Climax: Cheesecake.

WHAT IT DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

What is UP you guys, this is James reporting live from Bossier City, Louisiana!

...

I'm trying introductions to my blog in different, melodramatic emotions. That was the "pretentious, overly pleased with himself reporter" intro- kinda reminds me of that Swedish youtuber nobjockey Pewdiepie. MAN those people get on my nerves, like, I used to enjoy them- I subscribed to PhilipDeFranco, Grace Helbig, Ray William Johnson, NigaHiga etc etc... But now most of them get on my nerves (especially Philip DeFranco, self- righteous tosspot). Same thing happened with viners, they're just annoying now.
...
Oh dear, it would seem that I am becoming somewhat of a grumpy introvert who doesn't like real people- don't worry friends and family reading this, I still love you all!!
I guess this is another pre-uni concern of mine: that I won't be able to make friends unless they have big gleaming eyes, messy hair, and are drawn by someone Japanese....








^Be my freind, plz?

Aaaaanyway, let's get back on track This is a travel blog after all, so I suppose I should talk about my travelin'

This week has been a bit of a crazy, sporadic, "little bit of everything" week. It was a tad random... Like this photo!

















I was originally supposed to spend the week with someone named Erica Adams who works at the local radio station, but unfortunately, Rick couldn't get a hold of her until Tuesday, after which he told me that I needed to phone her to arrange times for the rest of the week.
Bugger.
I hate using the phone.
Especially with strangers.
BUT, I got over myself, and summed up the courage to phone her.
The conversation was quite straight forward, but my mind was spinning the whole time:

*Bring Bring*

Erica: Hello?

James' thoughts: Okay James, you can do this, just like you rehearsed (Yes, I actually rehearsed)
James' words: Hi, is this Erica Adams?

Erica:... This is she

James': thoughts: ARGH She sounds weirded out, she sounds angry, she thinks I'm a creep, what did I do wrong? Why do I always mess these social situations up? I'll never succeed in life, partly because I suck at talking to people, but also because Erica is about to bite my head off because she thinks I want to breathe heavily down the phone or some other pervy thing.
James' words: Hiya Ms Adams, this is James Hill, I'm the exchange student Rick Gates mentioned- I'm just phoning to discuss times for me to come and job shadow you.

Erica: Oh hi James! Yes, Rick Gates told me about you. Unfortunately, my daughter threw up at school on Monday so I couldn't get back to you sooner, sorry about that. In terms, of times this week, how's Friday at 10am?

James' thoughts: 












ONLY FRIDAY?!?!?!?!?!

James' words: Okay, Friday sounds great- see you then!



So yeah, a week's work experience quickly became a day's. At least I could still go, but it meant we had to find other things for me to do.

Tuesday was a great day off, as Ross didn't need to go into school for some reason, so he and I watched all 13 episodes of Hellsing in that one day. With Pancakes. It was awesome.

Steve, before flying off to Pennsylvania for the next week (he comes back on Tuesday), very kindly arranged for me spend Wednesday with another Rotarian- Wayne Gates (Rick's older brother) at his farm out in Benton. Wayne's a great guy and kindly said yes.
Boy oh boy! I spent the day at an American farm! It was fricking awesome! Most English farms seem to consist of a red tractor, a flock of sheep and their farmer both standing idly chewing cud, and a border collie wishing it had opposable thumbs and a higher level of intelligence so it can use a smart phone and cure it's boredom. But Wayne's farm was waay different: he farms cattle and timber, so there were huge ares of these long, thin trees that were just beautiful.
I took some photos....

Also, Wayne has 18 large rifles. d---(^_^)---b

Then on Thursday, another mishap! I was supposed to ride along with Kelly, the person who does the marketing and sales for the restaurant that Krista works for (Notini's), but unfortunately, she hadn't checked with her boss as to whether I could or not, and it turns out I couldn't- due to me being a liability.

   










^ the face of a liability

So then I spent the rest of the day with Krista, which was pretty good. We went to the bank, which was the highlight of the day actually, as one of the people who works there is from Liverpool, so it was great hearing a somewhat familiar accent when I walked in and heard "You're a big lad for ya mother!". 

