Tinyaco Picnic – Part 2: Quidditch!

During these games, some friends shew me an awful thing: the beansboozled box. This is a candy box, with 10 differents colors of candy, but for each color, you have two tastes: one good, and one worst than simply gross. For example, if you take the orange one, you can eat a peach candy, or a barf candy, and you can trust me, the imitation of the barf taste very realistic. Worst thing I ate in my whole life, so I decided : never again.

Okay, now let’s rewind few hours earlier, to my favorite part of this day, the quiditch game! Unless you live in another planet (in this case, how do you have internet?), you can’t don’t know the quidditch game from Harry Potter. The “in real life” version is a very funny game, playable with handcrafted goals and dodgeballs balls.

I was a Chaser: the Chasers have to take the Quaffle ball to score, but you have to avoid the Bludgers, balls threw bu the Beaters to prevent us to score: if they touch us, we have to release the Quaffle and come back to our own goals before to play again. The Keepers are the guardians of the goals.

During all the game, we’re allowed to use only one hand, because the other one is supposed to hold the broom.

Don’t forget the snitch! The snitch is a man with yellow clothes, he can run outside the playground with the two Seekers who have to catch the sock protruding from his sock.

This day was awesome, it was a pleasure to see these friends a last time before to leave, I’ll never forget them.

Thank you Tinyacos !

Tinyaco picnic – Part 1: barbecue & cards!

One week before leaving, my last meetup : the annual Tyniacos picnic!

This meetup was awesome, I saw almost all the cool guys I met during these last three month at the same event. It was very sunny, and we brought a ton a food : checken dips, sandwiches, salads, and a huge barbecue.

We started by sports like volleyball and the quidditch game, but as the quidditch was freakin’ cool, I keep it for my last article.

Then, we played at many cards games until the night.

The first cards game I played was exploding kittens, a game totally what the hell where you have to.. Explode kittens. Yeah.

After, I discovered a very funny game: Cards Against Humanity! In this game, you have ten blank cards with words or pieces of sentences. Each turn there, one person take a black card with an incomplete sentence, and we have to chose among our blank cards to complete it. The one that took the black card chose the funniest sentence, and the one with the best blank card win the round. I let you guess what king of weird sentences we can make with this concept!

In this kind of game we absolutely don’t care at all about win, because the purpose it to laught, whatever who win.

I could continue this article now, but I remind you that I write this blog for my english class, and I can’t write over 200 words (but I already did it ahah), so let’s continue in the next article!

Dodgeball!

Early August, I joined a cool sport group to play my first dodgeball game! It was at the Tuttle Park, between Clintonville and downtown.

As it was my first game, they explained to me the rules : there are many balls, and you have to throw them to hit the opposite team.

But, a ball will be ruled “dead” after it hits any object, even another ball. Same thing if the ball is caught by another player, before or after hitting someone. That means that a dead ball can’t eliminate a player. A ball in the head doesn’t count.

In this game we rely o the integrity : it’s sometimes easy to lie and say that the ball didn’t hit you, but you have to be honest.

If someone catch a ball, you can allow two player of your team to come back in the game.

And, final rule, when three people remain on one side, the opposing team can cross the half-court line to get them out easier, but they can only throw from inside one of the two small circles. At least one foot has to be in the circle for a throw to count.

You have to run, catch, throw and avoid the balls all the time. It was exhausting, but freakin’ cool !

Thank you Columbus Sports & Social !

Name 10 Trivia!

Let me talk about one a the firsts meetups I went in the Gateway Movie Center : the “Name 10 Trivia” game!

You’re in a bar, a guy with a microphone asks some questions and you have to answer. First round, questions about American culture. Oh shit. The questions was kind of “tell the top 10 of the most populous states”, or “the 10 most famous trains in America”.

In this kind of game, there is two kind of people : the guys who absolutely want to win, and the guys who don’t care and just drink a beer. I don’t need to tell which kind of guy I was, ahah.

Then, tell 10 superheros withous “man” in their name faster as possible. Yes, I can answer!

Round two, the personalities questions. Each time the guy show the picture of a famous people when he was young, and you’ve to guess who is he. All guys was “aaaah, I know, I know !”, and I was “aaaah, who the hell is this guy?”. Then, the guy shew pictures of dogs or cats and we had to guess what was the movie reference.

And for the final round only one guy of each team played in an elimination questions game.

Obvioulsy I wasn’t exhaustive for this game, but now you can picture it. Even if a french guy like me was not able to play so much, it’s a good and funny way to spend the evening, I loved it.

Thank you Tinyacos !

Matsuricon!

Do you know the “Japan Expo” concept in France ? There’s the same in Columbus, it’s called the Matsuricon!

If you don’t know the concept, it’s an event that immerses you in the Japanese universe, but this one is especially for the mangas universe. I’m a big manga reader, so it’s a perfect event for me.

Instead of to be in only one huge warehouse like the Japan Expo, this one takes place in a very big building, and each places are in differents rooms, it’s like a three floors maze, pretty hard to find a specific place without a map.

First thing you can see there : cosplayers. Many cospayers. There’s no shame with the clothes in this place, because we’re all for the same reason! One of my best friends even cosplayed her dog ahah.

I saw a a manga drawing course using Photoshop, saber shop, and many kinds of cool items shop. I bought a shirt with a hedgehog crying with a “free hug” sign, because that makes me laugh.

