Magdalen Boat House:


On Thursday and Friday, we bumped again! Hooray! Both were pretty quick bumps. Wednesday was St. Peters II, then Regents Park on Thursday, and St. Catherine's II yesterday. Torpids is hilarious. A boat concedes if the coxswain puts their hand in the air. And there is tons of fowl play to get them to do so. Whenever we get close to another boat, Taz, our cox will tell us if we're half a boat length, quarter of a boat length, etc. away. And then the girls in our bow, which is closest to their boat start screaming "concede!" It just makes me laugh; I can't get myself to yell it. It's just silly. If they don't concede early enough, the chasing boat is allowed to hit their boat and try to damage it. Rosie, our captain, kept telling us to just whack their boats and they'll concede, but Magdalen never concedes because we're rich so we can buy new equipment. Hilarious. Yesterday, it was taking a little while for St. Catherine's to concede, and the girl in our bow, little Imogen, actually hit their cox in the back with her oar. I don't think Imo actually meant to, but we were so close, and she was still rowing, so it just happened. But that made them concede. And it's all perfectly legal.

W2 pushing off up the river.

Down the river:


We found out on Thursday that during the W1 race on Wednesday, a girl from a different college was flung out of her boat by catching a crab (improper rowing technique causes your blade to go too far under the water, so it's too strong to pull through, and your blade can get caught, so it pulls you out of the boat). On Thursday I managed to catch one. Sometimes they aren't bad, but I had to duck to get out of the way of my blade, and then it was parallel with the boat, and I was just like ummm now what? But I got it back and we bumped, so it was no big deal. At least I didn't fall in the river.

Thursday photos: http://www.bigblade-photos.com/rowing/events/2009/ot09/thursday/Magdalen%20W3.html

Thursday after our race, I was convinced to stay and be a marshall for the next two hours. That really sucked because I had an essay to write, and I ended up staying up late to finish it. But no matter. Marshalling was lame though. Basically, they just line about 15 people up the river with radios to make sure the coast is clear for the start of each Division. It was pretty boring, but I got to see some good rowing, so that was neat.

The rest of the Boat Houses:


Then yesterday, it was supposed to be a really long, tough race, so we were pumped full of adrenaline, and Rosie, who sits in front of me, fell off her seat during the start. She pushed back so hard that her butt was in the air and the seat rolled forward. She was so surprised and struggled to get her seat back. I had to concentrate so hard on rowing so that that wouldn't distract me. Hilarious. Then we bumped. These other crews must be terrible because we have made so many ridiculous mistakes. Everyone does though I guess.

Friday photos:
http://www.bigblade-photos.com/rowing/events/2009/ot09/friday/Magdalen%20W3.html

I didn't get to go to the Gordon Brown lecture on Friday because of racing. But I think it was worth it. Ryan went, so he'll have to tell me all about it. Amanda and I are missing a trip to Cambridge today. But, oh well. I am so happy to be a part of this team. It feels really great to be competing again. It's funny because even when I was on OWU's soccer team, I didn't really care if we won or lost, but now that I am really a part of it, I care about Magdalen a hell of a lot. It's fabulous.

Unfortunately, we didn't bump today. It was really sad. We thought that we were going to be chasing a really terrible crew, but it turns out we were chasing St. Peter's I, and they have been training for two hours every other day for the past few weeks. We hadn't even been in a boat with everyone before Sunday. So we still did really well. We got bumped by St. Catz III, which was lame, but then we were being chased by Trinity throughout the whole course, and they never caught us, which was awesome. How exhausting to have to row the entire course! When it had only been a few minutes, it wasn't bad. But to row as hard as you can for about eight minutes.. that is painful.

W3 from Left: Imogen, Amanda, Kaci, Me (duh), Rosie, Clare, Alice, and Ruth holding our coxswain, Taz. Love them. We're in rowing order.


