Pre-Days 6-7 - Columbia...Not Nearly As Fun As Colombia

Well, the charm of this city did not take long to disappear. Columbia is kind of like the poor man's Gainesville. Sure both are large college towns in the middle of nowhere, and both have beautiful college campuses, but that's pretty much where the similarities end. While UF's success seems to have had a halo effect on the surrounding area causing businesses to thrive, the success of USC pretty much ends with USC.

My other complaint has to do with the trains. There are two separate sets of railroad tracks that run through the campus no further than a quarter mile from where I'm staying. They seem really cool at first, as though they really give the campus some sort of character, but after about a day of living in sight of these monstrosities I've decided the following--Adam Schwartzbaum and Pauly Shore are characters as well, and frankly I'd take bland and generic over excessive and annoying any day.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to happen to me the last 2 days, maybe even the last week, happened but a few hours ago as we were leaving the engineering building. We left the building and had just gotten into the car when this relatively well dressed black man walks up to the car and goes into his shpiel asking us for money. Ordinarily we probably would have just driven off, but this man comes up to us and immediately busts into the most incredible panhandlermonologue I'd ever heard. It involved squatter laws, pawning his and his wife's rings because he'd just lost his job (she was standing near by), and needing $11.72 more to make rent, and though he was probably bending the truth a bit we gave him some money anyways. Fuck even if we had been swindled, that man earned his money this night.

Bravo my friend, bravo.