So Friday finally came, and I went off to shadow Erica Adams. She works at Cumulus Radio, which, it turns out, is the second biggest radio conglomerate in the entire United States. In this North Louisiana branch, they are in charge of a number of small radio stations: 99.7 KMJJ (Urban), i97.3 (Charts), NASH country 101.1 (Country), and Magic 102.9 (Old soul and funk). After spending some time with Erica, she introduced me to Fox, who is the DJ of the country station and I sat in with him for a while and chatted with him when he wasn't talking on the radio (which was extraordinary to watch, by the way), he then introduced me Ali, whose the DJ of the chart station: i97.3. She was closer to my age (21) and when her friends came to get her for lunch, we ended up having some great banter about an idiot abroad and what girls from different places in Britain are sometimes called (Mank bird, Scouse bird etc) they then dubbed me 'Foreign Exchange James'. I'm welcome back there any time I'd like, and I will certainly be taking them up on their offer.
The Cumulus building is located directly above restaurant specilising in Cheesecakes. So I had one. It was amazing.
Now, back home in England, the idea of Cheese in a cake REALLY put me off, but since I'm in the land of 'put cheese in everything', I thought I'd finally  try it.
GOD DAMN.
The first piece I had was with Crickett Oldenberg- someone had brought some in for a birthday and Crickett offered me a piece. There was no going back.
Over this past week, I've had cheesecake on at least four different occasions. It's amazing.
One of these occasions was yesterday at the Rotary Club of Benton's Roast of Bossier City's Mayor, Lorenz "Lo" Walker. Now a "Roast" seems to be quite an American thing, in so far as, I've never seen any on British channels, with British guests- always American. The basic premise is that a number of "Roasters" (who are friends of the Roast-ee) all go up and speak about the Roast-ee in front of an audience. Now, I use the term "speak about the Roast-ee" very loosely, a more appropriate term is probably "crack jokes about the Roast-ee's height and sex life, and reminisce on stupid things they've done. It's pretty jokes. My highlight of the night (other than the cheesecake) was one particular joke: "Mr and Mrs Mayor had to buy a strobe light for their bedroom to give the illusion that there was actually any movement".

So yeah, pretty here-and-there week, this coming week won't be like that, as I'm at the daycare centre. It's gonna kick ass. And then, this coming weekend, we're going to New Orleans!! This week is gonna be AWESOME.
Oh yeah that reminds me, because I'll be in New Orleans, there won't be a blog on Sunday, I may just postpone it to Monday or Tuesday, or just skip that week altogether. I'll let you know.
No I won't.
You'll have to wait and see ;)

OH 
By the way, it has come to my attention that the video I linked y'all last week didn't work in the UK. So, in the likely event that y'all were too lazy to look the song up yourselves, here's another link that will hopefully work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE0XcdM22Yo
If this one doesn't work, then go find one that works cos this constant linking is effort.

I'm getting worried that this blog hasn't been as entertaining as some of the past ones. 
Damn.
If you're finding this, then I'm sorry.
I'm bloody tired and that's affecting my stream of stupidness, I'll try and do this earlier next time.

Also, social networking! On the off chance that some of you reading aren't my friends and family, this seems like a good opportunity to try and get more Twitter followers! Hooray for desperation! Anyway, I'm @JamesBookerHill check me out! 

SOOOOOooooooOOOOOooooooo
I'm off now, got stuff to do, anime to watch, and Z's to catch.
As always, thanks for reading!
 ...
Have I ever said that before?

Hmmm

If I haven't, I should have, it is common courtesy after all

Ok! Ok! Sheesh...

Jya ne!

James
x  

Settling in...

Konichiwa, you guys!

First of all, sorry the blog is late: I know I said I'd be posting one every Sunday, and I had one all lined up for y'all.... But then shockwave crashed..... And I couldn't save nor publish the blog..... I thought I'd saved it and so refreshed the page...... And the blog that had taken me the best part of three hours to write was wiped......
I stood there looking at my laptop like

I was SO angry!!
No word of a lie, it took me about 40 mins to calm down and stop myself from ripping apart my laptop.
But I eventually chilled out and went all zen mode. And now.... Here's my blog!

