October 14, 2009
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coeur mechante
I finally know what its like to go to an United States university. Everyone in my program at school is american, so I don’t know why I was suprised to find myself on a bus to Portugal with 40 americans. There are definitely some differences between americans and canadians, at least as far as 20yr old americans in university. I really don’t feel comfortable speaking for the rest of the country at this point.
The main difference is found in the way they drink.. actually.. maybe its just college kids in general, because I found this with the other boys we met from Calgary. There is something so unappetizing about planning to get ‘so hammered’ or ‘so liquored’. I can drink with the best of them…… but the best of them don’t drink that way. Instead of deciding to get as drunk as humanly possible, I prefer to drink casually until you are ‘accidentally’ drunk. The people that I spend time with tend to treat every new drunk night as some accident or surprise. They will drink (surreptitiously almost) until the time for that whispered claim.. “I think I’m drunk”.
The other consideration for these american kids is their lack of sarcasm. It is extremely difficult for me and tempting. On the bus ride home, there was this boy who attends Yale. They should possibly implement a sarcasm course as requirement there.. He was telling us about how there was a guy with tourette’s in his class and I tried to tell him there was no such thing.. then he said “No it’s a real disease” So I straightfaced, asked him if he thought it was funny to make fun of someone with a disease.. this type of conversation continued.. he asked if we have facebook in Canada, I asked if they have youtube in the states… the peak was when our tour leader asked us to guess the name of the Spanish artist we were listening to. I told the boy I was talking to, who takes all his courses in Spanish that the name of the artist was something that translates in english to Whore Shit. I told him I couldnt win the trip anyway so he should tell the tour leader… He did! It was so awful and so funny at the same time..
By the way Portugal was unbelievably pretty and Liz, Lauren and I had a great time going to the beach, swimming in the ocean and generally avoiding contact with any other members of our group.
