The Final Chapter....

So as I close this 4 month-ish blog... I wanted to finish by giving some highlights from the last part of our travels....

From San Francisco we flew to Pittsburgh and had a much more chilled out experience with some friends while also touring the city and visiting the theme park Kennywood for the day.
After Pittsburgh we drove to Philadelphia and visited the Liberty Bell and other touristy spots around the city.

We took a day trip to Washington DC which I think has become my favourite place we visited, it was so beautiful and historic! We managed to see Barrack Obama drive by in a limo as well as being thoroughly impressed with the famous Abraham Lincoln and the WW2 memorial among many other things. I was really surprised at how small the White house was!!!

From Philadelphia we drove to New Jersey where we stayed with a family who were about a 40 minute bus journey from New York City. New York City was absolutely incredible and totally lived up to expectation with Times Square being top of the list on the things to see... not least because Ruth was surprised by her boyfriend Phil right in the middle of it and proposed too!! Meeting Whitney from the TV show 'The Hills' just outside Central Park was another highlight along with watching some of the filming of the 'Smurfs' movie which is to be released in the future. We managed to get a picture of one of the celebrities from it, Barney from 'How I Met Your Mother...' We ended up feeling thoroughly star struck by the end of it all!

Seeing so much of the United States following our time in Mississippi was such a privilege... it was amazing to see the diversity of each and every State and I love that now everytime I'm watching an American sitcom or movie I can continually say 'I've been there!!!!!!' :)

From the Deep South to the West Coast!

Last Saturday Ruth and I left Mississippi and headed for the West coast to spend a week with her sister and brother-in-law in Foster City, San Francisco. When we arrived on Saturday night we headed out for a meal at the ‘Stinking Rose’ called this because of the fact that the entire menu consists of garlic in some shape or form... garlic quickly became a theme for the week as it managed to make its way into a lot of our food! We took a walk around Broadway and I was struck by the diversity of this big city and the sights and sounds all around. We ended our night by driving to twin peaks where we took a look at the city skyline at night, it was a cool sight.

On Sunday we went to Central Peninsula church and heard a guest speaker, the famous tennis player, Michael Chang, give his testimony, it was really encouraging and we managed to get some signed tennis balls after church! We had lunch and then drove to Stanford university where we walked around and took pictures of the different buildings there, it has the largest campus in the whole of America and was definitely a lot bigger than Stranmillis or Ole Miss!

We headed into downtown San Francisco on Monday and spent time exploring the big city... After being together for almost 4 months Ruth and I have got to the stage where we are almost one person (!!!!) and this was evident in one particular shop we visited... We both had to get a dress for weddings we’re going to at home this Summer and Ruth came into the changing room and told me she wanted me to look at something. I was already in the changing room and had on a gorgeous dress I was really excited about showing her and was thinking of buying, we both came out of the changing rooms and there we were standing in exactly the same dress and we both ended up buying it! Study abroad with one person does weird things to you! We made a visit to Chinatown and I felt like I had somehow flown right into China it had such an authentic feel to it. On Monday night it was Jones’s birthday and so we headed out to get Chinese food at a local restaurant, I tried a lot of things I had never had before including little dragon bread!

By Tuesday it was time to get down to some serious sightseeing and so we headed back into San Francisco but this time steered clear of the shops and headed straight for the famous cable cars on Powell Street that took us the whole way to Fisherman’s wharf, Ghirardelli square and Pier 39. I loved going to each of these places... Ghirardelli square was the first stop, famous as this was the place where the Ghirardelli chocolate was made for most of its history, now it has a shop dedicated to selling chocolate and many other little boutiques and pretty arts and crafts stalls. Fisherman’s wharf was a mixture of tourist attractions, shops, street performers and other random Americans (including a man who you paid to take a photo with his two dogs who were wearing sunglasses!!!)! There was loads to see and do in the wharf and pier 39 was an even cooler experience, it even had a store completely dedicated to the left handed (Dad) and we made sure to go and see the famous sea lions who line the dock.