Gooooood aftern-
*checks time*
Evening, readers of my blog! I have now been here in the "deep south" for the best part of two and a half weeks now, and boy am I lovin' it.
Now, the title "Settling in" would lead you to believe that I'm only just, well, settling in. But, that's not actually the case (to be expected, I suppose, as my title- writing so far has, to be honest, sucked). I was pretty much settled in after the first few days, and now I feel so comfortable and "at home" that it seems like I was at my actual house a lot longer ago than just three weeks. Southern Hospitality at it's finest (even though Krista and Steve are from Iowa and Chicago!).
So this past week I have been job shadowing Crickett Oldenburg at Allegra Marketing. It was great fun, highly interesting, and I gained valuable insight into the world of an independent marketing firm, which is who Allegra are- they're hired by small businesses to help them with their marketing campaigns. Crickett was a great person to shadow as well, telling hilarious stories in the car which helped keep em entertained between meetings.
Unfortunately, that placement was only for a week, and now I'm moving onto other placements. I figured that, seeing as I'm here and want to experience as much as possible, I'd widen my horizons to encompass other types of work experience related to Psychology. For example, next week I'll be working at a daycare centre, and I am looking into some possible placements with the Psychology departments at some local universities. It's all coming together nicely, and for me, excited is an understatement as to how I'm feeling.

While I was being driven around by Crickett, I couldn't help but notice that she used her phone A LOT whilst driving. This is something I've noticed quite a few people doing since I've been here, and it's taken me a bit by surprise.
Back home, being on the phone whilst driving is like the worst thing one can do in a car.... Aside from strangling a puppy and committing tax fraud.... Never strangle a puppy and commit tax fraud whilst driving.

   











^I'm watching you...

But yeah, I guess they can do that here because so few cars have a manual gear box- so they'll usually have a hand free to use the phone. If someone did it back home, how would they change gear?
So for a while I thought everyone here must be amazing drivers, but after Crickett told me that people in Shreveport are crap drivers, and after I saw two accidents in like, two days, I started to doubt that (fair enough, right?).

Speaking of phones, I'm using a temporary, prepaid phone while I'm here for local calls and texts. This is due to the OBSCENE prices that EE charge for data roaming (i.e. using your phone abroad). Back home, 1GB of data costs £10, which isn't too bad, but over here, 500MB costs £50!!!!!! That's half the data for five times the price.
Ain't nobody got cash fo dat!!!

...

Urgh.. Blogger keeps underlining words it doesn't recognise the spelling of (and trying to correct me when I use the English spelling of something). This is getting annoying...

JDBFIBRGIWBRUG POINTLESSNONSENSE OERBGUERBOEB

There we go, that's just to piss it off.

Anyway, this temporary phone's number must be a recycled one, as I keep getting text messages from numbers I don't recognise that make no sense to me. I've been ignoring these, up until Thursday, when I received multiple messages from the same number. Here's how the conversation went:

Stranger: hows ur job goin?
James: *no response*
Stranger: r u considered at work while ur at work or r u can go out n stuff?
James: *no response*
Stranger: I think women have to travel as much as men
James: Sorry, who is this?
Stranger: iight kool
James: I think you've got the wrong number, mate
Stranger: who dis
James: The person you've been texting all morning
Stranger: Is this Chris?
James: No, this is Rupert

After that, regretfully, my conversation with this entertaining stranger ended. I guess I'll never know who my moderately illiterate friend was. Whomever he may be, I'm sure he was the pride and joy of his English teacher (who should, with all respect, be fired).

On Saturday, I had a major first world problem.

I couldn't sleep in.
I know, it's awful, I've been receiving sympathy cards since then.

...

Only joking :D

But yeah, I had to get up at 6 in the morning to go and help at a Catholic community centre. We were going to be heading out and delivering soup and sandwiches to the elderly in the area at around 8:30, so we went earlier to help them prepare the food..... or drink.... Just what is soup anyway? It's like yoghurt- it's not a liquid but you don't chew it..... One of the great mysteries of life, I suppose.

