m from back home. I was invited on a snowboarding trip to Sugar Mountain, NC, and it sure was something, at first I was like Bambi on ice to begin with, but pretty quickly I got the hang of it, after 2 runs on “Easy Street” I said screw it and went to the top of the mountain for the black run. When I say I took a beating I felt like I had been in a barfight with Mike Tyson when I had got back to the condo, I fell once every 15 seconds, but when I was going, I was real fast. I was told I have 2 speeds: 6th gear and parked face down in the snow”.
North Carolina was beautiful though, it makes South Carolina look like a tropical state in comparison, I liked it so much I got into contact with Appalachian State University and after speaking to faculty and having a 1 on 1 zoom call with the Head of Political Science at their Grad school, it is my plan to now do a Master’s degree there. Without Richmond’s study abroad program I would never have considered this, it really shows how study abroad can change your life.
“Without Richmond’s study abroad program I would never have considered this, it really shows how study abroad can change your life.”
Back in Columbia I had a couple of good outings, me and my girlfriend Kate made a trip for valentines day to a shooting range called Palmetto State Armory. It was a sick afternoon, they had zombie targets to shoot at and lots of good outdoor equipment at the store attached to the range. It was my dream way of spending Valentines day.
One aspect of the South that is very apparent to me is religion. There seems to be a church for everyone down here, Protestant churches, Catholic churches even Orthodox churches, Columbia has a really nice Greek Orthodox church, in which they do a Greek festival, I attended with a friend and got to eat a really good lamb dinner, I hadn’t had lamb since being in England. If you’re planning to study abroad at USC do not miss this! My friend Aiden invited me to attend church with him one weekend, at his Southern Baptist church. Now back home I am not a churchgoer, before coming here I was a part of the Church of England, but I didn’t feel especially close to the church, here I was welcomed into the church and was impressed by the teachings and preaching of the Pastor, since then I have changed denomination to Southern Baptist, attending each Sunday online and with plans to be baptised in May.
That’s all from me for now, I’ll let you know how spring break went in my next blog! Hope all your spring breaks went well and midterms weren’t too stressful, Bye for now.