The highlight of my sightseeing in San Francisco was by far the visit we took to Alcatraz on Wednesday, being a history major I loved getting to see the prison after hearing and reading so much about it. The tour began with an escape tour given by one of the rangers who told us of the various escape attempts that had happened, including an inmate who made it to the rocks of San Francisco Bay but had become so deluded from the cold and the sea water that he lay down and was lifted by the coast guard who sent him back! It was a really interesting but also pretty grim visit! After visiting the island prison we headed for a closer look at the golden gate and got some pretty good pictures there, we visited the small town of Solsalito and following this the famous Lombard Street, famous for being the windiest street in the world!

Getting most of our sightseeing done we spent Thursday in a Mall in San Francisco and after that took another drive down to the pier and finished the day going to the huge cinema there to see Iron Man 2.

On Friday morning we started out on our epic road trip, the plan was to drive along the coast from San Francisco all the way to Los Angeles, an 8 hour drive, meaning we got to see a whole lot more of California in one day! The first stop we made was in Monterey Bay where we visited the famous aquarium there, it was the coolest aquarium I’ve ever been in...huge tanks with more fish than I knew existed but the jellyfish were by far my favourite, the way they had been placed and lit up made them look like a work of art! Following this we stopped by a seaside town called Carmel and then drove on along windy roads with awesome scenery, through Big Sur and past Malibu until we arrived in Los Angeles that night. Our first stop was to Hollywood Boulevard where we did the Walk of Fame, checking out all the famous names on the stars and after getting something to eat seeing the Kodak Theatre where the Oscars are held and the hands and feet of the stars outside the Chinese Theatre. First impressions of Hollywood weren’t great, a lot of very weird people around and not as glamorous as I anticipated!!!

The next day we headed to Universal Studios where we were going to spend the day... this is definitely the highlight for me of all the things we’ve done while being here in the States! The day started off well getting to see sets from some of my favourite shows including Wisteria Lane where Desperate Housewives is filmed, other shows included CSI, Parenthood, Law and Order, 24 and many more! The Studio Tour took us round lots of famous sets and showed us a lot of the behind the scenes goings on at Universal! After this we made our way around all the rides, Shrek 4d, Waterworld, The Simpsons, Terminator 2, House of Horrors (never been so scared in all my life!!!), Jurassic Park, The Mummy and others... it was an awesome day out from start to finish! Before we began our trip back to San Francisco we stopped off to see the famous Hollywood sign in the hills, we also walked along Rodeo Drive but didn’t see any celebrities and our final stop was Venice Beach and Santa Monica... It was a busy but amazing weekend!

We headed back to Central Peninsula church on Sunday and spent the rest of the afternoon, reading and chilling out.

I had an amazing time seeing California and have plenty of pictures to prove it... I am looking forward to what the East Coast has to offer now. We’re flying to Pittsburgh today, it is a 5 hour flight...still haven’t got used to the size of America!

Saying goodbye to all things Southern...and never feeling so Southern before in all my life!!

I survived 3 months in Mississippi!!

Hey y’all... this may have been the last week I hear the overuse of this phrase on a daily basis and it makes me sad... I’m bringing it home... I think Lisburn needs a little more y’alls and a little less yous!

3 months after we began our adventures at Ole Miss the time came to say goodbye and to move on to the next stage of our journey as we begin our travels home. We are told our lives are like a vapour and I feel like this is true for how fast the time on Study Abroad has gone. I feel like the older I get the more I discover that you never really know how much you love someone until you have to say goodbye. I am going to miss so many good friends that I have built relationships with over the past few months. On Monday we began what seemed like a never ending list of goodbyes and the process of dismantling our room back to it’s prison cell style! Dismantling didn’t really begin however until Thursday night when it hit us that we actually had to start packing up our lives and getting ready to fill a jumbo jet with it all!

We made the most of the sunshine and headed out to the beach beside Lake Sardis for some serious tanning on Monday followed by a trip to look at the boats along the marina. I had my first wakeboarding lesson and being a bit of a self-confessed whimp I did pretty well, almost managing to stand and persevering for half an hour before I eventually gave up because I’d swallowed so much lake water.

