Hey everyone, I’m back from the Fall Break trip to Washington DC with the International Club here at UNCC. Got back on Tuesday morning my time at the crazy hour of 1am or so after a 8 hour coach journey! If we had driven for that long in the UK we would have driven off of a cliff or something… well… probably…

 Anyway, thats all a bit ahead of myself, we left Friday afternoon at 3pm (oops… 4.15pm as our driver was incapable of telling the time). Either way, off we left stopping off along the way in a couple places either for food or just a toilet break and to stretch our legs. Along with a couple of movies to try to help pass the time and listening to music and such, after a while we arrived at around midnight / 1am or so - I can’t exactly remember when - but - it was late! Either way, after after getting into our room and settling down, I finally got some sleep a couple hours later… ready for the start to exploring DC at 9.30am when we had to meet everyone else for a little orientation on what we should expect and just a little feel for the place.

The first day was pretty miserable weather… kinda damp (it had been raining the night before), overcast and pretty windy and cold! Either way we left the main group when we all went our seperate ways in our own mini friend groups I guess you could call them… we started off taking a quick peek in the Natural History Museum, but after 30mins or so and being security checked we left to explore DC itself. We wondered around the city’s Mall area, which is basically a very long strip of a grassy park area in the central area, with the Washington Monument in the middle, Capitol Hill at one end, and the Lincoln Memorial at the other. The White House leads off in another direction from the Washington Monument at another right angle…

I’m sure you all like my Rory Blyth style (er…kinda) piccie above showing you where everything is located! Its a work of art…

Anyway, all that day we wondered round taking photos of this and that, we wondered around looking at all the major areas, Capitol Hill, Washinton Monument, The White House, The Lincoln Memorial and all the other memorials nearby such as for WW2, Vietnam and such like. It was all pretty good, and I took alot of pics - around about 250 on the first day! After looking at all of that we strolled back to the hotel to meet up with the entire group for around 5pm to go to Georgetown, a suburb of the city about 20mins or so drive away.

Now, this town was pretty amazing. It was an old street, built a couple hundred years ago and so had a very England feel to it. As a matter of fact, if the cars were on the other side of the road it would pretty much be England! It even had several English shops and the like, a very nice place with alot of bars and resturants. For all of you in the know, quite a few movies were shot there (I only found out afterwards!) but for example, the scene from True Lies where Arnie is in the bathroom fighting the terrorisrts and then follows one out on a horse while the terrorist is on a motorbike was all shot there down that street and in the shopping mall! Also Will Smith’s house in Enemy of the State was also somewhere in the area. Apparently a whole host of other films have used it as a location before too! Either way… we stayed there for a few hours and got something to eat in one of the resturants, and then made our way back to the coach to go back to the hotel at 10pm or so just to rest and look at all our photos - ready for another early start the following day!

I can see this blog post lasting a while, so, its gonna be a two parter, I’ll post the second part of the trip after I write it! Which will hopefully be later today or for tomorow. I’ll also get all the photos ready and uploaded in time for that blog post too… (Unless you’re reading this on Facebook, as there are some photos to look at already on my account on there of us generally being fools of ourselves)

Its October, and its still hot during the day! Seeing people walking around in shorts at this time of year does seem pretty weird. It does seem to be getting cooler in the evenings and overnight, and the humidity has now gone from the day, but other than that it seems just like a normal Torquay / UK summer day in mid- July or August with the bright blue skies!

Went down into Charlotte yesterday mainly really just to take some photos of the city itself. It was a beautiful day and so in that way it was perfect, check out the gallery for them.

Today we went to a car show at the NASCAR track here in Charlotte. We would have missed it if we hadn’t of seen an advert on TV about it the night before, and so our quick decision was to go to it!

