Weekend in Jersey

Penn State exists in a world of it’s own all the way out in the middle of rural Pennsylvania.

You could go for weeks without seeing a child, an old person or even a family. You slowly get used to everybody wearing Penn State gear, track pants and pajamas around campus and that normal clothes ( i.e. clothes that don’t say Penn State ) are few and far between. 

What I’m getting at here is that living on campus in State College is not representative of normal American life. It’s pretty fair to say you could stay here for a year and still have no idea about the way your classmates grew up in their hometowns. Luckily for me my friend Elle invited Jess and I to stay with her for the first weekend of Spring Break at her house on the New Jersey/ Pennsylvania state line just outside of Philadelphia. 

We almost didn’t make it to Philly because the bus we caught from State College to Philly was labelled for Hillsborough, not Philadelphia. It was only a last minute decision to double check where the bus was going otherwise we would have completely missed it !

Elle’s Dad picked us up in the centre of Philly and we drove across the state line into New Jersey stopping for a takeaway dinner on the way from Wawas – a kind of service station that does made to order sandwiches and burritos. 

Her house, about 30 minutes from the centre of Philly was straight out of every American movie and TV show I’ve ever watched - huge, white and complete with American flag flying in the front yard. We met her younger brother and parents and played with her very cute dogs before finally going to sleep well after midnight. 

The next day we drove around Elle’s town and went to the Cherryhill Mall close to Philly for shopping and lunch. On the way we stopped off at a drive-thru Starbucks – yes, that’s right you can order Starbucks just like you might order McDonalds or Burger Kind. I’m so annoyed I didn’t take a photo of this because if nothing else sums up American culture this did !

Driving around Elle’s town was so much different than my hometown Napier in NZ. The biggest difference is that there was no main shopping street you can wander down, instead it was made up of a series of huge big box chain shops and restaurants. These are all right on the road so instead of walking between shops everyone drives – minimizing any physical activity whatsoever.  In Napier and other towns in New Zealand we have a lot of independent cafes, bookstores and shops but all the shops we saw and went into were big chain brands like Nordstorm, Dunkin Donuts and Olive Garden.

After a huge lunch of baked potato at a bistro at the mall we went off-roading for the first time in Elle’s Jeep on some sand paths close to her house. Apparently off-roading is really popular for high-school kids, especially in kind of rural areas and most towns around New Jersey and Pennsylvania have places you can go to do this.  I sat in the back of the jeep – not a wise move as I flew everywhere as the car jolted up and down over the dunes and the seats in Elle’s Jeep moved. A couple of times we thought we were stuck, but luckily we didn’t have to call Elle’s Dad to tow us out …

After this we decided to stay in for the night – ordered some sushi and watched the Real Housewives of New Jersey ( which by the way was not at all representative of the people I saw in New Jersey !)

Eating lunch the mall

Before we almost got bounced out of the Jeep.  

On Sunday morning we woke up at 6am and Elle’s Mum drove Jess and I to the bus stop in Philly so we could catch the bus to New York City to catch our flight to Spring Break in Miami later that day !