One thing that is really cool about being at Ole Miss this semester is that the semester we choose to be there is the semester that the Hollywood movie the ‘Blindside’ is released and shoots Ole Miss into the spotlight...going home I’m looking forward to saying with pride I was a student at Ole Miss and for people knowing where that is and relating it to such a cool movie. We watched it again on Monday night and it was nice to watch it with Southerners who know the family in the movie well.

On Tuesday afternoon we completed our last piece of work for our professors, this was in the form of a comprehensive final for Dr Chessin and was based on all the work from the year. We had to fill in tables to illustrate terminology, there were short answer questions and true/false. We also received our marks from our lessons plans and I was pleased to have achieved 100%.

On Tuesday evening we hosted a thank-you dinner at our friend’s house, making a three course meal to say thanks for all the rides (both boat and car), the coffees, the meals, the nights out and much more. The evening went well and I was pleased to say that no-one got sick from the food!

On Wednesday it was a privilege to have lunch with an older missionary lady called Bette Morgan. We had met her in our first week in Oxford where we had also met girls who became some of our closest friends while we were here. She treated us to lunch out at Oxford University Club which was one of the most posh places I had ever been! She was an inspiring woman to be around and someone whose kind heart I will never forget. After lunch we headed to our friends house and spent the rest of the day watching movies, making dinner and playing cards.

On Thursday we were back to our beloved Bottletree where we met our friend’s grandparents who had come into town for her graduation, I enjoyed sitting beside her grandfather who was a WW2 veteran, he told me of how he had been sent to Australia and island hopped all the way to the Philippines. After doing some shopping on the square we had lunch at Olivia’s Food Emporium, we chilled out and enjoyed the sun while eating our lunch. Due to the hot weather and the lack of the ocean and a pool we decided it would be a great idea to go to Walmart and buy a pool and so the rest of the afternoon was spent in a two ring aquarium themed pool working on the tan. On Thursday night the packing began...

Our last day in Oxford was very busy but really fun...Of course we started our last day with our last ever Bottletree where we ended up getting kicked out of because we were there for so long! We met some more people along the square and after some emotional goodbyes headed to our very own pool complex where we added lemon juice to our hair and lay out some more! After a kabookies lunch and some more tanning it was time to get ready for my first ever baseball game. I wasn’t really sure what to anticipate as we put our Ole Miss tattoos on our faces and got ready for the match but I knew it was going to be a fun night. One thing I learnt about baseball is that it is all about numbers!!! I loved the game and was disappointed we had to leave early. I got a great sense of pride in my college watching them play in the huge stadium and regret not seeing more sports while here at Ole Miss.

We left the match and headed to the square to pick up our free tickets and meet and greet passes for the Justin Moore concert in the Lyric...I used to say I like country...well I think I never experienced REAL country. I have never seen so many ‘rootin tootin’ cowboys with their spurs and their hats in all my life and every one of them knew every word! It was a fun way to end a three month period in the South especially as we got to meet him... I had no idea who the guy was and unlike everyone else waiting in line was calm as a cucumber and got about 5 minutes of chat out of him which probably would have been more fulfilling if he had talked a bit faster...his opening line was ‘Hello Darlin’ I think I enlisted myself as his Irish promoter!! It is safe to say that after him signing my hand I will never wash it again!!!!

A swim in the university fountain was a good way to end a great night and a great three months at Ole Miss...

We are now on our way to San Francisco to begin a three week period of travel... we were only about 30lbs total overweight :s Looking forward to seeing more of America but am sad that I may never see Oxford again.... good times and great memories!!

Last week of class...Giving Rambo a run for his money...Graduation party...Dinner on the grounds...

Our last week of class here at Ole Miss came with mixed feelings for me, sad because it means we're going to have to start saying goodbye to some really good friends but happy because it means we're beginning a new adventure really soon!

