Scouting

Yesterday, Greenwood had their first ever ladies' soccer [sic] matches. I gave up my afternoon to cheer them on, and since I help coach at Parkview, I utilised the opportunity to take some tactical notes.

Instead of being lavished with thanks for giving my support, today in class I was accosted mafia style by three ungrateful players and accused of spying! It was thanks to the photo (above right) which was posted by one of the girls' parents with an incriminating caption. The fact that they lost both (JV & V)* matches 1-2 and 0-2 respectively may go someway to accounting for their appalling manners!

*JV = Junior Varsity = Reserve team
V = Varsity = First team

Spring break

For all the warnings I received from Missouri folk about the weirdos to avoid in the south, my experience was instead of warmth, good manners, and wonderful hospitality. The blue line on the map shows the way I went to Gulf Shores, and the red line shows the route home.

Tennis and surfing were the main activities at Gulf Shores. On the way home we experienced turnip greens, field peas, fried chicken livers, catfish and all manners of vegetables cooked in lard at a wonderful family restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi. The Mississippi river really is the most impressively large river I've ever seen.

The Lee family from Fayetteville, Arkansas extended most generous hospitality toward myself and Jong Jin, a Korean exchange student. The whole spring break was spent being part of their family.

Pi day

I neglected to inform you all that my first day at Greenwood was Pi day, a day in honour of mathematics' most celebrated number; a day involving maths games and umpteen varieties of pies for shared consumption. I'd never heard of this concept, but all of the American schools seem to observe the occasion. Why March 14? Well, Americans write their date with the month followed by the day, so instead of being 14.3.2007, it's 3.14.2007. And if we leave out the year, we're left with 3.14, which of course is Pi, correct to two decimal places!

Greenwood

Having completed my first eight weeks of student teaching, today I began my second eight week block. The first was solely physical education; the second will be solely mathematics. Over here the mathematics classes are separated by topic, so rather than teaching specialist maths, maths methods and general maths, I'll be teaching geometry, statistics and calculus.

Unlike Parkview High School, Greenwood Laboratory School is small, independent, and affiliated with Missouri State University. It's also only one minute's walking distance from where I live.

Eerie sirens

Several tornado drills were run around Springfield today, and the sirens got another chance to stir up some disturbing feelings. It's weird hearing sirens sounding a long way off, then hearing closer sirens firing up, until the massive siren on campus awakens. For me, a really creepy, ominous feeling accompanies the blustery wind and urgently screaming sirens, as they signal an unstoppable oncoming force. I'm not looking forward to the real thing.

Clean up

This Saturday, some friends and I took an afternoon excursion around Springfield, stopping at two different locations to clean up three different yards. Although the infamous ice storm struck over two months ago, many people still have branches down all over their properties.

Apparently there's a list of people who need their yards cleaned and volunteers can call the appropriate people to get in touch with those who need help, which is what our group leaders did.

The photographs depict, from top to bottom:

1. Evidence that I was present, if not technically working at the time the picture was taken.

2. Bird's eye view of Mark (AUS) and Robbie (USA) on the job at the messiest yard we cleaned.

3. Led by Andrew, the boys go to great lengths to find adventure and rid the roofs of fallen branches.

4. The team proudly sitting in front of the pile of wood extracted from one backyard.

Air raid

I was partially awoken last night at 4.30am by what sounded like a really bad accident. From my deep sleep I heard the siren of a fire truck, then another, and yet another. The next siren I presumed to be the ambulance. Right before I woke up properly, I remember thinking that it must be pretty serious. Upon finally snapping out of my deep sleep, I realised that the sirens did not belong to any mobile vehicles and were in fact identical to those that sound at home when there's a fire somewhere.

A quick glance out the window added weight to my growing suspicions - the scattered lightening and rain soaked campus suggested the sirens were warning of tornadoes. "Those are tornado sirens!" Our neighbour and floor residential assistant John Chiles confirmed, before setting off to bang on all the doors in our floor, sending people to the bottom of the building to take shelter. Woods house is not at all well equipped for tornadoes; in addition to having no basement, large windows adorn half of the bottom floor.

Having arrived too late to get a place on the bottom two floors, the rest of us were sent to the third floor, where we sat as the wind and on-campus sirens howled. A few tough jock (in their own eyes only) boys sitting near me kept making jokes and talking tough in a failed attempt to convince everyone they weren't worried. Some girls joined in with selfish whining about going to the vending machine, and in the background a television newsman said something about "observed rotation" in the storm system.

After a tensive 45 minutes, the sirens ceased and we all headed back to bed, not without some expected 'smart' remarks like "oh, do we have to?" from the town toughs. The morning news revealed that although no tornadoes actually touched down over the Springfield metro area, there was a threatening twister above the city which caused the alarm. Elsewhere in Missouri, a seven year old girl died and her family were injured when a tornado struck their mobile home. The season has begun.