Southern Hospitality

After work on Wednesday, I got to go to my first "SEC Alumni Happy Hour," which I've heard about for months now.  I gathered up as many of my SEC friends as I could (okay, so they were all UGA or UF alums/students but I tried) and off to Soho we went.  The happy hour felt like a big tailgate, I really felt like I was back in Athens! It was so fun seeing people I knew, and got that same feeling that I have had so many times at games, home or away - the SEC is one big family, filled with love/hate relationships. Football brings a healthy amount of friendly rivalry, and there will always be trash talking between schools in the same conference, but when it comes down to it we were all just there for a good time.

This all seemed perfectly normal until I told a friend that I was going and he was confused by the whole concept... "There's a happy hour for your conference? Do other conferences have this?" It never even occurred to me until then that they probably don't. The SEC is the most fun conference to be in because it's a big social network.  Being around people who had the same traditions as I did in college made me feel right at home. Stepping into Firefly that afternoon made me feel like I stepped out of NYC and into the South! While I'm absolutely loving every minute of being in NYC, it's good to know there's a big group here to hang out with that knows the meaning of southern hospitality and won't make fun of me when I let "yall" slip out.