Our classes this week tended to be pretty laid back which was nice as we had two tests to study for, the first being on Tuesday night finishing off our classroom management course and the second on Friday for Dr Chessin based around the curriculum and managing the classroom effectively. I was pleased to receive marks back for my classroom management showcase where I achieved 100% for the Berenstain Bears! In our final Special Ed classes we completed presentations based on different learning strategies for people with special educational needs, we got a nice surprise discovering we were exempt from the final due to an A grade from previous results.

The class however I was most sad about saying goodbye too was our Early Education class in Willie Price, over the past few months we have built up a really strong relationship with both the children and the teachers. I have loved my time with the Bunny class and getting to know each of the children's individual personalities so well made it hard to leave on Thursday. This week the theme was 'Magnificent Moms' and so our activities ranged from planting flowers to taking pitcures. On my last day with the class Miss University brought a special treat of a Sundae Party and so we all ate ice-cream and I enjoyed spending time with my class one last time. In our final reflection paper which was to be submitted this week I talked about how value the experience had been for me and how Willie Price runs a really efficient programme for young learners.




The highlight from this week took place on Wednesday when Ruth and I had the opportunity to 'man up' as we learnt our AK 47 from our Smith and Wessen and our Browning Buckmark from our M4! A very typical Southern thing is to own a gun and we have made friends with some people who definately could give Rambo a run for his money with all of their guns! They decided it was about time us Northern Irish girls learnt a thing or two and so we spent the afternoon shooting at different targets using different guns. I really enjoyed it and felt like I had definately stepped down a level on the girly scale! It was another cultural experience to add to our ever increasing list and I look forward to impressing the few people I know who can decipher good guns about my experience in Mississippi! I will however remember for the next time not to wear a hoodie as I found the metal that came off the bullets kept getting caught in my hood and burning my neck...maybe it'll take longer than I thought to be in a Diehard movie...!

On Thursday night we leveled ourselves out by spending the night in Tupelo on another shopping adventure. It was fun to be in another part of town and discover new stores, we made the mistake however of leaving it a little late to go into the Mall and so I was left stuck in the Abercrombie changing room when the music shut off and they were starting to lock up!!

I enjoyed my last weekend here in Oxford spending Friday night with some really good friends and then on Saturday attending another good friends graduation party. It was nice to be a part of our friends day amid the tornado warnings and torential rain! Her Uncle gave a ridiculous speech which included a clip of her singing when she was four and there were plenty of embarassing photos around. On Sunday we attended College Hill Presbyterian for the final time, it was great to be back here and was especially nice as after the service they had 'Dinner on the grounds' were lunch was provided by the church. It was a blessing to be part of this and spend time eating with friends, there was so much food however that I thought I was going to burst! It will definately be detox time when I get home!

Looking forward to my final week in Oxford, seeing friends and then heading on to the next stage...it's hard to believe where the time has gone however!

Convenient volcano, Color my world, Russian folk dancing, 59 tornadoes, Doubledecker, Second Baptist-'Alraightt!'

It's hard to believe we are into week 14 of our time at Ole Miss...another week flying by and only one more week of class to go... It was nice to have Robert around until Thursday of this week thanks to the volcano in Iceland which caused so much havoc around the world but which I was secretly very grateful for as it meant I could spend more time with my boyfriend in Mississippi!

I continue to learn a lot from the classes that we have been taking here at Ole Miss, whether it is through the direct instruction from lecturers, the projects we have had to submit, the presentations we have done or the tests we have taken it has definately been a valuable experience. I also am enjoying more than anything else the time I have been having with the preschoolers in Willie Price Nursery Unit and in fact this time has made me rethink my future in terms of being more open to early years work as an option for a career path... This week in Willie Price the theme was Transportation and so we were looking at different activities based around this topic, the children were designing cars and flying paper aeroplanes and on Friday they had their race day when they paraded their home made car costumes through the school! Each morning when they come together for circle time the kids enjoy singing and I wanted to share the 'Hello Friend' song with you that has now been stuck in my head for 3 months...
'Hello Friend, what do you say? It's gonna be a happy day! Greet your friend, boogie on down, give them a bump and turn around, then sit down.'

