When I was reading a post about taking someone to the movies, something happened a couple of years ago suddenly hit me.

I used to drink Cokes and they had a competition where there was a code inside the bottle cap.You might win something so long as you went to a website and entered the code. I won some free Cokes. But what astonished and delighted me was the Grand Prize I won then.

The Grand Prize was free movies for a year. They pointed out that one movie a week was what free movies for a year meant. All of the tickets were valid (有效的) for one year from the day I received them. So I must use them in the following year. I used quite a few taking friends to movies we all wanted to see.

Then I donated 20 tickets (all I had left by that time) to the local Women’s Transition House. Women and children could go there when they want to avoid a bad situation in general and get help to make a new start.It was the best thing I did with the tickets.

My workplace team had decided to help people in need, so we collected donations for that particular New Year’s Day. I knew that the Women’s Transition House provided some childcare for the women so they could go for job interviews and things like that.

I put those tickets in a box and wrote a note on the outside. And I asked the Women’s Transition House staff to give movie tickets to women there over the holidays to have some fun to do, with or without their children, which made me really happy.

It began the moment I sat down: An immediate sense of strong kinship(亲切感)with the people who chose to spend one week of their summer vacation in the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of Mississippi. I had been looking forward to bonding with some like-minded people. I wasn’t disappointed. I immediately hit it off with two other students, and we spent the rest of our week focusing on what had brought us together: a love of writing.

Our instructors were two graduate students in the university, and the writing camp was strongly aimed at seeing what we could create from locating ourselves in new places. On the first day of the camp, we each were asked to choose a spot in the town square where we could write about our surroundings. We were told to focus on all of the senses but to prioritize hearing, taste, smell, and touch over sight. Throughout the week, we did similar exercises, finding inspiration in nature and in our own direct experiences.

In the writing camp, I received encouragement from our instructors to publish and to get involved in the writing community. Learning about our instructors’ writing processes with their current projects and about their experiences of publishing helped us catch sight of what our writing lives might look like in the future. In fact, because they encouraged us to start publishing something I started sending my work out. My first short story will go to press early next month.

My experience with the writing workshop was a big success, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. You will make lasting friendships there, be inspired by a green southern town with a literary history, and gain valuable writing experience. I hope this review will be helpful to those who are looking for a great writing workshop.

Which of these ingredients have you cooked with or eaten, wild rice, rabbits or roses? Actually, they were part of Native American cuisine in the past. Sean Sherman is a chef from the Oglala Lakota tribe, who is attempting something remarkable. Through his company and his restaurant, Sherman is bringing these ingredients back into the public eye.

Sean Sherman grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation. As a reservation kid, Sherman usually didn’t have access to high-quality or tasty food. His family relied on the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which meant canned goods, tasteless food, and powdered milk. After high school, Sherman started working for the Forest Service. As part of his job, he had to learn the names of the plants, which raised his curiosity about indigenous (本土的) plants and foods.

Sherman started doing lots of research on his own, and he started his company in 2014. A few years later, Sherman opened his restaurant Owamni, where he showed native ingredients and flavors. The most significant feature of the restaurant is the native ingredients, none of which is related to European civilizations.

The vibe in the restaurant is totally unique as well. There, a lot of people are really struck by it, because it’s not typical to be able to go someplace and see their native foods on the menu, see native people cooking the food and listen to native music. Therefore, it’s a wholly unique experience and it’s something that’s really special.

Native cuisine allows native people to explore their histories and cultures. It supports local businesses and comes with a host of health benefits. “We should have native restaurants in every city to show the diversity and flavors of all the different tribes across North America and thus have a future where native cuisine is more widespread, and ingredients are more familiar and well known,” Sherman explains.