Accent instructors...Fat Tuesday...Geography lessons...Fire...Road Trip...Peanut butter hamburgers...Deer...RAIN...

Monday of week 5 began with an interesting lecture from a guest speaker in our Special Ed class based around teaching Science in the Special Ed classroom. The professor gave examples of how to present and illustrate concepts to pupils who may experience difficulties with the material. I found this a useful lecture and hope to be able to carry out these experiments in an inclusive setting when I am teaching.


On Monday night Ruth and I had the opportunity to become accent instructors for the production 'Seven'...

'Theatre Oxford with the Office of International Programs and the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies presents Seven by Paula Cizmar, Catherine Filloux, Gail Kriegel, Carol K. Mack, Ruth Margraff, Anna Deavere Smith & Susan Yankowitz. A collaboration of seven award-winning women playwrights, Seven is based on personal interviews with seven women leaders of the Vital Voices Global Partnership network who have triumphed over huge obstacles to create major changes in human rights in their home countries. In the seven interwoven stories we see the commonality of challenge and of bravery, and in the individual monologues that follow, we experience each fascinating whole true story. Seven will be performed at the Powerhouse Community Arts Center in Oxford Thursday and Friday, February 26 & 27 at 7pm and Sunday, February 28 at 2pm.'

We had received information about the production from the Study Abroad Office via email and as one of the main characters is from Northern Ireland we were asked to come and help her with her accent. This was a bigger challenge than we thought it would be...from Southern Mississippi to West Belfast in a month!?!? We tried our best to give advice and gave the actress a recording we made of her entire script. We look forward to hearing the final result next Friday night, we were given free tickets for all the help we gave her!

On Tuesday we were back to Willie Price, reading stories, interacting with the children and participating in the group activities. We celebrated 'Fat Tuesday' as part of Mardi Gras and so there were beads and colour everywhere we looked! On Tuesday night we had a guest speaker and were learning about various discipline strategies through group activities and presentations. We spent the rest of the evening revising and studying for our Special Ed test the following morning.

Our test on Wednesday took a similar format as the previous one, multiple choice responses and about 25 questions. The test was harder than I anticipated but I think I managed to get through it ok when I looked over my notes following the test.


I really enjoyed Leapfrog this week and Leapfrog Uno which is like normal Uno but with a bit more attitude, enjoying spending time with these young people and volunteering in this way. We tried to play Jacks but were unable to work out how to play it properly, lots of jacks and two bouncy balls?! Maybe someone knows what way these are supposed to be used, I'm pretty sure just bouncing the ball and grabbing jacks isn't exactly how it's supposed to be done!


On Wednesday night we had a bit of drama in Guess Halls, the girls next door to us set off the fire alarms by over cooking some spring rolls in their room. There was a mass evacuation and we all had to stand outside while the fire brigade came and checked out the situation. Nothing appears to have been damaged so we live to see another day of dorm life...!

After RUF on Wednesday night we went to our friend's house to watch the Irish movie 'Once' they thought this would be a novelty to have real, live, Irish people watching an Irish film! On the way to his house I managed to almost crash my friend's car when I saw my first deer run through the woods, I've never seen deer in the wild and so what was a massive deal to me was an everyday occurrence to the others in the car!

On Thursday morning we visited our favourite bakery (Bottletree) for breakfast before we went to Willie Price where we were reading a story about Comet the Rabbit and doing activities based around this novel. We were asked to complete the 'Intercultural Development Instrument' by Dr Mitch Hammer as part of one of our professor's research. This survey gives an indication of a person's intercultural competence in several areas. My love for diversity and interest in people of different nationalities makes me think I did well in this survey but we weren't given any results so who knows how it came out!!

My global ambassador took me out for dinner on Thursday night, this is basically someone who you can call on if you need help or direction. We went to my favourite food place....Ajax...! I steered clear of the typically Southern delicacies and opted for a salad this time! During dinner I felt I was giving a bit of a Geography lesson, trying to explain that in fact you could not take a train from Ireland to France and it was actually an island!

Friday was a really exciting day for Ruth and I as our first visitor arrived...Ruth's sister came to join us from San Francisco for the weekend. We spent time on Friday showing Cherith the sights and sounds of Oxford, Cherith had rented a car from Memphis and it was amazing having a mode of transportation all weekend! We spent most of Friday afternoon looking around the square, the weekend was beautiful, loads of sunshine and so we visited Holli's Sweet Tooth for ice-cream (Cake Batter and Birthday Cake Batter ice-cream...awesome!!!) and 'candy' before we headed out to the farmer's market to get ingredients for our Irish dinner party we had planned for some American friends that night. After a few stressful hours we had a complete menu we were happy with, Irish Stew, Chicken and Broccoli bake, Salad, Champ, Roast Potatoes... We even had Waffle Berry Pie and Bailey's Hot Chocolate for after. The food seemed to go down well, especially the Irish Stew which we thought was pretty good considering we made up the recipe...wife points for Ruth and I!!!

After dinner we headed over to the Powerhouse to check out a band called 'Young Buffalo' who we had first heard at Thacker Mountain Radio Show but ended up not staying very long because all the cooking took it out of us...! We spent this weekend at our friend's house, was a great break from dorms and living in a house again was brilliant.

On Saturday morning after being greeted with coffee from our friend Steve we hit the road and headed off to Jackson for the day. Jackson City is the capital and the most populous city of Mississippi. The 2000 census recorded Jackson's population at 184,256 but we saw very few of these people on our whistlestop tour. It took us three hours by car to get to Jackson after we stopped at a gas station to do the Hokey Cokey and drink my first Mountain Dew (it's amazing!). We headed to Clinton on the outskirts of Jackson and met a friend there who became our tour guide for the day. We visited the capital building and other sites in and around town, we did a bit of shopping at the Mall in Jackson and met some others for dinner in the evening at Mugshots... this restaurant was set up by some of the fraternity brothers of the people we were with and is famous for hamburgers...Ruth, being the adventurous type went for a peanut butter burger and apparently it's fantastic! The journey home from Jackson was rather uneventful apart from the mass amounts of deer that we kept driving past and for some reason I missed every single one of them, much to my disappointment!

On Sunday we visited College Hill Presbyterian where they had a guest speaker, a missionary to Columbia. I really enjoyed the service and what he had to say. In the evening we went to the women's bible study at First Baptist again and loved our time there. This has been a great way to not only meet people our age but older and younger people too.

When it rains in Oxford...it really rains...and so our beautiful weekend was brought quickly to an end by the storm that came on Sunday night...I have never seen it rain so hard!

(Brenna and Hayley...)