What's Mississippi Like?

Having lived in Massachusetts for most of life, the landscape and culture of the South have been somewhat of a shock to me. Although I did live in Alabama for about 9 months (when I was seven), and have visited relatives their throughout my life, my experiences living in Mississippi now are vastly different from previous experiences. Why? Well for one, I actually live here now (kinda, I technically live in Memphis), but when you live in a place (as an adult) you view it differently than when you’re simply visiting or or on vacation. Living in the south, i’ve found some things that i really enjoy, and others which are mildly to severely disconcerting. I’ll start with the disconcerting parts.

Things I Still Haven’t Adjusted To...

The politics: This isn’t as much of a problem as it is a shock. Seeing republican ads and commercials against Nancy Pelosi are not exactly common in the Northeast, but my apartment isn’t the only place where i notice the political change. Since i teach about early civilizations in the middle east, the discussion of Iraq has come up more than once. Although, I’m happy about the fact that they at least know what Iraq is, some of the opinions and information they have about that part of the world have been truly shocking to hear. Not just because of what they say, but because of how young they are. Having a 7th grader tell me that Iraqis kill all christians as a justification for the war, was not something I was expecting.
On a similar note, its also been really interesting to see how religion comes through in the classroom. In the northeast, unless you go to a catholic or christian school, religion does not really play out in the classroom. Here, that is far from the case. When teaching about the world’s earliest people, I had a lot of questions about “that evolution stuff”. Many times I had students ask, “so where were adam and eve??”. When I told some of the students that I did believe in evolution they were stunned, even more so when I told them that I had learned about it in school. At times, however, religion has been extremely helpful since it familiarizes my students with the part of the world we’re currently studying, and can also be used to distinguish different parts of the world from one another. For instance during a lesson on regions, i distinguished the South (of the U.S.) from the Northeast by comparing how religious people were.

Things That I Thoroughly Enjoy...
1. How friendly everyone is. The north really is a cold place. Here, people just speak to you even when they don’t know you, and many-a-time I’ve found myself giving out my personal information to people I’ve known for minutes. The only problem with people being so nice is that it makes it really hard to tell when people (old men) are hitting on me.

2. I didn’t really love the sweltering August heat, but its kind of nice that it still feels like summer in September. Although, I am DYING to see what a "snow day " will be like here.

Overall though, I like it here. It's definitely very "low-key", but I'm really enjoying being in a new environment and learning more about Southern culture.