Washington DC

Weekend in DC visiting the sites from picture books!

I traveled to DC for the weekend to stay with Janey, Terry's sister in law. On the saturday I spent the say in the centre of DC seeing all the sights! I started in the National Art Gallery and then did a long circuit around the mall. Walked up to the State Capitol then down the other side of the lawn. Had my picture taken in front of the Washington Monument - that stereotypical image of America. It was the windiest day EVER and so so cold! After that i headed to the American History museum for some lunch and felt like everyone was looking at me because i was by myself. If anything, this trip made me realize how much i want someone to share my experiences with because its not fun enjoying things by yourself. 

After that i walked up to the White House and around the outside of it. The actual house is way smaller than i expected! It is definitely no Buckingham Palace!! I then headed up to the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial. It was all amazing and very cereal actually being stood in front of these monuments which i have studied for so long. 

That evening we went to the Kennedy Centre to watch a ballet performance. It was pretty special and lovely to experience. It was a recital which i had never experienced before. 

On the Sunday I went to Mount Vernon, George Washington's plantation and had a tour around his house and grounds. In the afternoon I mooched around the shops in Alexandria. It was comforting to hear so many British voices here. In Alabama I get over the top excited if I meet someone who is British (which has only happened twice) that i have not already met. In Alexandria every other group had an English accent in it and some of the shop owners were British. They even had mothers day things in the shops even though America doesn't have theirs until April! It was a beaut of a day and the Potomac River looked fabulous in the sunshine. 

On the monday I had a meeting with the photographic editor at the National Geographic Magazine in central DC. I felt very lucky to be able to have that opportunity and be shown around their offices and learn how everything functions. Overall DC was definitely a worth while trip and I seemed to pack in everything i wanted to do! I was very very tired in the week to come though because i had totally worn myself out.

Selma - Civil Rights Jubilee March

March 4th 2012 

March Over The Edmund Pettus Bridge

This was definitely a day i will remember for the rest of my life! It started very slowly and slightly traumatic. This was my birthday weekend and we had a tornado warning in Tuscaloosa on my actual birthday, therefore all my celebrations had to wait until the Saturday night. So the morning after I was a little worse for ware and was the only one insured to drive the car so we had to wait until the afternoon to drive to Selma. Five of us went on the trip, me, Anika, Angela, Amy and Sophie! None of us knew what to expect, all we knew was that a jubilee march was taking place across the Edmund Pettus bridge which had taken place every year since the march took place in the 60s. The atmosphere was very friendly and even though we were the extreme minority, no body seemed to be looking at us and we slowly just slid into the crowd. There were thousands of people congregating at the Martin Luther King Church to watch the pre march rally. We saw Martin Luther King III speak and Jessie Jackson which was amazing. Its a bit cereal to stand and watch these people speak in person when, for the last two years, I have been studying them through textbooks and journals in Leicester! 

The actual march took place after the rally and we walked the route that the original marchers took through down town Selma. The mixture of people that were there was pretty amazing. It was not just black people, there were white, young and old, Mexican, Asian, men and women. All people walking through the streets together. We turned the corner onto the straight road towards the Edmund Pettus Bridge and I nearly cried. It was a bit like being inside a history book. We walked up and over the bridge with everyone and spent a while taking in the atmosphere then walked back to the main street. There was a festival type celebration in the centre and it really felt like we were in a different country! The vivid images, I will remember forever. 

Atlanta - October 2011

I have been a bit lax with my blog over the last few months so I am going to continue on from where i left off. For Fall break in October, Anika and I had plans to go to the beach with a group of girls that had invited us along but unfortunately that fell through so we had to think of something else to do pretty swiftly because we found about not being able to go only two days before the start of the break! We were both very disappointed so we decided to do something just the two of us. Atlanta seemed to be somewhere we both wanted to go and turned out to be a great adventure. 

We rented a car and Ankia drove because i was still recovering from being in a car crash in Mississippi and wasn't quite ready to be behind a wheel just yet. The first impressions of Atlanta were very good! It was great driving up into the city with the high rise blocks all around (Tuscaloosa's buildings are very flat). When we arrived we had decided to go into the down town area and walk around for a bit before meeting Anika's family friends for dinner in Marietta. The only problem with this plan was that we are both students, therefore we never have cash on us and all the car parks were cash only. This was annoying but it got worse when Anika's iphone ran out of battery because we were using this as a gps! So all in all our first afternoon in Atlanta consisted of driving around for what seemed hours then sitting in starbucks charging Anikas phone for our journey to find where we were staying! 

The rest of the trip was great fun though! We did lots of touristy stuff like the behind the scenes tour of CNN, the Georgia Aquarium (biggest in the world), Martin Luther Kings historical center (birth place, Church etc) Little Five Points, The Olympic Park. I also had my first experience of the Cheese Cake Factory... AMAZING. I have never seen so many different flavors of cheesecake in one cabinet in my life! All in all it was a pretty amazing trip which we cobbled together at the last minute. So far this trip is my fourth state and my sixth city!

The Olympic Park

CNN - Very Cool!

They had five wale sharks swimming round in this tank, I felt quite sorry for them!

