Getting Grouped

We talk about "regrouping" often. You know, that time you take on a sunny Saturday or Sunday afternoon where you go through all of your stuff and make new, different piles from old piles, clean up a bit, organize here and there, and prepare yourself mentally to start fresh the next time a notable "start" comes along? Yeah, getting regrouped.

Well, I sort of consider the past three weeks my opportunity to get "grouped." There's no re-doing about it; everything this year is from scratch. We have begun a new school with a new group of students in a new building; I'm coming off of a leisurely year abroad doing entertaining but only occasional work into a job working from 7:45-4 + extracurriculars. I hope to help sponsor a student-led theatre club at the 9th grade school where I work once a week, we are about to begin work on Shakespeare's As You Like It, and I'm still considering what holiday show to produce, I would like to get a French Club and a Forensics team up and running, as well as teaching (and grading) 6 90-minute classes every two days.

As someone who grew up on a 50-minute, 7-class-a-day schedule, 90 minutes is a long time to be in class. There are times when I find myself looking around wondering why these people are still here. If they would just GO AWAY I could teach someone else something different.

Only kidding.

Honestly, the block system works wonderfully for my theatre courses. It lets us explore concepts that in a 50-minute class would require two days: one for lecture/explanation and one for play. Being able to roll both factors into one course allows work to make sense more quickly, and therefore we are able to spend more time playing and less time focused on studying pieces of paper.

French, on the other hand, is a difficult class to have for 90 minutes. While language learning necessitates human interaction, it also requires a considerable bit of bookwork. You have to learn the vocabulary and the grammar the paper way, but you can't get them all the way into your head without conversing. It's quite a task to provide up-and-about activities that incorporate how to conjugate "être" in the present tense.

So, I'm almost grouped, three weeks into school. It's quite a task, this getting grouped. Continue to wish me luck. It's been helpful.

Englishman Stateside

So, before my leaving France to return to the States, my hallmate, Chris, ordered tickets to Lollapalooza, a music festival in Chicago the first weekend in August. That'd be now. Because he had never been to the US, he decided to spend several weeks over here, going places and seeing people that he had known in Aix. Because I start school Tuesday, it was important that he come down south early, so on July 27 at a ridiculously late time in the evening, Chris caught the Megabus in Chicago and began a trek to Memphis, TN. 

So, I've grown up in the South. I am accustomed to our particular brand of diversity, and I understand that "diversity" occasionally means homogeny of non-white individuals. I think that the trip from Memphis to Chicago was eye-opening, since the other three white people got off the bus in Champaign, Illinois at 3 a.m.

I picked him up from the Memphis bus station at around 9:15 on Thursday morning, and we went to visit Graceland, the home Elvis bought when he was 21 and kept until well after his death. (As in, he still has it, sort of.) We spent several hours wandering the grounds before making our way back to Memphis to eat lunch at the Rendezvous. The hostess at the (very full) Rendezvous told us that they didn't open until 4 p.m., but that they served ribs and coleslaw and beans at lunch. It was tasty.

The events that followed set us up for one of the most bizarre occurrences I've ever seen. I decided that it would be neat to go to the Peabody hotel and see the (famous) ducks, and, being not particularly familiar with Memphis and having every place in the general vicinity labelled "Peabody" slowed our finding of the ducks considerably. However, after some time, we had success, saw live ducks in the fountain (although it wasn't marching time), and headed back to the parking garage to find our car and head to Oxford. 

Now, as I mentioned already, there was an excess of "Peabody." I knew that we had parked in a garage in the Peabody complex, and I wasn't really aware that there was more than one. So, we left the Peabody hotel and the ducks and headed for the parking garage. When we got into the garage, it took me about 30 seconds and 10 feet or so of walking to realize that no, in fact, we had not parked in THIS garage, we must've parked elsewhere. In the same 30 seconds, a group of Memphis denizens arrived in the lot and headed to their car.

Now, when you're in a strange place and you see someone you think you might know, there's often an awkward moment where you look at them and they look at you and if you actually know them one or the other of you goes, "Lauren...?"

Well, if I were in a Memphis parking garage and I happened to run into someone I knew, I would be surprised, but not in complete shock and denial. I live in the south. I'm used to running into people I know in strange places.

However, if you're from England, and you're in the wrong parking lot in Memphis, and you got there at this certain time because you got lost trying to find the Peabody ducks, and YOU run into someone you know, someone who used to live with a friend of yours in England who you may or may not have known was working for St. Jude hospital in Memphis, you are likely to spend the rest of your time ini the area in complete shock and awe.

That's what happened. 

After Chris and his English friend had a short conversation, and after the friends of Chris's friends directed us to the correct parking lot, we finally left and found the car. The rest of the day was spent in complete befuddlement to the odds of encountering this acquaintance in the wrong parking lot in Memphis. The chances MUST have been less than one in several hundred thousand.

