Days 22 and 23 - Furman College

We arrived by car in South Carolina after being picked up by our new host Brandon Inabinet - the professor we would liaise with everyday. The evening began with a mini debate over a lovely dinner at a Mexican restaurant with 20 other students present. Mary and I sparred over the motion “Thb that America has a duty to spread democracy around the world by any means necessary”. A group of middle aged women who looked like they were pregaming for a night out initially seemed to be very interested in my argument about why this would be perceived badly part of neo-colonialist agenda; in fact they were more interested in my accent.

Afterwards we were taken downtown by a resident student called Zack and a South African student called Ben Fogel to a large community fair called Fall of Greenville, named after the city that we were in. There were tens of thousands of people from all walks of lives, colours and faiths taking samples from the hundreds of stalls and attractions on show. The food was excellent and our tokens allowed us to mix and match to our hearts content.

Saturday witnessed the British debate team attend their second live college American football game between Furrman and Howard. Furman dominated the game so naturally our attention focused on the non-sporting entertainment at the game. Mary and I befriended the Paladin (the official mascot of the school sports teams). This guy was pretty brave wearing a full set of armour in the searing heat on Saturday lunchtime. Mary and I also met the cheerleading team however we were disappointed to find out that the school doesn’t book in cheerleaders for debates.

We put our diplomatic hats on to meet the President of the College in the VIP box (yes VIP). He was a very affable man who I had noticed was wearing a shirt and a jacket but with Khakis and military boots. It soon transpired that today was Military appreciation day and at half time there would be a ceremony to commemorate the Furman students who had died defending the country. As we would expect America has a deep sense of respect for war veterans and the moving ceremony at half time confirmed this.

The next stop was hiking with Brandon. We saw some incredible views on this hike, the highlight being us drinking beer on a cliff edge overlooking rural South Carolina. I’m not normally a huge fan of hiking but as the pictures show the experience was an amazing one. Fall for Greenville continued into Saturday night and so we headed there for some more food related shenanigans. So far we’ve had an amazing time.