The children then sing the weather song...'What's the weather, what's the weather, what's the weather like today? Tell us Jane-Reeves, what's the weather, what's the weather like today?'
Over the past few weeks I have rediscovered the value of making singing a daily party of young childrens routines and this has been reinforced in Willie Price. We have days of week songs, months of the year songs, clean up songs, getting ready for snack songs and many more! I had the opportunity to teach the children about primary and secondary colours this week through my Science project, it was received very well and I definately will use the experiment in the future. The children were each given some white frosting and Graham crackers and using different colours of food colouring we mixed combinations and spread our secondary colours on our crackers after making predictions as to what the two colours would make!

We had a test during our Special Education class on Monday which covered all the material we have been learning the past few weeks including emotional and behavioural disorders, learning strategies and looking at the ID, superego and ego and how conflicts here can create various defense mechanisms. Dr Chessin's class focused on lesson planning in more detail and classroom philosophy, we did a useful activity where we had to come up with and submit our own philosophy for the classroom. In our Tuesday evening class a guest speaker told us about IDEA legislation and worked through the 13 different categories of disability that exist and we thought through some scenarios related to inclusion.

The sun shined for most of the week in Oxford and so much of our time this week was spent walking or sunbathing around campus or visiting Holli's sweet-tooth for icecream...my favourite is cake batter!! The time came for Robert to leave on Thursday and I was thankful that he made it back safely on Friday carrying a much heavier load than when he came, I graciously passed on a huge chunk of my wardrobe to him for the trip home...! He left just in time for the winds started to blow on Friday and I felt as if I was in Kansas like Dorothy with all the tornadoes hitting Mississippi, we had warnings left, right and centre and so we were kind of excited that we might actually see one but Oxford only got the tail end of the crazy weather.

We had a great weekend despite the weather...Friday night we celebrated our friend Jerusha's birthday and so we headed to an Indian restaurant called Maharajas to surprise her... I enjoyed the night, sitting with two Italian guys, a German girl and a Portugese guy, we talked about Europe all night and it was sooo refreshing after being with Americans for such a long time! It's crazy how people end up in Oxford, they were there studying black holes as part of their Physics research....! After dinner we headed to a dance studio and spent the night learning folk dances from all over the world, my favourite being this Russian step dance, Ruth and I were not the best at it! I taught them some dances from ceildhs at home which everyone enjoyed learning, especially the tush push!!!



Saturday was the day set for the annual Doubledecker festival which is an arts and music festival that takes place in the square. Normally the festival runs all day on the Saturday but because of all the fears over the tornadoes it was broken up so the music was on Saturday and the arts were on Sunday. We headed down to the Lyric on Saturday afternoon to listen to some of the bands and get more of a feel for the quirky town we've been living in for the past few months... I enjoyed listening to 'Dent' and a 'Weezer' cover band who set up stage in a girls back garden! There was a very chilled out atmosphere with everyone just milling around enjoying the nice day. At night a stage was set up and we went to listen to Sharon Jones, an amazing soul/funk diva who was just an incredible singer and entertainer... there was something really unique about the feel, it has been described by others as a mini mardi-gras. It was a highlight of my trip in MS so far...

On Sunday Ruth and I decided that we would like to visit Second Baptist, the churches here are still predominently segregated and so this was a unique experience in that we were the only white people in church. I loved this worship service though, the gospel choir gave me goosebumps they were so good, it's the first time I have videoed church! We had to stand up and introduce ourselves and it felt a little strange to stand out so much in church but everyone was so welcoming and I absolutely loved being a part of the service where the 'Alraights' and the 'Amens' are flowing!!

Weeks 11, 12 and 13... Chaotic schedules...Finishing school...Funny cards...Hot tubs and speed boats...Robert...The Queen meets 'Elvis'...Volcanoes...

My blog has been somewhat neglected over the past couple of weeks due to a crazy amount of work, presentations, tests, teaching and then the arrival of my boyfriend Robert at long last!

