Daily Tar Heel staff writer Luman Ouyang sat down with Andy Leece and Mary LaPlaca, a couple visiting the UNC campus from Philadelphia, for Town Talk’s weekly Humans of Chapel Hill feature.
To view the original Humans of New York blog, see here.
Why are you visiting the campus?
Andy Leece: We are visiting the triangle area. We were actually hoping that our daughter would apply to UNC, but she doesn’t want to. So we want to come to see it anyway.
How do you like the UNC campus so far?
A.L.: It’s wonderful. It’s absolutely beautiful.
Mary LaPlaca: It’s very pretty. It’s like a dream.
Did you graduate from a school in the South?
A.L.:No, I graduated from the U.K.
M.L.: I went to Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.
How was your college experience in U.K? Is that much different from the U.S?
A.L.: It was a long time ago. I don’t think it was that much different. We had a good time.
How did you meet each other?
M.L.: We were both interested in canoeing and kayaking. And we both joined a canoe club in Pennsylvania. So we met on a river. It was probably — might have been at the beginning of the summer. We actually took a trip to North Carolina to kayak on the rivers in North Carolina. Our first trip together was actually to North Carolina.
How many years ago was that?
A.L. and M.L.: 30
Are you still going to try to persuade your daughter to apply here?
A.L.: No. She’s on her own. She makes her own choice.
M.L.: But we might move here.
A.L.: We were just thinking how much tuition was to take class here for an older person, because it would be nice to take some classes.
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