Florida's Aquatic Friends

Labor Day (Mon 6th Sep) I was still down with David and Laura for most of the day. We came up to Laura's family's house (where I spent my first day in Florida) and enjoyed the river. I went fishing for the first time since childhood and did surprisingly well. I caught 4 fish, all Brims, which have spiky fins that get you if they are annoyed... I decided to let David take hold of them and take the hook out! You have to let them relax their fins then you can hold them. Apparently they were the biggest of that kind that they had seen! David admitted he didn't have a lot of patience and kept taking the line out and moving to different spots, so he only managed to get 1, though it was a big one when it came.

Sunday afternoon we took a walk by Lake Alice on UF campus and saw loads of turtles and even a baby Gator! It was a really nice lake and a nice afternoon for some other photos too.

It's great to be a Florida Gator!

That is one of the songs that was sung at the Gators game at the University of Florida. "Elder Graham" that I went to stay with down in Gainesville managed to get me a ticket to the game on Labor Day weekend (Sep 5th). College football was a lot more fun that I had expected. There's a huge band at every game that plays bits of music between each play, usually in response to how it went... e.g. "Gator Bait", where the whole stadium raises and snaps their arms like a gator's jaw because the Gators "ate up" the other team in that play. The crowd gets pretty involved in it but in a much more fun and unified way than football back home. With the band there are of course cheerleaders too, who lead the cheers (self-explanatory).

I also got a glimpse into the world of tailgating. I'm not sure how far across the US this practice is observed, but certainly it is down here in the south. Here's how it goes:
1) Take your flatbed truck if you have one (most people do).
2) Park it on some stretch of grass or side of the road.
3) Open down the tailgate (the back part of the truck).
4) Sit around on chairs.
5) Have a barbeque on the tailgate and some beers.
This starts at the beginning of the afternoon when the game is an evening one. This game didn't start until 7pm but there were tailgaters there by 1pm just off campus parked up and starting the grill. We also saw a truck on the road in front of us as we were driving that had a barbeque permanently fixed to the back of the truck on a kind of arm that swings out - they get serious about this down here! Every patch of grass on campus that they wanted to preserve had to have a special "No tailgating allowed" sign on it!

Instead of indulging in this Southern delight, we had a barbeque at David's girlfriend's apartment, though David's truck would have worked fine if we'd have all been up for the full experience! I think watching the afternoon's games on ESPN were more David's motives for us going to the apartment...
The Gators won 62-3! It wasn't ever supposed to be a difficult game... David explained the rules to me before we went, and then I kept asking questions throughout the game but at least I knew what was going on most of the time. The most difficult thing is just to keep track of where the ball is! I think I may have become a Gators fan.

Hugest Roach Ever!

Eugh! I woke up Saturday morning filled with excitement for the long weekend due to Labor Day, full of anticipation for going to Gainesville to see David and Laura and go to a Gators game. But when I opened the bathroom door what did I see? A HUGE cockroach on it's back next to the toilet! I was the only one in as everyone else had already arrived in Miami for their weekend trip away, so I had no backup! It was still alive and twitching every now and then. I rushed for the Raid from under the kitchen sink and let him have it for about 20 seconds! It kept writhing about but then finally stopped - I would have freaked out if it was on its legs when I sprayed because it's not quite as quick a method of death as a thwack with a shoe sole! It was pretty disgusting to clear up and the air was probably at toxic levels of Raid, but I survived and set off on my way to Gainesville.

Too cool for Driving School

Today was my driving test. Getting a licence has been a pretty crazy ordeal here overall. I called up to find out how to get a Florida licence and was told that we would have to simply go to one of the two major drivers licence centres, bring my UK driving licence, passport and I-94 card and they would give me a Florida licence for $5.50. I even called another time to confirm that it was really all that I needed to do. This was a couple of weeks ago. We all turned up at the office, which is about 35 mins drive from Mayo, and all our hopes were dashed! Instead of being so simple, our British licence only meant that we didn't have to do the 4 hours of drink and drugs awareness training (still a blessing, but not quite what we hoped!). We still had to do the whole written test, without having read the drivers handbook at all. We could only get 5 questions wrong and still pass it. I got 4 wrong, two of the others got 5 wrong, and one got 6 wrong so failed it! The written test qualified us for a learner's permit so we went ahead and booked the practical test, the slots being more than a week's wait away. Hege and I had the first appointments.

When we turned up for our practical test (another afternoon off work) our car managed to fail the safety test because we had one brake light out! So we had to rebook for today, a week later. That evening we discovered that the light had only fallen out of the socket and was jangling about in the light box!

The other two boys had their tests in the meantime. They told us that they failed because of hitting a cone when reversing out, and not stopping for long enough at the stop sign. This was a whole load of rubbish which we didn't find out until yesterday evening when they admitted that they had passed and were just having us on!

Today's test was really easy. The only difficult bit was pulling into a parking space in our big 7-seater minivan without hitting the cones. I had to try it a couple of times but it was still ok for the test's standards. So Krispy Kreme doughnuts all round to celebrate!