Yesterday we went all over the place, visiting the military base where my brother works, and the hospital where my sis-in-law works, et cetera. In the evening we went to this super cool Christmas lights festival, a 3-mile drive through a county park where they set up these great lights. The pictures don't begin to do it justice, since I'm terrible at taking night pictures.Here's a little patriotic one--the stars actually were blinking on and off but the camera got them all with the slow shutter speed.
And this being South Carolina, they're still proud of their Civil War heritage.
This was my favorite one, even though it's not a picture...just a tree.
But yeah, it was extensive and super fun. I was wishing my parents could have seen it, since in my family historically we get very excited about Christmas lights, despite the fact that we never put any up ourselves.
Later, we went to eat pizza at a local joint (think One Guy's; it wasn't quite as good but it was kind of the same atmosphere and so on). We were having fun with the fact that we all have rings on now:
After that we went downtown to a little coffee/ice cream/hooka shop that is run by this Italian man. Dale and Erica wanted me to speak Italian to him, but unfortunately he wasn't there. The hooka smokers were there in droves, though. We had ice cream, sitting outside in December. Fortunately it just doesn't get that cold around here. I took a picture of one of the many gas lamps they've got downtown:
And that's pretty much it from yesterday. Here in a little bit we're going to go downtown again so we can see it in the day time. :)And by the way, it is really weird around here. I have been looking and looking, and I have yet to see the South Carolina state flag flying anywhere. I saw a few American flags, but very few. I had to wait and wait and wait and finally: "There's one!!" And it was on a post office, so that doesn't even count. :( So apparently these people don't go for patriotism / state-ism quite the way we Texans do, but I guess I kind of knew that already. It's still weird to see, though.
The city is really twisty, with roads that obviously weren't planned snaking around every which way. And there are so many trees, I feel like I can't see anything. There are 2 rivers (not one, but two) so we drive over these big bridges occasionally. Whoa--bridge over a body of water. Foreign idea! Anyway, one bridge is a drawbridge, and I keep hoping that a boat will go under it while I'm here, but my brother says he has yet to see the drawbridge up, and he's been here for months. Apparently all the boats come in and out at roughly the same time, so if you're not there early in the morning or at night when they're coming in, you're out of luck. :(
Oh, and the people talk funny around here. Not super weird, but of course there's definitely a difference. I heard a car commercial yesterday that cracked me up. And, can you believe it, this whole city only has two country radio stations? I don't know how they survive. ;)
Okay, time to go explore again. I'll be back later...
