With hair teased bigger than Texas, earrings so large they have to be held on with glue and not one, but two pairs of fake eyelashes weighing down my eyelids, you probably would have judged me to be exactly what I looked like, a hopeful Texas beauty queen.

I am a South African exchange student who is in Waco for the semester. I flew over here on the large ostrich Africans use for intercontinental travel and was intrigued to see how long it would take before I was asked my first “Mean Girls” question.