the language barrier

This next blog post isn’t as much about glorifying a Penn State event as it is telling a story about capitalizing on one.

My roommate is a Chinese national. That may seem like a strange detail to kick off this post – but it is entirely relevant. He doesn’t speak a ton of English, keeps ridiculously abnormal hours, and spends most of his time in our room. To be perfectly honest, I can count the number of (actually engaging) conversations that we’ve had together on one hand.

All of this is true so much to the point that I didn’t even know that it was his birthday until about three hours after I woke up… and I found out on Facebook.

I don’t want to sound like I’m pitying the kid, because that’s not my intention, but I did feel bad that he was going to have to celebrate his birthday just as he would any other ordinary day – in a foreign country, in his dorm room, without his family and friends.

That night, was a Penn State basketball game (and one of the things I do know about my roommate is that he loves basketball), so myself, and a few of my friends on my floor, convinced him that he should come with us.

That night was one of my favorites of my freshman year. Shiwei looked like he had the time of his of life, and I definitely had never seen him so animated. In my head we had simply gone to a Penn State basketball game, and a Penn State basketball game, albeit a good one, is still rarely a spectacle to see.

But to Shiwei it was much more than that. And that’s something I’m glad I could be a part of. The population of international students on this campus is pretty high. A lot of people even complain about it, I know I have at points. But that night I realized how hard it must be on a lot of them, and how much they were perhaps unaware of what they’re missing out on.

Regardless, it was one of my favorite nights here that I’ve ever had. I spent it at a Penn State sporting event, with some of my closest friends, and with the roommate I’ve been aiming to make one.

tailgating

 I’ve talked a decent amount about football on this blog. I mean it kind of makes sense, right? It’s a pretty passionate subject in this area, and since I’m in love with the area, they go hand in hand.

But just as I think that Penn State isn’t simply a school, I also don’t think that Penn State football (or any football in general for that matter) should be limited in definition to the confines of Beaver Stadium.

That’s right, I’m talking about tailgating.

Growing up with season tickets to Penn State games gave me experiences that hardly any other kids I knew could begin to understand. If they were lucky, maybe they got to go see an Eagles or Ravens game – if they were lucky.

They’d come back in to school on Monday and talk about how awesome it was. I couldn’t help but laugh in my head.

Only sixty thousand people were there?

You only “tailgated” for two hours?

These things blew my mind. Growing up tailgating in Happy Valley had totally (but thankfully) spoiled me in the art of tailgating. Noon games meant getting to the parking lot no later than 7:30 AM; 3:30 games were awesome, they had a similar arrival time and almost twice as much tailgating. The best though? Night games.

An 8:00 night game in Beaver Stadium is one of the coolest experiences ever. It started off sleeping in (relatively) – we’d probably get to a parking lot around 8:00-8:30 in the morning. It also meant that it was an extremely huge game on the schedule. In my memory, night games are highlighted by games like the Michigan State game when Larry Johnson broke 2,000 yards and the 40-7 Nebraska game.

The day is full of excitement, amazing food, awesome people (up to about forty, coming in up to four RV’s, for a big game), and victory would bring a great after party.

It is a culture. There’s RV Land, the car lots, grass spots, pavement spots, the opposing fans, and lifelong friends.  And I love it all.

Growing up tailgating at Penn State has taught me to take pride in my tailgating. Then again, that’s not so different than anything else here.

"the greatest show in college football"

This is a blog about my belief in Penn State.  It is about my memories that I have accumulated over the years. And it is about my love for the Valley.

While to me it will always seem like more than a school that happens to have a rich football tradition, to many that is exactly what it is. On one hand, I wish that they could see more. But on the other, I know exactly where they are coming from.

One of the greatest parts about Penn State’s great football tradition is relatively new. Over the past ten years or so, the student section has grown from great to amazing. Because I’ve been going to games for nearly all my life, I’ve had the chance to see firsthand these changes happening.

I remember the first time that “Zombie Nation” was played; I remember the first Paternoville; I remember the first White Out, and the first White House; I remember when “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” first came on, and I remember the first time I saw the student section go incredibly wild after watching a slow motion wave crawl around the stadium.

As amazing as all of these things are to see from afar, this year I got to experience them first hand. After years of envying the college kids in the seats on the other side of the stadium from where I sat, I finally got to be one of them this year. And, as several of you well know, it is one of the coolest experiences ever.

The student section of Beaver Stadium is rightly heralded as “The Greatest Show in College Football.” The drunken comments, the sober comments, the blue and white shakers, the waves, the singing, the yelling, the wins, and the losses – it’s all intoxicating. I can’t get enough of it.

From this season in particular, my favorite moment was (in what happened to be Paterno’s last game) the southwest and southeast ends of the student section flocked to the behind the goal post and distracted the Illinois kicker on what would have been a game winning field goal. It was utterly epic, and absolutely symbolic of the spirit of the students all year. 

ESPN once wrote that one of the top one hundred things to do as a sports fan was see a game in Beaver Stadium. What better place than from the eyes of a student.

home away from home

This week is another trip down memory lane. In this case that memory isn’t even on campus, but it’s certainly Penn State.

On the far end of College Ave, the Hampton Inn is one of the first things that you come to once you’ve gotten off of Exit 26 from 322. And it is this hotel that will be the subject of this week’s blog. That may seem pretty lame at first but, to me, that place is far more than a hotel.

To put it in perspective, I have probably spent more nights at that hotel than some people in this room have ever spent nights in any hotel. Every home football weekend for about ten years in fact.

Think about it, that may even be more times than you’ve slept at your grandparents and best friend’s house combined! Pretty insane if you ask me.

Football weekends would always start off with checking into the Hampton on a Friday night, and then heading over to the Damon’s next door for dinner. It was a pretty awesome tradition to have as a kid, one of the kinds of traditions that seem novel every time, even though you’ve had the experience before.

What separated the Hampton Inn from other hotels, in addition to simply being intrinsically valuable, was that it had perhaps one of the most delicious and unique continental breakfasts a hotel could have.

Every single morning, I would wake up and eat Grilled Stickies from The Diner. This is something that I didn’t even realize the amazingness of until I became a student here. Grilled Stickies? Those things are unbelievably awesome! I make trips to The Diner every time before I go home so I can bring some back to Delaware with me.

But this hoarding was unnecessary as a kid. Because, every day, every morning, I had an unlimited supply.

Unfortunately, a few years back, Hampton Inn’s stopped being individually owned and operated, and the business decided to regulate all the hotels. The Hampton that I spent many childhood nights in lost a lot of what made it special… including the Grilled Stickies. That being said, I still give it a glance every time that I drive by, because let’s face it, old sentiments live on.