We ate lunch at the Head of the River pub after our race today. It was nice to spend non-rowing time with the girls for once. I am so excited to spend next term here as well, because I feel like I'm finally starting to fit in and feel perfectly comfortable. Since this term has been amazing, I can't imagine how fabulous next term will be. I am so excited for punting and croquet and blooming flowers in the botanical gardens! I'll never want to come home.

Torpids dinner tonight! The entire boat club rents out a place to have a fancy meal. I haven't gotten all dolled up in a while, so that'll be fun.

Day 1 Photos...

http://www.bigblade-photos.com/displayimage.php?src=http://www.bigblade-photos.com/rowing/events/2009/ot09/wednesday/&im=OT09_02571

Again, keep hitting next. This was obviously after we had already bumped because were are laughing...

Pulling pants in my pidge in the plodge

Earlier in the week our coach, Dee, sent us all an e-mail to check our "pigeon holes" (mailboxes) in the porter's lodge (info station/magdalen welcome center) for a little surprise. When I took the envelope out of my pidge, one of the porters leans over the desk and says, "sorry, but if you can, will you tell me what's in there? all the rowing girls have been walking out with them, and i'm very curious". I opened it up, and pulling pants were inside. Aka: a thong with crossed oars on the front of it. So awkward and hilarious at the same time. We are going to wear them over our pants on Saturday, apparently? I don't know.

We had a water outing yesterday to work on our starts, and thank goodness, because it is a ridiculous set of strokes. Total chaos. It's basically to just get your boat going as fast as possible from rest, but it's awfully hard. Today was our first race of Torpids. Our start was atrocious. I splashed Rosie, the girl ahead of me, so much. But, we bumped in about a minute, so obviously the terrible start didn't matter. Very exciting stuff. Ben took time out of his paper writing to come cheer us on. Bless his heart. Sadly, we had bumped before he got there, so we were done with the race. But he did get to take a photo of us at the boathouse:

Then I had my tutorial with Gareth. He said that he could tell that I was having a busy week because my paper seemed less fluid than usual... Whoops.

Amanda and I went to Hall for dinner, and then we went to see Jane Goodall at the Oxford Union.


It was only two pounds to see her speak. She has a pretty fascinating and inspirational story. After telling a brief autobiography, she talked about how similar chimps and humans are; their genome is less than 1% different from ours. She thinks that the key difference is the development of our language. Oral and written history, and then the ability for debate and discussion are what make us us. Then she went on to talk about her animal rights, humanitarian, and environmental campaigns. She mentioned Roots and Shoots, which is a program for education and action about the terrible state of our environment. I had never heard of it before, but it sounds like a really neat program. It started in High Schools, but it has moved to both elementary and university student groups. It was a very nice lecture, and I feel lucky that I got to see her. Hooray for environmental activists. And for getting a book signed...

Rowing Photos

http://www.rowphoto.co.uk/events.php?event=torpids_2009&image=IMG_TOR09_0558.jpg&crew=All%20Rowing%20On%20Div%204


558 to 572 is our crew. Just keep pressing the next button. Heinous.

Rowing On

Rowing on is a qualifying race that we participated in yesterday. We did extremely well, and apparently this is the first time in a decade that Magdalen has had three women's crews. And, we were not far behind W2, so we could theoretically bump them in Torpids, which starts on Wednesday, and runs through Saturday; there is one race a day. When I was practicing with W2, they were actually really nervous about being bumped by W3, and I told this to the W3 girls, and they got pretty excited about it. It would be very humiliating for W2 if we bumped them. I really hope we do. That'll show them for demoting me...

Torpids dinner is on Saturday night, and I wanted to buy a new dress for it, but I decided to buy new shoes instead and just wear a black dress that I bought. I am slightly obsessed with the shoes. Photos to come.

Tyler (a friend from Hopkinton who is studying in Ireland this semester) is coming to London with two of his friends on Thursday, and they are leaving on Monday. Good thing he picked the busiest weekend of my life to come to England. Hopefully I will get to see him for a little while, though. It may just make me incredibly homesick... We'll see.

