This year, two exchange students, Giorgia and Sienna, came to Magnet from Italy and Germany, respectively, for their Junior year. Why they were placed at the hardest school in the state remains a mystery, but while they are here in America, we wanted them to have some authentic American experiences. Thanks to their host families these two have already experienced many American things, but we wanted to give them an experience only a teenager in Charleston could give them…

Obviously the first place we had to take them was Raising Canes. Canes remains to be an extremely popular food destination for teens in Charleston, seeing as my friends and I go here at least once a month. It has become very popular online and, due to it only existing in the United States, it was a perfect example of delectable American cuisine. Both Giorgia and Sienna had heard of Canes, so they were very excited to try it.

Giorgia was most eager to order an entire cup of Canes sauce, as she had seen on Tiktok. Since none of us “local Americans” had ever ordered an entire cup of sauce, we were all very excited. All of us ordered a “3 Finger Combo,” and it’s safe to say that we enjoyed it.. as we had no crumbs left over. Sienna had a Coke as her drink of choice while Giorgia was more adventurous, trying a Hi-C Lemonade. Despite the outrageous amount of sweetener, she really liked her new drink. Sousa Waggoner (12) also offered both girls a sip of her iced tea, and to my surprise, they both liked it. Giorgia and Sienna said that Canes “exceeded their expectations” and that they very much enjoyed it.

Our next stop on our tour just had to be a store that fully embodies American culture, 5 Below. This store frequently pops up on our list of ‘to-dos’ due to its proximity to Crumbl Cookies. Unfortunately both girls already tried Crumbl Cookies so we did not include it in our stops that night. If you have never been to 5 Below, the idea of the store is that there is a huge variety of items inside that should all cost less than 5 dollars.

This is a very fun place to go when you are balling on a budget. We typically buy the same selection of items every trip, and this time was no different. I purchased a slime and some markers for the coloring book that Isabelle O’Leary (12) purchased for us to do in school. Sienna did not buy anything, but was very entertained with the basketball section of the store, dribbling around a mini-basketball in the dribble zone. She also pointed out Haribo gummies and told us that they were created in the town she is from, Bonn, Germany. Giorgia did not hold back in 5 Below, ensuring she had a great experience. She bought a gummy pizza, a sticker pack, a whoopie cushion, and some jelly fruits. Later that night we ended up trying the jelly fruits, which resulted in an epic fail.

Our final stop just had to be the epitome of American experience, Walmart. Our stop to Walmart was both practical and fun. Sousa Waggoner (12) had to purchase some batteries for her five dollar megaphone she purchased, but Giorgia was focused on getting graph paper. The vast aisles of Walmart might be intimidating for the European eye, but these girls looked right at home. Unfortunately, in our quest for batteries and graph paper, we got separated from Isla Todd, Isabelle O’leary, Sousa Waggoner, Lily Thompson, and Jenna Hallaba (12), and had to fend for ourselves while my phone was dying. After we got separated from the rest of the group, Giorgia and Sienna found some mini sombreros and tried them on while I frequently tried to find everyone. We then met up with everyone at the checkout where we decided to buy Cosmic Brownies for the whole group. (There was a heated debate on whether or not we should buy Cosmic Brownies or Zebra Cakes but we settled on Cosmic Brownies (I still think it should have been Zebra Cakes)).

We headed back to Lily’s house and on the way back, we listened to some of Sienna’s music suggestions. We believed since we introduced them to our favorite things, she could recommend us some of her favorite things. Some of my favorite songs she played in the car were “Pistazieneis” by 01099 and “ALLES DOPE” by Cro. If you want to hear a bit of the music she suggested, I highly recommend listening to these two songs!

Back at the house, Isla Todd very strategically cut up the brownies for optimal tasting and both girls said that they liked them. I thought that they were lying because their reactions were not as good as I had hoped. This is also when we tried our Jelly Fruits and failed miserably. I don’t really know why we continually try them because it never goes well…  If you were wondering, yes, Giorgia does still have her cup of Canes sauce. We ended our time at the house by watching Youtube videos on the TV until we all decided to leave.

As we were leaving we got a call to meet up with some senior boys at Cookout. This seemed like a fantastic idea for the girls to meet some new people. We pulled up to Cookout and I had this fantastic idea to have both Giorgia and Sienna pretend they couldn’t speak any english. We fooled all of the boys and some of them were very upset that we had pranked them afterwards. Nobody got anything from Cookout because we were all still very full from Canes. We ended our night with some good conversation and ideas for next time. Raptors, let us know if you enjoyed this series. Drop some more ideas for places we should take them in the comments!!