Shopping in America

The first few days have been filled with classes, meetings, and lectures but we had the opportunity to get off campus last Thursday evening for a trip to Walmart. We loaded all ten of the exchange students into a Buc van and made the short drive down the road to the local store. Once inside, it was like having ten children in a candy store. They knew that they could satisfy all of their needs in that store and took full advantage of the facilities at hand. Many had forgotten shower shoes or toiletries and each of them were eager to roam the store to scope out the offerings. Their excitement at such a commonality was incredible and was not something that we took for granted.

On Saturday, we drove the exchange students to Wrentham Outlets along with another host, Brendan Dickinson. Upon pulling into the parking lot we heard chattering including “Reebok” and “Nike” but were quick to advise the students about spending all of their money on this first weekend. Some of them desired boots, sneakers, or winter coats and others just wanted to walk through the outlets. We left them to their own devices and set up a meeting for 1500 outside of the Reebok store.

We met back up around 1430 and heard stories about the shops they saw or the items they saw for sale inside the stores. A few of them had found a Chinese food establishment but were quick to warn us that it was an American-Chinese food restaurant and was nothing like the authentic Chinese food available back home. “The chicken was very tough” one of them remarked and we quickly told them that it would be difficult to find food comparable to the food back home. We made another quick stop at Walmart to pick up any other necessities before heading back to campus for the evening.

2/c Mike Doren and 2/c Jon Foley are cadet hosts for the SMU students at MMA and will be documenting their semester experience.