i have finally had the opportunity to participate in one of the most essential cultural activities of eastern tennessee. yesterday, i went to a UT football game!
that is, university of tennessee-knoxville. mark, my mentor, texted me late on friday night to let me know he had a couple of free tickets. some people were planning on going hiking in the smokies yesterday, and i really wanted to go with, but i decided that the game was more important. and i'm glad i went. it was fun, and i've never fucking seen so many people dressed in orange ever.
UT also has an unnecessary number of mascots. the main (maybe?) one is a dog named smokey, so they had two smokey mascots, but they also brought out a real live dog at the beginning. then there was some guy in a daniel boone outfit. and then, they call themselves the vols, which is short for volunteers. tennessee is called "the volunteer state" because a bunch of tennesseans volunteered their services at the battle of alamo. so bizarre.
the game was also unexpectedly exciting. they were playing against university of alabama-birmingham, a smaller state school with a so-so football team, so UT was supposed to have it in the bag. well, by the end of the third quarter they were tied! they ended up going into double overtime, but UT won it.
friday night, a bunch of people ended up going out to eat at a restaurant in knoxville called hong kong house. some of the chinese students had already been planning on going there because it has legit authentic chinese food. they even had a section on their menu called "american chinese food", haha. the food was quite tasty, but fuck chopsticks dude. afterwards some of us went to a pretty classy bar. apparently, you don't have to be 21 to go to most of the bars in TN, except for the smoking bars. which makes no sense.
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