The past couple of weeks at Ole Miss have been really great, I am enjoying each and every of the experiences I am getting here in Mississippi and am thankful to have made the decision to do a semester of study abroad here.

Week 11 took the normal format in terms of classes and placement but I had the extra responsibility of teaching my three day lesson plan to my first grade class in Lafayette. I really enjoyed teaching the class about the lifecycle of the frog and the format of the lessons I had planned meant that I was able to interact closely with the students through the week. A highlight from teaching was on Thursday when we came together to put the components of the visual lifecycle we had created on our poster and reviewed facts, seeing how much they had learnt from the lessons made it worthwhile. I definately will miss my teacher and my students from that classroom, on Thursday they had their egg hunt and I enjoyed being a part of that, running through a field looking for Easter eggs to put in their baskets. They each wrote me a goodbye card, one of the funniest included the message...'I never knew Leprechauns existed until I met you!' I also received a book from them called 'Babar's USA' all about a family of elephants who travel all over the States, a really sentimental gift I will be able to use in my teaching in the future.

I also had opportunity to present my book 'Harry's haircut' to my preschool class this week. The book I made follows the story of Harry who needs a haircut but has a very funny experience with the hairdresser who cuts it too short then too curly, too sparkly, too frizzy etc. The children laughed when they saw Harry and each of the silly hairstyles! I'm pleased with how well this project went. I now have to complete my Science project and reflective paper and I will be finished with my assignments in Willie Price. I continue to learn a lot from Willie Price, the theme for week 11 was 'Bunnies and Chicks' and so we made all kinds of Easter decorations to go along with this theme.

Despite having lots of work we still took some study breaks, the highlight from this week being chilling in a hot tub!

Due to Easter we had Friday off and so I spent the day on a friends speed boat on Lake Sardis, a great way to chill out after a busy week! I also had the opportunity to go to a special service for my friend Rae's Grandad who had been a pastor for 50 years. This service was held in a 'primitive baptist' church and definately ticks the cultural experience box! A lot of gospel and a lot of Amens! Ruth spent the weekend in San Francisco with family while I enjoyed visiting friends and spent Easter Sunday eating dinner with a family from church!

So the day finally came for Robert to arrive in Memphis, after lots of travelling and lots of interrogation (Robert was born in Iraq!) he made it... On Monday of week 12 we went to pick him up and bring him down to the sunny South.

Despite having Robert here I still had classes to go too and this week the focus moved in special education to emotional and behaviour disorders and from there to speech difficulties. I continue to learn from these classes and see many different approaches to this subject through these sessions. We were preparing to be tested in Dr Chessin's class and so spent a lot of time reviewing information and learning more about instructional strategies and professional resources.

On Tuesday evening in our night class we had to present out classroom management showcase and hand in our plan that coincides with this. This project has kept me busy for the last couple of weeks and so I was thankful when the day came to hand this work over and to showcase what I had been doing. The assignment was to create a classroom management plan covering important areas such as rules in the classroom, system for rewarding, a behaviour strategy, a plan for contacting parents and including your philosophy for the classroom. As well as a written plan we also had to create and showcase how this plan would play out in the classroom. Mine was based around the popular children's series the 'Berenstain Bears' this went down really well as it heavily influenced the early years of my classmates' education. My plan followed the theme of bears, ranging from rules following the acronym of 'bear' to a reward system based on the 'bear buck.' I was pleased to see my effort rewarding gaining 100% for my showcase.

On Wednesday evening Robert and I headed off on a trip (was excused from class for Thursday/Monday and had Friday as a day off due to Chancellor's inauguration!) to Pittsburgh to visit with friends for the weekend. Our flights were really delayed and so at 3am we finally made it to Pennsylvania and met up with our friends. We stayed at Geneva College Wednesday and Thursday night, visiting friends we know there and seeing the different sites in and around that college. It was strange to come from Ole Miss to such a small, Christian college and the weather was also a bit different, very cold compared to what we have down here! On Friday afternoon Robert and I headed to my friend Laura's family home for the weekend where her older sister Bekah and husband Tony were meeting us from Philadelphia along with Kait and Brenda who I stayed with over Spring break. The house was full all weekend, we enjoyed eating out for breakfast, watching the Blind Side (amazing movie, all about a footballer who goes to Ole Miss-I spent the entire film shouting out things I had seen or knew!!!), eating more food, visiting Grace RP church, meeting some of my parents old friends, playing with Nerf guns, learning American football and eating more! A great weekend was had by all and we were sad to say goodbye on Monday morning.