The Southern Religion That They Call American Football

Soo American Football... where do i start!! I have been to three games now against North Texas, Arkansas and Vanderbilt and they still dont cease to amaze me. Just the cheer excitement that takes place on campus the day of the game is unbelievable. Literally everyone is in Alabama colours from the pet dog to the tiny baby or the open top car or the motor bike passing on the road. All the students also majorly dress up. on an ordinary day every girl on campus wears an XXL tshirt with shorts and trainers but on game day this all changes and they all get their beautiful dresses out and their high heels.  Tailgating is a massive thing here, everyone  starts setting up tents on the quad the friday before the game and by the morning of game day everyone is out in force on the quad with their drinks, bbq food and mahoosive tvs to watch the lead up to the game and in the background you can hear the Million Dollar Band warming up, its pretty cool! There is also food stalls and fun fair rides for the kids. Its ridiculous, i cant quite compare it to anything we have in England. 

I find the actual game mega boring (but dont tell anyone i said that here because i will probably get shot!) I dont know if you are familiar with America Football but the game is made up of four quarters so technically it should be an hour with a half time but usually about four hours later we are still stood watching. Literally every two minutes they stop the clock for about ten minutes and the whole time is spent stood up!! The bit that i enjoy is the bits at the beginning and the middle when the million dollar band, cheerleaders and Crimsonettes do there thing. One thing that was an amazing site was the whole stadium.. every one hundred and eight thousand seats.. doing the wave around the stadium! One thing i forgot to mention is the seating for the students is all down one end but it is split into the greek section (sororities and fraternities) and the ordinary student section. This has been a subject of contention on campus since I have been here because it is a recently new thing. I dont think i agree with it because instead of segregating people on their race it is pretty much segregating people on their wealth and class. I dont know why they felt the need to split everyone up! There is an in joke within the Greeks that the normal students are called the GDI's standing for God Damn Independence because of all the fuss they are kicking up which is quite funny. We are yet to loose a game so everyone is hoping that Alabama gets to the national championships in New Orleans this year. Roll Tide!

Civil War Memorial

I have been told that the reason why everyone in the south is so fanatical about their football is because it is the south fighting back after the civil war, showing the north that they did not loose the civil war completely. The national championships usually end up being between a northern and a southern team and therefore the south see it as a way of winning against the north. Crazy.

Road Trip To Nashville and Memphis

2/9/2011 - 5/9/2011

Last weekend five of us went on a road trip to Nashville and Memphis, it was Labour Day on monday so we took the opportunity to get away for a few days! We ended up driving a massive minivan which had electric doors and an electric boot and all you had to do to drive it was move the stick from 'park' to 'drive', literally the laziest car i have ever been in! I got mega bored driving because all the roads were just straight wide roads which went on for hundreds of miles and all i had to do was keep my foot on the pedal and wiggle my foot around every so often to stop it seizing up from cramp! 

Nashville was amazing, such a cool atmosphere at night. Every bar on the main street had country bands playing and everyone was out to have a good time. The girls all wore cowboy boots with dresses and the guys all had their cowboy hats on. 

On the Sunday we got up early and drove to Memphis which was about a three hour drive. A storm had hit the south that day so we were driving in the pooring rain which wasnt so fun. We headed for Graceland, Elvis' home and paid $10 to park our car in the car park. After stepping into the lobby area we all realized it was about $35 to actually get in to the place so we decided that was a no no, a bit to expensive for a group of girls who are not huge fans of Elvis like some of the people were there. Nearly everyone had Elvis tshirts on! I did make sure i got an Elvis Graceland key ring before getting back in the car though, just to say i had at least seen the place! 

Graceland being to expensive was a bit of a blessing in disguise really because it gave us enough time to head to the national civil rights museum in Memphis. The museum is inside the motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated. It was such an amazing experience and we spent the whole afternoon there looking around. Quite a lot of the written information i had previously learned over the last few years but some of the original photographs and news tapes were really interesting. They  had also opened up the room where martin luther king stayed the day he was shot and on the balcony of the motel is a wreath in memory of him at the point on the balcony where he was shot. These sorts of places are pretty much the reason why i came to the south! 

On our way back on monday we drove to Jackson Mississippi to stop for some lunch before heading back to Tuscalloosa. We stopped at a diner to get some lunch (there is another rant about the food coming) I thought i would be healthy and get a salad and i specifically asked for the dressing on the side but no this didnt happen. Most of the other girls had burgers and sandwiches and when i got my salad i felt like they had the healthier option. My salad was drenched in about a liter of think yellow salad dressing, i could barely see the green of the salad leaves!! Seriouslyyyyy you literally cant buy anything healthy here if you eat out. I ended up sending it back because it made me feel sick just looking at it haha. 

But all in all it was an amazing memorable first road trip!

Nashville 2/9/2011 - 3/9/2011

Me driving the beast of a minivan!

We stopped on the way to Nashville for a Wendy's along with all the freaky
red neck truckers.

$10 a night each!

The car on the far left was our car! The motel looked like one of those freaky on the roadside
motels from the movies! Well i guess it kinda was a freaky on the roadside motel.

The Girls! From the left me, Amy, Jenna, Martina and Angela

Down Town Nashville