October 15

I don't know if you know this but a week before coming to America I briefly slept in a field near Wolverton. Something crept into my clothes and went to town on my chest and back. As a result I look quite disgusting with my shirt off. Hopefully it will clear up soon. I'll be keeping you up to date with this.

Currently staying in my friend's house in Chantilly, Virginia. This is in Fairfax county - the second wealthiest county in America. All the lawns are immaculate. Every fence looks freshly painted. This is nothing like The Wire at all.

We (myself, the native Virginian, a Brit and a Dane) stumbled across a high school football game in the evening. It was the "powderpuff" game which means it's girl playing the sport while boys lead the cheering. All the stereotypes about American highschools made famous by John Hughes movies are true! I saw all the cliques. The jocks, the nerds, the popular girls, the alternative longhairs, the African-American hip hop guys and the dropouts. The dropouts came and talked to me and we briefly bonded over AC/DC. One of them had been expelled for breaking INTO the school.