like bernie

I've been very busy lately. My mum was concerned there wouldn't be much in the way of nightlife/socializing here  (...party animal mother). She had nothing to worry about.

1. There was Friday Night at the Fountain, tailgating and the game a fortnight ago. We got fed the biggest leg of meat I've ever seen at Friday Night, Fred Flintstone BIG! (too big to actually eat, I tried cutting a piece up but it was so intense the plastic cutlery wouldn't work). Tailgating was amazing, it is something that needs to be bought to England. The best way to explain it is: a load of tents before the game that are set up with food/picnics for you to eat from (or at least how I interpreted it, I hope I'm not wrong and am not wanted for food theft). The game was cool but the only thing I really understand is when someone scores a touchdown. I think I've mastered pretending I know what's happening.

2. Last weekend was bid day for the Fraternities.. Greek life is something so other-worldly to anyone from outside America and it really is a strange thing to spectate but I'm starting to understand why it exists. There were inflatable slides and other fun stuff going on, which was cool.


3. I can't believe how differently people dance here. In England people generally wave their hands around merrily, move self-deprecatingly or sing along to the song drunkenly. Here, it's grinding or choreographed moves- the strangest one has to be 'The Bernie' where people shimmy like they're a dead man (inspired by the 80s movie Weekend at Bernie's). There's also the Cupid Shuffle, The Wobble and The Dougie...in the randomness of it all no one has ever danced the 'Saturday Night' routine that I remember pulling shapes too at school discos.


4. I'm starting to have tests and essays due in my classes, fun times. I had a history test the other day and the only thing I could really remember from all that we had been taught was about the woman that were sent to marry the vagrants that had been sent to colonize Louisiana. One of the French men captaining the ship was a womanizer... you can guess what happened. It wasn't on the test, would you believe it! We started watching Gone With the Wind in one of my classes. Rhett Butler is possibly my new favourite fictional character of all time.

5.We also went and saw The Lion King in 3D which was awesome.. REALLY three dimensional! I guess that has little to do with life in the South....Last night I dreamt I went camping with Abe Lincoln..but got woken up by a massive roll of thunder before we set up tents or anything. There's been biblical thunder today, that has literally shook the building.

I got some more pics up on my FLICKR

make do

It really feels like I've been here more than the 3 weeks-so-many-days I have.

Last weekend bought Storm Lee. It wasn't as bad as I expected it to be but as I didn't even have a bin bag to shelter under, the walk to get food from the cafeteria drenched me to the bone. The first time I ventured out and arrived to find not much to eat, I nearly went full King Kong.

For the rest of the week it's been lovely blue skies and cool breezes, much like a British summers day! I've seen people wearing fleeces which has made me smile a bit.

When we were trapped inside (not being too over dramatic- we actually were for a couple of tornado warnings) we found ourselves having fun time rainy day activites (because even if you're not allowed to leave the building, there's always something other than school work to do...)

In our corridor a couple of 'Wreaths' have appeared. Magical creations that upon first seeing them made me jump out of my skin, because it was dark, they are so big and look a bit a Disney vortex.

I first assumed these things to be quite traditional and expect the hall to fill up with them, but most people have said it's the first they've ever seen of them and were just as new.

So in the storm, with boredom and wreath inspiration behind us, we created our own door decor.

 

Just for the record, the placards in the middle are velvet and we coloured them in ourselves.

What to expect when there are a lot of expectations

I don't want to do the easy thing of comparing the USA with England but GOLLY GOSH books are expensive here! If I were to buy all my textbooks for my classes from any nearby bookshop it would cost me at least $400! Loan them from the library, you may ask- well it appears the campus library holds many, many books but not a single one was an edition I needed- it did make me wonder what the books in the library are actually used for- since a not a single subject has provided an outside reading list ....?

My classes have all been very different from anything I'd have in England. It seems that it's normal for students to  barely acknowledge each other in class which meant a few of us made a faux pas of sitting directly next to a random person causing them to sit up and look confused. Teaching is also very different; there's less emphasize on interpretation and comparisons. It's considerably more straight forward, but there's still a big workload. Apparently a tropic storm is on its way, which has already cancelled 'Friday Night at the Fountain', freeing up time to make me sit down and actually read :/


This week has also been the week where I have found certain stereotypes are true or false...

GUESS THE STEREOTYPE: F or T ?

'Southern folk will never discuss Religion or Politics'

A common thing I had been told or had read about was that Southerners will rarely discuss religion or politics. I got chatting to some people at a party and within several minutes both had been the subject of conversation- and not instigated by the British girl!

'PARTY! I'll bring the red plastic cups'

A cliche I expected to only exist within movies was people drinking out of red cups! I'm not sure why red holds the front in the plastic disposable drinking utensil market but the reason behind them is to conceal alcohol with regards to drinking laws regarding open containers.

'Mississippi? You're gonna need a larger Bible belt!'

And lastly, before I arrived in the 'Bible Belt', there had been warnings on how invasive religion might be, but it appears, so far, to be another inaccurate assumption about Mississippi. There are items in a lot of shops that would never be found in commonplace England though. These 'craft crosses' were available in Wallmart; I think if any supermarket in the UK sold them, there would be complaints. I'm not sure what exactly they're for, or why anyone would need 24 of them but they're a good demonstration of the noticeable differences I think

If the Storm Lee doesn't strike too hard I should be able to report on a football match next.. Southern Miss To The Top!