torsdag 17 mars 2011

Alabama


So we’re finally here, at our goal, Alabama. Unfortunately there´s a thunderstorm going on right now, and we’ve heard that they are quite common in Alabama.

The name Alabama comes from a native American tribe. Alabama is unofficially named the Yellowhammer state, after the state bird.

The people are really nice here, and they´re not all rednecks. They do speak with a southern accent though, which we try not to laugh at.

Everyone seems to be christians, and they go to church on Sundays. That´s something we´re not familiar with, but it seems normal here. We´re not going to try It though. There are also lots of conservatives, which I´m not very happy about.

Alabama is the thirtieth largest state in the US, so it isn´t that big. The capital is Montgomery, but we´re going to Birmingham. It was funded in 1871. Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama with a population of about 230 000 people. A quarter of the population in Alabama lives in the Birmingham area. In the 1950s and 1960s Birmingham was a center of the civil right struggle for African-Americans
Nowadays Birmingham is the culture and entertainment capital of Alabama with several art galleries ant theatres. There´s also opera, ballet and orchestra companies, but that´s nothing we´re really interested in.
Birmingham doesn´t have any major league teams so we won´t go watching any games, which I´m happy about.

We didn´t really know what we could do here in Birmingham, so we downloaded the iphone app and found out more about the city. For example we read about the railroad park, the Birmingham Zoo and Alabama adventure theme park. 

Yesterday we had really great day. It was 24 degrees Celsius in march! We we´re really happy about that and we decided to go to the zoo
Birmingham zoo is Alabama’s most popular attraction, drawing more than 500,000 visitors annually. They got more than 750 animals in all kind from spider-monkeys to hippos. 

The animals were wonderful, especially the butterflies on their show. But we all thought that the snakes were pretty scary,.
Here, to the right, you can see a map of the zoo, like you can see there´s a part called “Trails of Africa” and that was a new grand opening attraction at the zoo.
Well it was a new part at the zoo and the most interesting. They had built up a whole landscape that looked like Africa, and you could see real elephants, zebras etc. It looked like Africa for real, we thought we were visiting Africa not Alabama. 
The best part, according to me, was all the endangered animals, they get saved from extinction.
So for fun we thought we all could say which animal we liked the most:
Hanna liked the kangaroos, Sophie liked the monkeys, Simon liked the lions and Julia liked the birds of all kind. 


Simon went out and spoke to the people who lived here in Alabama and most of them were students from the local universities and colleges. They all spoke well about Alabama and said that if you want to study in America, then Alabama is the right state for you. They also told us that there are some special rules in college, like a codex. Its sounds exactly like in the American teen movies.  According to us that sound kind of wrong, since were in the 21th century. Some people still have a higher status in the society, for example jocks and people with money. I need to point that it’s not the same now as it was for 20-30 years ago. At that time the black people had their own student corridors. So the racists aren’t that many as before, and that´s a big step to a better world.

Since we´ve already posted "Sweet home alabama", we´ll have to post another song.
Hanna chose "Alabama Song" since it´s sung by David Bowie



We'll see you all again soon! Love, Hanna, Sophia, Simon and Julia.

Ps. We were planning on posting a recording with us telling you about Orlando, but it wouldn´t work :( 

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