By Sidney Dills, Diversions Editor
You may think that being stuck on campus during May or for the summer is going to be a drag. Without many of your friends on campus, you sigh, there won’t be anything to do.
You are mistaken.
Greenville has plenty of activities to keep you entertained both day and night, with friends or alone. The free time between classes and research will provide ample time to explore the more time consuming activities in Greenville that you did not have time for during the regular school year.
Heritage Green, a 10 to 15 minute drive from Furman, is a cultural complex featuring the Children’s Museum, three art museums, and the Hughes Library.
The Children’s Museum, although seemingly for just a younger crowd, can allow you to reminisce on your childhood with a younger family member with fun interactive exhibits. The featured exhibits are designed to introduce children to art, humanities, sciences, health, nutrition, and the environment. Take the Light Waves Ahead exhibit, for example, is a place where you and your younger sibling can learn about how light reflects and refracts and the use of lenses, and create art with the “light lab” tools provided.
The three art museums in the Heritage Green complex provide ample opportunity to explore different styles of art from both local and non-local areas. One of these art museums is the Bob Jones Museum and Art Gallery. The Old Master Painting collection on display features furniture, sculptures, paintings, and tapestries from the 14th-19th century periods. The Bowen Collection of Antiquities has artifacts spanning 37 centuries of Egyptian, Roman, and Hebrew cultures.
The Hughes Library is often overlooked by students. Students can get a free library card for the Greenville County library system here and check out the numerous books that are offered. There is a limit of checking out 50 books at one time, 10 DVDs, 10 CDs, and two magazines. Along with the huge selection that the library system offers to check out, there is a number of reference books. While checking out books here and passing the time reading in an Eno by the lake is a great way to relax, having a Greenville library card can also be useful for when the Furman library does not have all the reference materials you need for a paper during the year.
Another place to visit is the Greenville Zoo. The Greenville Zoo has elephants, giraffes, a monkey exhibit, reptile house, and, my favorite places, the alligator and barn exhibit. In the barn exhibit, one can pet the potbellied pigs, goats, and classic brown cows. The giraffe exhibits houses a family of giraffes. At the moment, the baby of the family is one-year-old Kiko, but a new addition to the family is expected to arrive this summer.
If you enjoy spectator sports and eating classic hot dogs and Cracker Jacks, then consider attending a Greenville Drive baseball game at Fluor Field. The team is Red Sox affiliated. There are home games to attend every week all summer and the full schedule can be found at http://greenville.drive.milb.com/.
The city of Greenville offers various street-side activities during the summer. During May, Moonlight Movies can be seen in Falls Park on Wednesday nights. Live music can be seen three different days of the week throughout June, July, and August. On Wednesdays concerts are held on the TD Stage at the Peace Center. Downtown Alive happens every Thursday night. This free event includes live entertainment varying from blues to funk bands right on the downtown strip. It’s a great way to relax with a beer and enjoy music. On Fridays there is also live music, featuring various styles of music at The Hyatt. All of these events are outdoors and free of charge.
Finally, for those interested in ghost stories or the paranormal, Greenville can offer you some places to check out late at night for some possible frights. There is a children’s graveyard behind the gas station near Furman. People are reported to have heard laughter and running sounds as well as seen lights in this area. Another spot, Route 107, is where a man crashed his plane in the 1950s. On dark, rainy nights people have seen a figure walking on the route and then disappearing.
