Prior to doing Teach For America, if anyone was talking about "The Delta," I probably thought the conversation was about a hot sorority girl. But in the spring of 2009, one of my best friends got the news that she was accepted to Teach For America and would be placed in Mississippi. And thus, the word "Delta" took on a whole new meaning.The Shana Fisher that I knew in college was a Staten-Island girl who I never thought could survive in the deep south. I remember my Dad and I giving her a lesson in the finer points of rural life: shooting guns, drinking beer, talking about Jesus. (see: EASTER 2009) Now the tables have turned and she's a country-life expert! After 2 years of crazy stories, I knew I had to come visit her before our time in Teach For America came to a close.
Where to begin describing this wild weekend? It was nothing short of a culture shock. My first surprise: brown tap water. "It's brown and slimy," Shana explained, "But we put it through the Brita." I pulled out the Brita. "Shana, it's still brown!" I was dumbfounded. "Yeah, but the Brita gets rid of the slimy," she said. "It's fine!!"
The next morning I planned to accompany Shana to school. I was dying to compare my teaching experience to hers and see what her students were like. "I can't wait to see if you understand them," she said. I wondered how bad it could be- how different could these students sound from my students?
I walked into the classroom in the 300-person, decrepit highschool. "Hoo-da-ee!" The kids pointed at me. "Hoo-da-ee?!"
I had no idea what they were saying. Shana had to explain... "Hoo-da-ee?" = "Who that is?" The southern drawl was unreal!
Thankfully, Shana is a Spanish teacher...so we switched to a language all of us could understand and began interviewing one another in Spanish. I loved it!
After school, we drove to a local "restaurant," called "Chucks." It was a dairy-bar, order at the counter kind of place, where nothing was more than $5. Shana introduced me to heaven on earth: Corn-nuggets. They were deep fried balls of creamed corn and I can't explain how amazing they were. The corn nuggets were just a small sample of the mounds of fried food I ate that weekend. Doughnuts, chicken, catfish, hush puppies, french fries, more doughnuts, and as much beer to wash it down as you could want.
Mississippi was a beautiful place in its own way. It's very flat and there's not much to see, but the sky was so enormous! Shana lives on a farm next to a river. We spent a lot of our time outside partaking in all sorts of joyful southern activities: searching for alligators, climbing grain bins, riding horses, and of course shooting guns. All of Shana's neighbors, including her landlord and his family, came by to chat with us about life in the Delta and enjoy the beautiful day.
The conclusion of the trip was a fish-fry dinner with some of her Delta friends followed by an evening at "The waterin hole" - the only "bar" for miles and miles. I'm fairly certain there were more confederate flags in this bar than full sets of teeth, but everyone from the surrounding towns comes in to hear some live music, have some beer, and cause a whole lot of small-town drama.There's so much more I could say about the weekend there but a blog entry could never do it justice. I think Shana and her friends should work on a book about life down there- it's a whole different world that us east-coasters can hardly imagine. Cheers to life's great adventures!
Going to Massachusetts to finish out vacation at home. Peace and love!