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When we left Memphis, we drove down I55 to Batesville and over to Oxford, where we made a blitz tour, saw Caitlin, had yogurt, drove through campus and past Faulkner's grave, and headed back down 55 to Jackson. Thursday evening with a still-recovering-from-jet-lag Chris, we went to the Cock of the Walk and ate a pretty good fried dinner.  (True southern experiences are based entirely around delicious food.)

 

After a good night's sleep Thursday, we got up and drove to Vicksburg Friday morning to meet Jason for lunch. Because we arrived a bit before Jason was ready to go eat, we drove through Battlefield park and looked at the Civil War monuments there. I was surprised to learn that the vast majority of monuments in Battlefield park are dedicated to Union soldiers rather than those from the Confederacy. 

This monument was to Minnesota soldiers, if I remember correctly.

It was really hot and really humid, and we were glad to get back into the car with the Air conditioner on full-blast. 

We left the park at the wrong exit and drove through downtown Vicksburg. Eventually, we ended up at a place where Jason could find us, and he picked us up to go to the Tomato Place for lunch. The Tomato Place is a combination produce stand/burger joint on Highway 61 South. They have the best smoothies I have ever had, and their burger is pretty good, too. 

Friday night, Jason, Chris, Mom, Dad, and I went to Walker's Drive-In for dinner. Walker's is an upscale restaurant in Fondren, the "hip" part of Jackson, and dinner was fantastic. Mom, Dad, and I each had the Filet, Chris had something with crabmeat on it, and Jason had lamb. There were no complaints.

Friday night, Jason, Chris, and I went to my grandparents' house and shot several rounds of pool. I pretty much dominated, but they wouldn't like me to say that.

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We spent Saturday at Jason's land in the country. Jason drove, and Chris, my cousin Adam and I went. We met Jason's dad and younger brother there, too. It is fortunate that his cabin is air conditioned, because I believe that the outside temperature got to be several degrees over 100 (F). We hung out inside during the hottest part of the day, and we watched the third Harry Potter movie on the projector screen, which was pretty nifty. Jason threw a 12 lb. brisket on the smoker, which was more than enough for dinner. (It was delicious, too.)

Once it got cool enough to go outside, Jason drove and the three of us took the 4-wheeler around their land. Later we shot clay pigeons with a shotgun (I hit one!) and targets with a revolver.

After dinner we tried to go fishing, but Jason's reel broke and the one Chris was using got tangled. We saw a beautiful sunset and headed back inside. We would've left then, but earlier we had started the last Lord of the Rings movie, and we had to watch it through to the end.

The sky as we were leaving lacked a moon, and the stars were some of the brightest I've ever seen. Nighttime in the country is breathtaking.

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Unfortunately, Jason had to leave Sunday to go down to Louisiana for work, so he couldn't accompany us on any more of our adventures.

Sunday morning, Mom, Dad, Chris and I woke up reasonably early and drove to New Orleans. On the way into town, we stopped at a Bavarian bakery for breakfast pastries. When we got to New Orleans, we parked in a garage with a neat view of downtown.

Downtown New Orleans

We ate at the Palace Café, one of the Brennan's restaurants (I told you we were food-centric), walked down Bourbon street, around Jackson Square, into Jax Brewery for a drink, and eventually on to Café du Monde for beignets and coffee. By the way, drinking coffee in New Orleans in the middle of the day on the last day of July is ridiculous. Just throwing that out there.

After having beignets, we walked back to our car (in the right garage this time, without any twilight-zone-scary encounters) and toured the Garden District in the comfort of an air conditioned automobile. We were fancy.

For dinner, we stopped at Middendorf's for stuffed crab and gumbo. You really can't beat the food. 

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Monday was Chris's last day in town. Grandma and Popaw treated several of us to lunch at Nick's, which was delicious. (Grandma, Popaw, and I all had shrimp and grits, Chris had some sort of tenderloin, I don't remember what anybody else had.) After lunch, Grandma and Popaw drove us around downtown and showed us places to see.

After lunch, we went back by my parents' house to pick up things, and we headed to Memphis to catch the 11:15 p.m. bus back to Chicago. For dinner, we went to the Flying Saucer beer emporium, and after enjoying a couple of pints (I had pear cider+framboise; I still don't care for beer), we made the tour of Beale street.

Because I had misplanned the time it took to get to Memphis (I'd allotted four hours instead of three, which I later determined was because it's 2.5h to Oxford and 1.5h from Oxford to Memphis. The extra hour was the trip from Batesville to Oxford and back. Oops.), we had an extra hour to kill before the bus arrived. We drove to Southaven and wandered around Walmart for half an hour and drove back to Memphis. 

I dropped my English friend off among a very "diverse" crowd late at night in a questionable part of Memphis and left for Oxford. It was "half twelve" when I arrived at Caitlin's, and I quickly zonked out in her guest room. 

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I am fortunate to have such wonderful friends. You are always welcome in my home (although we might have to get you to sleep at my parents' home so that you will have a bed and not a couch). 

Beginning on Tuesday, I will have students in my classroom and chaos will almost certainly begin. Perhaps this will become a place to chronicle the darndest things my kids will say, or perhaps it will sit idle for months to come. Either way, I wish you the best.