We made it back to Mississippi on Monday evening and were met by Ruth and Rae who had plans for us, we headed to IHOP and then to our mystery location which turned out to be 'Graceland too.' This trip goes down as possibly the funniest/wierdest experience I have ever had in my life.... I don't even know where to begin in my description of it...We turned up at a house with two huge lion posts, tinsel wrapped around their necks and Rae goes up to the door and shouts for Paul... Paul appears a few minutes later looking thoroughly deshevelled with his teeth flapping up and down when he talks, we pay the five dollars to come inside and so unravels the most ridiculous Elvis tour ever.... The house is filled from wall to wall, ceiling to floor with memorabilia of Elvis, from cardboard cut outs, to blankets, to curtains, bathtub, to every record he ever recorded. However...our tour guide seemed to be a little farfetched in his descriptions...Apparently (according to Paul) he has been visited by the FBI/CIA three times, 3 presidents have been, George Bushes daughters, Tom Cruize's dog, Pamela Anderson, Sean Connery, every policeman in the state of Mississippi and infact the Queen of England herself took a visit to Holly Springs Mississippi to check out Paul's collection! Amazing! I had to stand well back from Paul during the tour, a fit of giggles that just didn't seem to shift made it impossible to look at him as he exclaimed all of this with a straight face, egged on by both Robert and Ruth. Paul named his son Elvis surprisingly and has apparently been offered millions of dollars for each and every part of his vast collections from people like MTV and the actual Graceland. I quickly learned to take everything he said with a pinch of salt, a man who has clearly gone crazy after many years of having a house open to the public 24/7 and endless repititions of his tour speeches! Definately something I will never forget!

On Tuesday I was back in Willie Price where the theme for this week was 'Creepy Crawlers' the children did all kinds of experiments including making ant hills from sand and spiders from thumb prints. On Tuesday evening we had our normal night class where we had a guest speaker talking about Autism, a useful lecture that solidified what I already knew on the subject. We visited a Greek resaurant after class, there were only a few 'authentic' dishes however according to my expert boyfriend!

Class continued as normal on Wednesday looking at delayed language and at having a personal stance towards education and having a philosophy for your classroom.

Robert continued to meet friends as the week went on and on Thursday he had a taste of authentic Southern food visiting Ruth and I's 'favourite' restaurant Ajax. We spent time with friends on Thursday night eating Pecan and Derby pies and doing dances from all over the world including Greece and Russia!

I completed a test for Dr Chessin this week and was happy to get results back on Friday which told me I had achieved full marks on part one and 28/30 on part two. I am happy with how well my marks have been going during my time at Ole Miss.

On Friday Robert and I headed to 'Rowan Oak' where William Faulkner lived, this was really educational as he is the most influential writer from Mississippi.

Saturday was Robert's due date to leave Mississippi, head to Amsterdam, fly from there to Birmingham, catch another plane to Belfast and be at a job interview for Belfast Royal Academy on Monday morning. Would have all been fine if a volcano had not decided to erupt in Iceland causing havoc worldwide....oh well...more time in Oxford for Robert then!!!

Work...work...work...USA-the whole world...Brilliant...Easter nests...Big Bad Breakfast...Zoo!

This week the work load really went up a gear and so we spent most afternoons and evenings either in school, Willie Price, class, or in our dorm room working on assignments and projects. On Monday we were given our assignments for Willie Price which include a cookery project, making and reading our own big book, a science project and a reflective paper. These projects have to be completed within the next three weeks and so I began to put together the resources I need for getting these done and presented on time.