The NASCAR speedway itself (where it was being held) was huge, with a few cars on show near the entrance, but most either down on the track itself or in the center of the track where the pit stop is and such. We ended up walking the entire way around the track looking at cars - there were loads! Way too many to take a photo of each without running out of battery especially when I forgot to take my spare. A few of the photos I took are below of the cars;

Also there were life size show cars for the recent Disney Pixar movie ‘Cars’, which were in a building in the center of the track;

And, to my delight a TV Show was being recorded! For the American ‘Speed Channel’, there was a main stage where they were filming 2 cars at a time for a car show to apparently be aired in January 2007. A few pics are below;

In the end it was a good day out, even contending being out in the heat for 5 hours with no shade! I also took an astonishing 285 photos, way too many to upload onto my site, but a selection of what I thought were some of the best can be found at the gallery by clicking here. Or from clicking any of the pictures above.

Yesterday (Sunday) we went along to an American Football game in downtown Charlotte at the Bank of America Stadium. The Carolina Panthers were against the Atlanta Falcons. Even though the game ended up with the Carolina Panthers loosing in what could simply be called a rubbish game by them, the whole experience was great. The stadium itself was huge, and even though we were at a top corner section, the view was still pretty good, and the atmosphere from the supporters was great, with the Falcon supporters chanting at the Panther fans all the time… with one calling one of thier players ‘half man. half amazing!’ at the top of his voice, which was pretty amazing in itself!

At half time we also saw the biggest flag I have ever seen in my life! It covered the entire pitch to commemorate 9/11 which anniversary followed the next day (today). When each of the top Panther players entered at the start as well was quite a sight, with flames shooting up and mini firework type things…

Some photos below are from what I took on the day, there are more in the gallery. From left to right, TV News truck, Player Entrance, the BIG flag!

  > New Site

As you may have noticed, the site has changed its look. Its a bit more modern now than before, and in my view more professional than before. There’s now pages dedicated for each video and website (some website pages still need to be completed) which I have made and more bits and bobs, so go explore! For all you in the know and who care, I made the site fully using CSS, while making it XHTML 1.0 valid - the first time I have done so on my own after taking the plunge into valid webpages after I was forced to change! Ahem! Hehe.

Well I guess thats that. I keep thinking to myself that I’m missing something out here, and I’ll probably realise later and kick myself, but hey, until next time…

Well, here I am. America. I’ve been here a little over eleven days, yet three weeks ago it still seemed so far off; a distant dream if you will. But now its here and after getting settled in and then experiencing a weeks worth of lessons I don’t think it has really sunk in yet. Other than a tedious eight hour flight and then three hours of aditional delays, it doesn’t really feel like much has changed. Yea, its a lot more humid, and the cars drive on the other side of the road and all, but it just feels like any other day, kinda as if we’ve been here for ages.

 Maybe it’s because I havn’t really felt homesick, I’m guessing because I ‘left home’ last year to go to Kingston as well, and so this year it hasn’t hit me. Or its just because we’ve been kept busy, from endless shopping trips to get everything from essentials to food, to taking photos and attending classes.

 As soon as we got off the plane and out of the airport the heat and humidity here hit us. I think we are slowly now getting used to it, and with every building air conditioned we can get around, its just a little burden when you want around in the mid-day sun. We’ve been meeting a few people here and there, mostly other international students as we spent virtually the entire first week with them, from orientation to a meal, and we live with most on our floor in our halls accomodation. Over the past few days we’ve started to slowly meet a few Americans, and most would seem friendly enough. Everywhere we go it seems there are people amazed at our accents, and in shops we often get comments made towards us! - In the nice way that is!

So, down to the campus - its big - and very modern. So modern virtually everything looks brand new. Photo’s on the gallery to follow soon! There are blue light boxes scattered around the entire campus which you can use incase of an emergency, or if you want the police to drive you back home at night! - I havn’t tried that yet!

 Anyways, I hopefully plan to start keeping this up to date again while over here in America, and will start posting pictures of my time here in the gallery soon. Until then though… have a good one!