"I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything."
Bill Bryson

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut


Today I can hardly walk. I can’t laugh, I can barely navigate stairs; in fact the simple act of getting out of bed this morning was the kind of pain that I would probably associate with childbirth. Here’s a little flashback as to why...

Before I came to America I had everyyonee telling me that I’m going to come back fat. It is America, land of MaccyDs. But I have to say I am rather surprised at the lack of obesity I’ve seen. I mean I am stuck in the UCONN bubble but it is a bubble of 40,000 or so students. Despite this, it is still incredible how much ‘fatter’ I already feel. Now I know I’m not fat, I’m not saying I am, but after two weeks here I am definitely starting to feel slightly unhealthy. For example, I arrived on a Monday; it wasn’t until the Friday that I ate a meal with a knife and fork!!! I kid you not. To be fair, that was mainly because we arrived a week before school started and so none of the dining halls were open, but still.

Since then things have got better, in fact the dining halls are amazing. So far I’ve only been to two, the one in my own halls, McMahon and the one just around the corner, South. You walk in and there are numerous options from pasta to pizza to a massive salad bar to some international cuisine, to a grill, it really is quite difficult to choose. So what do I do? Well what anyone would do, try and eat it all... It doesn’t work. Anyone who knows me well enough knows that, with the exception of breakfast, I have the smallest appetite known to mankind and I usually have to call on someone to help finish my meal. It’s not the food, it’s me! Despite this I am managing to put away a fair amount of food, always accompanied by salad I’d like to add, but still a lot more than I usually would eat.

So you see my predicament?! I cannot return to England fat like everyone has predicted! So what did Rachel, Emily and I decide to do? We have taken a tour of the gym, started a new healthy eating regime and yesterday we took our first fitness class, ‘butts and guts’. And yes, it was as horrifically painful and torturing as the name suggests. So the mystery as to how UCONN dining halls can provide 40,000 or so students with three very large, amazing meals a day yet still maintain a fairly skinny campus has been answered: torture.

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