Our Special Education Class this week focused on strategies for working with pupils who have learning difficulties, these include the Content Enhancement Routine, LINCS, TOWER, The FRAME and the Multipass Strategy. Our professor continues to teach using practical examples and interacting with the class. I am learning a lot about how to specifically work with LD students within an inclusive environment and so this is a useful experience.

We had this week during our Effective Teaching Strategies class to pull together our lesson plans that we will teach within the next week. I was able to get my 3 day lesson plan completed around the topic of the lifecycle of the frog and I plan to teach this next week. Our planning was out of class but on Friday we came back together as Dr Chessin was in Greece for Spring Break with a group of students and then visiting Belfast to spend time at Stran with Dr Siberry. Ruth and I enjoyed her enthusiastic return to class, entering the classroom proclaiming her love for Belfast and how much she wants to go back! I've never heard anyone be quite so passionate about Belfast... normally people get excited about the Giant's Causeway or the South but Dr Chessin loved the city...She asked us if you can buy wheaten shortbread on the internet!

Planning for lessons is different over here, they split the lesson planning into three stages, 1. Identify desired results, 2. Planning Assessment, 3. Daily Learning Plans. Having prior knowledge of planning lessons helped me to get through my planning without much difficulty but there were aspects that I struggled with as I hadn't come across before, for example, what informal checks I would use during the lesson.

I spent time in school on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week and enjoyed the consistency of being in the classroom. The class are learning a lot about plants at the minute and so have planted sunflower seeds so they can make observations on these over the next few weeks. I continue to spend time chatting to the children and on Tuesday I had an interesting conversation with a couple of students around a children's encyclopedia, they were looking at a map of the USA and asked me to show them my country. I explained that we had to find a world map for me to be able to do that at which they told me, 'But Miss Lorna there is nothing else!' I still get surprised at how little these 7-8 year olds know of the world around them and how much is yet to discover when you live in the USA which I am finding incredibly insular.

On Wednesday we took a field trip outside to look at various plants surrounding the school, the children were allowed to bring things back to the classroom to share with their friends. I found it pretty amusing when two girls brought handfuls of green onions into the classroom and preceded to stink out the room over the course of the day! We also visited another class where they were studying sea life and something I really liked was the 48 feet whale they had made and was stuck up around their room, an idea I will steal for the future! On Thursday they did some Spring activities, they made flowers by dropping coloured water on kitchen roll and folding into a flower shape. They also made butterflies by crunching crepe paper and using pipe cleaners for the antenna.

I taught my cookery lesson on Wednesday in Willie Price and together we made Easter nests. This lesson went really well and the children were very responsive to my instruction. I still find it funny when the children don't know how to react to some words I use, for example I said 'Brilliant' in praise of how well they were working and one little girl shouts out 'Brilliant- a fancy way of saying great!'

On Friday night we spent time with some friends, eating lots of dessert and watching the movie the 'Princess Bride' which I really enjoyed. It was great to just hang out after such a hectic week.

On Saturday we headed to 'Big Bad Breakfast' but unfornately the whole of Oxford went for breakfast on Saturday morning and so we left and walked around an art exhibit on the square before returning and enjoying an awesome American breakfast...definately my favourite meal in America...belgian waffles and endless supplies of coffee!

After being fuelled up with breakfast we met up with friends to head to Memphis to visit the zoo there. This was a great day out being a lot bigger than our zoo in Belfast and having a lot more interactive areas. My favourite animals were definately the hippos, I had never seen those in real life before and we were really close to them which was exciting. They had a creepy night animal indoor exhibit which freaked me out, especially the huge aardvark which looked like it was right next to you as you rounded the corner in the dark! We got surprised by our friends in Missouri who joined us for the day out, was nice to catch up with them again! On Saturday night we headed to Buffalo wild wings, a sports restaurant which was underappreciated by a nominal sports fan like myself! I thought about how much my brother, Dad and other male friends would love it though!

On Sunday we enjoyed going to College Hill presbyterian and then resting in the afternoon so we could be refuelled for another busy week!

Still enjoying my time in the States but can't believe how much it is just flying by....