A week of tours

Hey guys,

(Apologies for this post being later than usual, it’s been a bit hectic!)

This week was not as eventful as usual, but I still had some fun! The week started off with getting to visit some athletic facilities, and ended with a day trip to Huntsville, Alabama! So this was a week of tours.

Monday 7 October

I spent most of today watching Netflix, stopping for a bit to go and grab Georgia and I some Papa John’s for lunch, and to do a bit of studying. I don’t have any tests or assessments due for a few weeks so I’m trying to get ahead.

Today’s sports journalism class was a special one – we were getting a tour of several of the campus’ athletic facilities! The tour started at the Gillom Center, which houses 4 of Ole Miss’ female sporting teams: Soccer, Softball, Volleyball and Rifle. Gillom is the home of all of these teams’ offices, training and rehabilitation facilities, locker rooms and lecture theatres, as well as being the venue for the volleyball arena (which consists of 2 courts). Gillom was reconstructed only 2 years ago, so the facilities inside are super modern and extensive. It was great to hear about the renovation process from the woman who fought so hard to make this facility for women so great (my professor for this class, Lynette Johnson. She’s high up in the athletics department). We even got to walk through the doors where the soccer girls run out onto the field from at every home game (because the soccer field backs onto Gillom). The softball complex is across the road, and the rifle range is in town, so generally Gillom is a one-stop-shop for all of these female athletes.

We then walked across the road and toured the Tuohy Center, which is the men’s and women’s basketball teams’ training facility. It’s named after Sean Tuohy, a former Ole Miss basketball player whose family is the focus of the movie The Blind Side. The building is essentially divided in half by a hallway running down the middle, with each team having one side, both with identical facilities. They each have a gym, locker room, lecture theatre, common room, offices, and double-sized basketball court. These facilities were also very swanky and new, as the building was opened in 2010.

We then walked back to Gillom to get into our cars and drive over to The Pavilion. I rode, since I don’t have a car, and I went to go and grab my bike. Luckily, though, my professor saw me and asked if I wanted a lift and offered to bring me back to get my bike later. So much better!

When we got to The Pavilion, Ole Miss’ very new basketball stadium (completed 2016), we took some elevators down to a premium club area where all the VIPs hang out on a game day. It was a very lush and large dining/function room, covered in red velvet carpet, windows looking out onto the court, and a buffet bench. We then walked out the back to see the loading dock area, and the walked down a corridor to see the locker rooms and laundry facilities. After this, we actually got to walk onto the basketball court and see the whole stadium from there. It was HUGE! The stadium fits nearly 10,000 people. The jumbotron (the big square screen on the roof of a basketball centre) was massive, too. I can’t wait for basketball season, which starts next month!

(The only footage I got from the tour. No one else was taking any photos so it felt a little inappropriate. However, I got this subpar video when we were walking across the basketball stadium)

The tour finished here and my professor drove me back to my bike, and I rode back home from Gillom. Vera and I went and grabbed dinner, and then I sat with some Netflix for the rest of the night.

Tuesday 8 October

This morning was freezing! I mean, it wasn’t THAT bad, but it was about 14 degrees, which is half what it has been since I’ve been here. I don’t mind a bit of sweater weather; I just didn’t expect it this early (we were told it wouldn’t get cooler until November).

As per usual we rode to the Grill for lunch. Today was extra good because the pasta was delicious, they had catfish, and there were so many football boys to geez at.

Today’s classes weren’t anything particularly special.

After our last class of the night, we ran back to the dorms to get a lift to the Intramural fields on the other side of campus, because we were in a flag football team and had a game tonight. We had no idea of the rules or who was even in our team, but we went into it wanting to give it our best and have some fun. The game was good to begin with, and it was super easy to pick up the rules (they were the same rules as American football, except that instead of tackling, you pulled someone’s flag waistband off to stop play). However, as the game went on, the other players on our team were playing mostly amongst themselves and leaving Georgia and I out because we weren’t as evidently sporty as they all were. This felt us feeling quite left out and disheartened, considering we were actually trying.

The ride home was quiet because the others knew we were upset, but we made ourselves feel better with some Papa Johns.

Wednesday 9 October

This morning we rode to the grill for brunch, and then headed to Student Union to find a birthday present and card for Susanna as it was her birthday today and we were celebrating with her tonight. We ended up getting some earrings with the Ole Miss ‘M’ on them, and a card that we all signed. I spent the rest of the afternoon studying in Student Union before heading over to my class.