Aaaaanywayyss, the morning was actually brilliant fun, I had a great time cooking the soup with the people at the centre (which is called the Knights of Columbus), and then actually delivering the soup was very rewarding- I could tell that some of the old folks really appreciated it.

However..... some.... didn't.

One guy in particular is apparently a problem every time- he used to be a minister and has consequently decided that he hates Catholics so much that he won't even accept free food from them. And before shutting the door on us, he said "the Lord giveth and the Lord TAKETH AWAY", like it was some sort of threat!

Stupid old coot.

But other than that, it was a great morning.

Afterwards, I assumed the role of the quintessential American teenager, and went to the mall. Clothes here are so cheap that I had to see if there were anymore I liked. Unfortunately, I didn't like the fit of the Levi's I tried on, so we went somewhere called Hot Topic. Now I've heard some things about Hot Topic, most of them bad. But upon walking in, after getting over the people who work there, who all have ear lobes the size of Venus, I saw their anime t shirt collection....

My reaction?

 It was awesome!

After that, I thought I'd treat Ross and his friend, Hunter, to lunch at a fast food joint called "Cane's". Paying for all three of us would have only cost me like 15 bucks, but just as I was about to pay, Steve (who had already eaten) jumped in and, very kindly, paid instead.

Very nice of him (thanks, Steve!), but I was just standing there like

Later on, we went for dinner at a Japanese steak house called "Shogun's", where the Cook cook's the food right in front of you, as well as doing cool tricks with his cutlery and fire.

The whole thing was utterly kick ass.

BUT NEVERTHELESS

It's getting on, and I've been at this for a while now. I know you all love to read my blog, but I do have a life- I've got very important stuff to be getting on with at 4:30 in the afternoon!

*opens anime website and Facebook*

Before I go, Ross introduced me to this awesome song, check it out!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cnQCk0u49w

Until next time

Jya ne

James x

A pleasant culture shock.

Howdy y'all!!
...
Nope, even after a week of being here, I still sound inexcusably white and English saying that...
Nevertheless... Hello!!!.

This, I imagine, will be when these blogs will start getting remotely interesting- as I have come to the end of my first week in Louisiana (or as the natives pronounce it; Loosiana), and have real, "different cultural experience" stuff to report on! Hooray!

Around the time of year I got here, in this part of the world, they celebrate something called 'Mardis Gras'. As far as I can understand, it is a final "let's get stupidly drunk" festival before Lent- that they only seem to celebrate in Louisiana (I expect they do mark it in other parts of the States, but it's no where near as big as it is down here in the Bayous). The main activity that people partake in (besides excessive alcohol consumption and dramatic lowering of standards) is catching beaded necklaces that people throw at you from floats (the floats being the main bulk of any parade), and as trivial as it may sound, it is actually incredibly enjoyable. The seemingly trademark phrase of this activity is "Throw me some beads, Mister!", a tradition I honoured for a while, before resorting to "THROW US SOME BEADS, MATE!", which, in my strong English accent, attracted a fair bit of bead throwing. I find it very interesting how people can go crazy trying to get some plastic beads (Steve actually got into a bit of a tug-of-war match with some woman trying to get the same set of beads), which they're only going to throw away in a couple of weeks time. Funny how people get carried away in an atmosphere of joy.
Of course, with the festival being as big as it is, not only beads are thrown. Oh no, the mighty talon of American commercialism has a firm hold of these parades and the items thrown, with many of them being simple toys with the name of a company on them. I, for example, caught a stress relief ball with the phone company, Metro PCS's logo on it, and a foam finger with " Number 1 healthcare fan" written on it- an item I immediately used to crudely imitate Miley Cyrus.











^A truly 'sophisticated' Englishman.

In total, I went to two Mardis Gras parades. The first was in the area just outside of Shreveport, and is considered the main parade of the Shreveport/ Bossier City area. This is the one that attracts an older population, as opposed to the second one I attended (based in the Shreveport suburbs) which is more for children. One also gets WAY more beads from the second one, perhaps because there are less people to throw beads to.

