I've been rather behind on this! Everything got very busy all of a sudden... here is a rundown on different occurrences in my life

St Patricks Day
America with its Irish pride takes this day very seriously. I've never actually ever celebrated it before this year (even though I'm a quarter Irish) but I joined some friends for the occasion, donned some green and drank some beer in a couple of pubs. We also went to the Irish-Italian festival at the St Thomas Aquinas church, which hosted a lot of food stalls, music and fun stuff: it was so busy and had a good atmosphere. It was interesting in that it was attended by hundreds of people not members of the church- in England, it's incredibly unlikely any event would have such high attendees from people who are not members of that doctrine. Some of my friends that I went with who have had a Baptist upbringing thought it was really crazy to have alcohol served at a church event which also made me smile. There's more info on the link above

Assignments Galore
I've had so much work this past week and a half, the end of the semester is really starting to impend with assignments coming at me from every angle.. but I'm really not looking forward to the next 6 weeks passing, even if it does mean I'm free from work. I'm still having the best time here!

Exploring more of Hattiesburg
Even though the town is very small I've still found there's different places to explore. This past week I went to Hattiesburg Zoo, which was actually a pretty cute little zoo. I looked a bit like a plum when I pointed in the water and very excitedly said 'Oh wow! Look turtles!' to which the person I was with replied 'Oh, they're wild... they don't even put them there, they just appear' haha. We also went to T-Bones which is a pretty cool record store cafe, it also hosts comedy nights and gigs.

this monkey looks pretty sad but he did smile at us

Claire turned 21
So we went to some bars and had a party. It turned out to be a French themed party, with Anna and Tanja creating berets out of paper plates, foreign language music and a lot of guys drawing slim mustaches on. Sybs also baked a rather incredible olive and ham bread/cake thing.

Anna being French

Onions et wine

apparently French people don't hug but they aren't all French

So things are well!

Spring Break

A much needed holiday came this week. My brain had given up working a fortnight ago and I got pneumonia so my body was pretty shoddy, a trip away was definitely required!

The French girls (Sybs et Claire), the German girls (Tanja und Anna) and I rented a car and headed to Texas. You see some interesting sites on the road and we passed through a couple of odd small towns. We also encountered a lot of police cars at one point, then discovered later that two convicts had escaped from jail! Ahhh!

Our first stop was in Houston, which turned out to be rather boring! It was raining buckets and everything was closed.. the only people we encountered were homeless or groups of high school girls dressed in sports clothes presumably traveling to play in some tournament. The main problem was finding the epicentre of things and I wondered if the city shut down at the weekend like the financial areas of London do? Either that or it was a city that came alive at night (vampires...?)

one of the very few pictures I took in Houston

We did go to a very large mall in Houston, where we were dry! It was the largest mall in Texas but full of the more up price, high end market shops... my mother will be pleased to find I didn't buy a load of clothes! I did purchase a Lego storm trooper keyring though

 I think it was good that we went to Houston first and I think the weather really effected our opinion of it. I did expect more spaceships...

Then we headed to Corpus Christi, which was BEAUTIFUL! When we arrived we wandered along the harbor outside our motel, then found a restaurant (called the Railway restaurant? I'm not sure) where I ate the most wonderfully fresh shrimp salad. The weather was wonderful

Corpus Christi had a very different atmosphere to the rest of Texas, like most beach towns it's more relaxed and it had many art galleries and museums.

The next day we explored the beaches, firstly the city beach named 'McGee' which was nice but when some clouds came we decided to drive half an hour to Mustang Island and explore the beaches there. We soon found where the stereotypical spring break was happening... you can drive your car (and park it) along the beach (which felt weird) and we drove past many partying youths, wearing neon, blasting RnB from their trucks. It was a very weird, very American site to see and as the majority of them looked under 18, it made us uncomfortable and we drove on, parked and laid in the sun.

parachuters

There were many souvenir shops with a giant shark entrance. I think more shops need giant shark entrances in England

We were going to break our journey up in two on the way home but ended up just driving the full 11 hours, which must have worn Tanja and Claire (our drivers) out but they're troopers!

So this week is turning out to be quite interesting. Saturday night we went to a party where 4 police cars turned up to break before it was even 11pm due to a noise complaint. Cops busting a party is a cliche! It was a pretty calm gathering and considering it was a Saturday night, not actually that late and in a student apartment complex, I was a bit miffed. British culture maybe very reserved and unemotional but greater allowances are made for people having fun.

Sunday, I went to a baseball game. I much prefer fast paced sports to the stop/start routine of American Football and the organ music makes me giggle. Southern Miss won against Troy- I'm not sure who Troy are or where they come from but woohoo! VICTORY!

Monday, I received an email from Keele University warning of toxic bead bracelets made from seeds that have a similar chemical structure to a warfare agent and thought 'cripes!'. Then a couple of hours later I received an email from USM warning of a bank robber roaming on campus... confirming that everything really is always bigger, brighter and more dramatic in the states. It transpired into a bit of a joke with a mock twitter page created, a collection of very precise details about the robber emailed out and I found it hard not to laugh when a policeman came into the library with a piece of paper I can only presume had a description of the criminal, holding it in the air as he looked at people. The man got caught after a 'foot chase'.

Wednesday I went to a basketball game. The stadium was pretty empty as a Greek (sorority/frat, not the nation) event was taking place, but it was a good game and we won again! Apparantly it's the most successful season whilst being in Division 1 that USM has had to date.

So that's my week so far...