I participated too to a charity tombola, and won the only one price : a cool scroll representing a cool manga I know.

At the end I saw a show made by the official American voices of very famous animes like Dragon Ball.

Cool event if you like Japan and mangas.

Thank you Wendy & Joe !

Irish Festival – Part 2

If you like the Irish music, you’ll be in heaven. I love Irish songs, from pipes to rock. There were concerts all the day, animals shows, traditional songs, and even a tap dance show (very good).

At one point I saw a place where a guy told us about all the history of Irish literature. I listened carefully. Just kidding, I ran away, It was boring, ahah.

The place is huge, you can walk for a long time before go right round.

I saw a place where they sold some “price-cutted” shirts, and as they were green with “Irish Festival Ohio” written in, I bought it. Due to that, when I’ll wear it in France, when some guys will ask me “Oh, you went in Ireland ?”, I’ll answer “No, in Ohio dude, because here too we have Dublin, shaka brah !”

Many people took pictures in front of two sculptures, one of them was a kind of stone with the same engraving as the stone in Ireland’s Irish Festival, and the other was a representation of the “Irish roots”. I took a picture of me in front of them, of course.

It was very sunny and hot all the day, so it was obviously one of my favourites memories of Ohio.

Thank you Cecelia !

Irish Festival – Part 1

Here’s one of my favourites days : the Irish Festival.

As a reminder, I lived in Dublin, just next to Columbus. If this city has he same same as the Ireland’s main city, it’s not a coincidence : these two citys are twins. That’s why the Ohio’s Dublin is very Ireland-themed, and the Irish Festival is the biggest and the most famous Event in this city.

It lasts the whole week-end, and I came sunday. If you come before noon, you can enter for free. But for that, you have to wake up before noon in the week-end, and… No, not for me.

When I came in, I was directly immersed in the Irish folklore : traditional musics, shows, and clothes. Everyone is dressed in green, and some with the traditional green plaid skirt. There is food everywhere, and beers, beers, beers !

The only one beer I already knew was the Guinness, but I’m not a pancake batter drinker… So I discovered the Coors, and that’s pretty good. Here, for foods and drinks, you can’t pay with money, you have to buy tokens ($2 each token, 3 tokens for a beer).

Food and drinks are affordable, but don’t try to buy some souvenirs, it’s like $50 for a wood stuff, it’s worst than the Apple Stores.

Air Balloons Festival

Today I’m gonna talk about the “Air balloons festival” in Marysville. It was the at the first week-end of August, all the afternoon and the evening.

This event is pretty famous, and it’s easy to guess that by the huge traffic-jam to go there, so long that we missed the beginning. It’s $10 to have the access, but we jumped the barrier at the back to go for free because we knew that we wouldn’t stay too long.

That was pretty awesome, there was a very big range of baloons : a whale, a shark, a birthday cake, an ice cream and even Yoda and Vader from Star Wars !

There were a ton of people and a rock band played all the afternoon. There were too a lot of food stands, but we hadn’t cash, and there’s a funny anecdote : the only ATM available was out of the festival, so we told to the food sellor that we lost our tickets, and he said “that’s weird, because there’s no ticket to entry, but wristbands”. Okay, it’s time to run away !

This event is once a year and very beautiful to see, with a good ambience, very friendly. One of the events you shouldn’t miss if you come in Columbus Ohio !

Thank you Cecelia !

Ethlyl & Tank

Today, I’m not gonna tell you about all the bars I went, but there’s another pretty cool : Ethyl & Tank.

This is another gaming-bar, but older, bigger and with food !

The good point is that the food and the drinks are cheaps, and you have a lot of space (two floors). Like the previous I shew you, this one have old arcade machines too. Some of them was broken but it was cool anyway.

The particularity here is that when you come in group, you can of course order a simple cocktail, but you better order liquor pitchers, so you share your cocktails with your friends, it’s friendly, and they are not commons cocktails.

The two we ordered was the “Bacardi dragon berry, peach shnapps, cranberry, 7UP, sour & grenadine”, and the “Jack Daniels honey, triple sec & pink lemonade” cocktails. I never saw cocktails like that before, and their taste was very special.

Concerning the food, only with the tacos for example, you have a large range of choice, I took a triple tacos : pulled pock, pulled chicken, and catfish tacos ! Yeah I know, I often talk about what I ate / drank during my trip. Maybe you don’t care at all about that, but it’s too late, because you just read it. Eheh.

Thank you Rudy !

Tecumseh!

The Monday of my tenth week, one of my bests American friends said to me “hey, I’ve something very cool to show you!”, it was my first open-area theater experience.

The drama is called “Tecumseh!”, and it’s a freakin’ cool show. It’s about one hour and a half driving from the south of Columbus, in a city with a unpronounceable name : Chillicothe. The story is about the epic life story of the legendary Shawnee leader as he struggles to defend his sacred homelands in the Ohio country during the late 1700’s.

Yeah, it’s not a happy show at all ahah. If I tell you about this drama, it’s because it’s a very unusual way to do a theater play : the company consists of approximatively fifty actors, and the means employed are huge : horses swimming in the lake to escape, fire dance with the indians, military march by the Americans with their rifles, very good actor performances, and amazing fights.

Two hours and a half of pressure with this impressive drama. It’s played since 1973 and many people in Ohio saw it at least one time.

This show is very known in Ohio and tell a part of the history of this state, so if you come in, don’t miss that !

Thank you Andrew !