^A VERY small part of the collection of beads I obtained

A few hours before the first parade started, I got my first true experience of the incredibly notorious; American fast food. I experienced Wendy's; a fast food chain that is very popular here in the states, but one that we do not have back home in Blighty.
So this was some pure American fast food.
Straight up.
We went there after Ross and his friend, Hunter, exclaimed great shock at the fact that I'd never had Wendy's before, and thus concluded that I had to try it.
Getting dragged to a place that sells cheap burgers and chips?


Looking at the menu, I once again resorted to my Pavlov's dog state, with a side of utter amazement.
The Baconator.
The Son of Baconator.
Wow.




















^See that one at the top with three burgers in it? Yeah. America.

Something else I discovered in Wendy's which got hammered home the more fast food places I visited, is that most sodas have unlimited refills. That's right. Unlimited.
I know, in England, Nando's do unlimited refills, but they're pretty much the only place.
In America, almost every place does them. It's awesome.
This, for me, really demonstrated how much lower the cost of living is in America, compared to the UK. This point was further demonstrated when I visited Hollister.

Now, a few of my friends may describe me a a bit of a Hollisterite- I have been known to wear outfits comprised entirely of apparel from Hollister, often without me realising it. I have been trying to reduce the frequency of Hollister clothing appearing on my body, but I'm afraid that this effort may soon cease, due to the prices of Hollister clothing in America.
At home, a hoodie from Hollister is about £40.
Here in America, I bought a hoodie and a denim shirt for $38.
38 DOLLARS.
That's about £22. So I'm getting double the number of items of clothing, for almost half the price.
That makes me very happy.

Unfortunately, when I jokingly warned my beloved Father that I may require additional funds to replace those that will probably be spent in Hollister, I (quite rightly) received a less than positive response.
James: "Daddy- kins, I may require more $$$$"
Daddy- kins: "The bloody 'ell you will"
James:

*runs away*

ANY HOOOOOO

In order, to continue my guitar practice while I am here, I bought an acoustic guitar.
For $70.
Again, ridiculously cheap considering it's surprisingly good build quality and play-ability. The one downside to it is that some of the fret posts had quite sharp edges, so when I was practicing Andy McKee's 'Drifting', I ended up doing one of my fingers a bit of damage.

Other than playing the guitar, I've spent my first week here doing a variety of things in my down time, including: being introduced to Minecraft (which is so addictive), and playing kinect golf with the Piraino's (which as incredibly fun).
On Friday, I spent the day with Rick Gates at his office, and running errands with him- job- shadowing really, kinda in preparation for next week. Aside from an awesome double cheeseburger, the stand out moment of that day was as we were driving through a somewhat down- trodden area of Shreveport. I joked that this would not be an area to leave one's car unlocked, and Mr Gates, with a smile on his face that soon spread to mine, said "That's why I have this" and brandished a large handgun. This was my first real encounter with the gun culture here, as when I told the story to Krista, she showed me her concealed weapon license and one of her guns, and then promised that we'd go shooting sometime.
Now that I'm looking forward to.
On the whole, stereotypes are inaccurate, and should be dismissed. But since I've got here, I have come to understand where they come from, for example, Louisiana is in the "Deep South" of the USA, and one of the main stereotypes of this area is Redneck culture. Now, NONE of the people I've met here are what most people would consider "Rednecks", but I did see quite a few people at the first Mardis Gras parade who were wearing sleeveless shirts and cap hats, driving sand buggies and quad bikes, and listening to loud country music where the only two audible words were "Beer" and "Gun". But, I never interacted with any of these people (luckily?). So, perhaps this stereotype has some truth to it, but, the term "southern hospitality" is nothing but the truth. Every single person I have met has been incredibly friendly and accommodating. I am so lucky to be staying with the Piraino's- they've made me feel truly at home and I look forward to the next two months staying here.

Anyways, this has been going on for a while now! You're initial interest (if it existed at all) as probably drained away by now, and you're probably impatiently skim reading like:

So without further ado, I shall cease this post. I've chosen Sunday as my blogging day, so y'all can expect the next one then!

Jya ne!

James x