The days of ‘The notebook’ and ‘The Longest Ride’ might be over, but the spirit of the show remains in the southern part of America. Being the third biggest country on the entire planet, each part of the country has distinctive cultural characteristics. American colleges, in particular, which are well known for people showing their college and regional spirits, is a good place to take a look at the culture of the local people. Here I have listed two southern cultural elements that I was able to learn about by being a part of University of South Carolina Gamecocks.
Sweet Tea Is not just a Beverage
Koreans have chicken and beer. British people have a cup of tea. The southern people have a cup of cool and refreshing sweet tea. It is a quintessential southern food, brewed with six to seven Lipton black tea bags with sugar inside. Some of the glasses can hit 22 brix of sugar which is close to twice what you can find in Coca Cola. Sweet tea appears in every part of their life. In southern colleges, they serve it in the cafeteria for free so that we can feel the southern spirit every moment; they drink it while having a political debate or conference about school issues, and they even have it in the official school events celebrating national holidays such as Halloween and Thanks Giving. If you are not a huge fan of sweetness, you can even get ‘unsweetened sweet tea.’ They have a less sweet version of sweet tea as an option.
Southern Spirit for Game days
It is widely known that Americans are so thrilled with football that they even coined the phrase ‘The Beautiful Game.’ Starting with a pre-game for tailgating the night ahead of the game days, you will experience all the craziness of the game days; You will find people driving to the tailgating spot shouting “Hey y’all, it’s the game day!” honking the horn. Southern college students do the pre-game from early in the morning. The pre-game is a party held in the parking lot of the game stadium. For the game day, they dress up with southern spirit, and with the spirit of their school. Girls usually wear black dresses with southern cowboy boots and hat, and guys wear either polo shirt with college color on them, with colorful southern pants. You can even see cops on the horse guarding the game stadium.
Southern Hospitality Is the Best Thing Ever!
Along with all the visible cultural stuff, the best thing about living in the south is that you can feel Southern hospitality all the time. Unlike people in New York City or California, they do not mind talking to new people all the time or smiling at others when they have eye contact. In this point, I bet you will feel at home in the southern states. If you want to discover or experience more about southern culture, you can look up Chonnam National University’s international programs since they provide exchange student programs with some of the Southern colleges. In addition, it would be the icing on the cake if we can discover our own way to reflect Jeollanam-do culture in CNU people’s college life.
By Lee So-yi, Tribune Reporter