Today’s business negotiation class was… interesting. We’d got the grades for our midterm negotiation exercises back, and people were NOT happy. I walked in on several people bitching, and it got progressively worse. Our professor walks into a shit storm, and every student in the class is ready to say their piece. We spent 1h20m of the class discussing and arguing over the midterm grades. Personally I was happy with my 72%, considering this would be a great grade for me at home, but everyone was mad that they didn’t get an A. It was hard, though, because the grading was subjective because it was based on what our professor thought were good negotiated deals and there weren’t necessarily specific things we had to achieve to receive certain amounts of points. Additionally, our professor had told us that he was informed by the business faculty that he was only allowed to give 20% of the class an A (90-100%) and had to give at least 5% of the class a D (60-69%) or an F (0-59%). Everyone thought this was ridiculous, because how could it be fair that more than 20% of the class could have done A-level work, but not be allowed to receive an A because of a quota? One of the guys in the class emailed the business faculty during class, and he read out their response to us all, in which they denied that such a grading policy existed. Now our class was losing faith in our professor and getting angry that this was potentially his own grading principle. The class eventually cooled down after our professor agreed to talk to the faculty and find out what the actual grading policy was, and then a classmate put up pictures of her puppy on the projector to calm everyone down.

I raced back from class to get ready for Susanna’s birthday dinner, and then Ciara, Paula and I headed over to the bus stops to get the bus into the Square. We were going to Ajax Diner, the southern diner here in town that I went to in orientation week. We met Susanna, her roommate, Linda (German) and Franziska (German) there, and grabbed a table. I ended up getting the catfish again since I think it’s delicious, and had some mac and cheese on the side.

(Left to right: Ciara (Ireland), me, Susanna (Scotland), her roommate (Louisiana), Franziska (Germany), Linda (Germany), and Paula (Ecuador).

After dinner, we headed back to Susanna’s apartment at The Hub (an off-campus apartment complex) and got into some drinking. A whole bunch of other people who live at The Hub, as well as Georgia, Vera and CJ who all arrived from their late classes, joined us, and all of a sudden Susanna’s apartment was bustling with heaps of people. We spent the night playing drinking games, and eventually headed home around 1:30am.

(CJ, Paula, me, Ciara, Georgia)

(I got snapped digging into Susanna's birthday cake... oops)

(I found these meme shades and this was my look for most of the night. Never taking myself seriously lol)

Thursday 10 October

We hadn’t even had THAT big of a night last night, but Georgia and I were pretty whacked out by it. Thankfully our class was short and we spent most of the rest of the day napping and watching Netflix.

We decided to spice up the day a little by heading out for dinner to try a new place. We went to Tallahatchie Gourmet, a restaurant where our freshman friend Griff works.

I snapped a few pretty pics of the Square while we were there, just as the sun was starting to set. Oxford is so pretty!

We then rushed back to campus to get to the soccer match, and so Ciara could head to class. The soccer was fun, and CJ finally won herself a shirt so she was ecstatic (when something good happens for the Ole Miss team, promo guys will throw t-shirts into the crowd. CJ has always wanted to catch one).

The rest of the night was spent chilling.

Friday 11 October

Nothing particularly exciting happened today.

We played a few card games later that night, before half of us went to bed and the other half went out to party. I chose to go to bed early because some of us had an early wake up tomorrow for our little adventure.

Saturday 12 October

5:30am was the wake up time this morning, which was actually quite easy considering I hadn’t fallen asleep until after 2 and therefore hadn’t hit the deep part of my sleep yet. We gathered our things and headed out the front of our dorm, where we waited in the freezing cold (6 degrees Celsius) for the international advisors to rock up with the minibuses. We eventually jumped in the one being driven by Roc, one of the international advisors who is a legend and has so much Ole Miss spirit, and we headed off towards Huntsville, Alabama.

The drive was about 3.5 hours, during which I listened to music and tried to nap. We stopped halfway at a Walmart to grab some breakfast.

We eventually rocked up to the Huntsville Space Center at around 10am. We spent an hour and a half wandering around, looking at pieces of old space crafts that were on display. They were quite incredible. The centre also had several space-themed amusement rides, so we rode on one that was open at that time of the morning. At 11:30am we headed into the theatre (everyone there called it “thee-ay-ter” which was so annoying!) to watch a National Geographic documentary about the 1969 trip to the moon, which was enjoyable and interesting. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering and going on the other attraction rides which were super fun.

At around 3pm we headed a few blocks away to an outdoor shopping mall where we were let loose for a few hours. I was initially in a shopping mood and enjoyed browsing a few stores, but eventually got bored and sat in a store’s changing room charging my phone. At around 6pm, we grabbed some food from Starbucks and jumped back on the bus to head home. I’d eventually run out of steam and was ready to nap, which is what I did for most of the drive home. We eventually arrived back to campus around 10pm.

It had been a massive day, so I headed straight to bed.

Sunday 13 October

Today was a super chill day, spent almost entirely in bed. I was still recovering from the massive day I had yesterday, and caught up on a lot of sleep.

This week was yet another fun one in the books! Time’s going way too quick, so I’m trying to cram as much fun in as I can! See you next week!

- Emily xx