Moshing and Ministers

On Thursday, I went out to dinner with my friend Chelsey. We went to the Eagle and Child, and for pretty much the most famous pub in town, the food was no good. But whatever, it was fun anyway. Then we were going to meet Ryan at "Thirst Lodge" for a jazz society thing. We wanted to go last week, but ended up getting side tracked until it was too late. So we were determined to go this week. Little did we know, it was the night of some themed pub crawl. While Chelsey and I were walking to the venue, we saw tons of groups of kids wearing the same shirt as well as pirate attire. They were also accompanied by guys in neon orange vests. When we got to Thirst Lodge, the bouncer asked if we were there for the jazz thing, and then he asked us to wait outside. We did, for a half hour, and the jazz thing still wasn't starting because all the pirate kids were still buying drinks. I was studying one kid's shirt, and it had all the big clubs on the back with boxes next to the names where you were supposed to check after you had been to the club. There were hundreds of these kids about. In groups of about twenty or so, but they were all over town. It was freaking me out. And they seemed like they had just turned eighteen. When I got home, I googled "Stamina" because it was on the back of their shirts, and sure enough, it's some website where you sign up to be a part of a giant pub crawl. It freaked me out. And we went home without seeing any jazz. Next week!

I was sick on Friday. But I still managed to put together a decent Biochemistry essay. Then Amanda and I watched No Country for Old Men. It was really interesting. I can't say that I enjoyed it, because it was very depressing actually, but I do think that it was a fabulous movie.

Yesterday was a glorious day. It was so beautiful out, so Amanda and I went shopping for a bit. Then I got some reading done before my Biochem tutorial. At the end of the hour, we always decide when we will meet next, and Rob suggested Friday afternoon, and I told him that I actually didn't know when I would have a race, so then he was muttering to himself about when else to meet, but the he was like, "well since the Prime Minister is coming, I'd like to meet at this time..." "What? Gordon Brown is coming?" "Oh, yes. No one's supposed to know that it's him giving the lecture at the Sheldonian, but I know (because he's the almighty Dean)." "Ummm Can I go?" "Sure. You'll have to apply for a ticket. Find out in the Porter's Lodge". So I went to the Porter's Lodge, and a sign was up about the next Romanes Lecture. This is a free, public, annual lecture given at the Sheldonian Theater in town, and it has been going on for over a hundred years, and they speaker may talk about pretty much anything. The flier said that a "Senior Cabinet Minister" would be speaking at 1.00 pm on Friday the 27th. They don't want all the publicity about who it actually is, I guess. Thank goodness for crazy Rob! I ran home, emailed the University events administrator, so hopefully I get a ticket. And hopefully I don't have a race at that time on Friday...

Then, last night, Amanda and I went to a concert. We missed the first opener, but oh well. Suburban Legends was the second opener, and they played the Ducktales themesong. Blast from the past. I loved it. Then Reel Big Fish came on.


I think Amanda was scared for her life the entire time. We were pretty close to the front, and once they started playing, the crowd got pretty rowdy, and we were pushed about the entire time. At one point, we were standing right at the edge of the major mosh pit, so we were sucked in a few times. I just kind of went with it, and pushed/punched back, but Amanda was in total shock. I felt bad for her, but I'm glad that she went with me. I was actually surprised at how moshy the crowd was. At one point, Amanda got pushed to the ground, and I was like a mother trying to save her baby. We were separated by a few people, and I pushed them away so hard to get to her and pull her up. She also ended up breaking her earring and her bra because we were smashed up against people the entire time. What a great first concert experience for her... Other than a couple bruises that I woke up with, I didn't incur any damages.
Before:

During:

We were surrounded by very tall, very sweaty, guys. It was impossible to see the band and/or escape the madness.
After:

You can't really tell, but my face was so red. I was a dancing fool. Amanda on the walk home: "I don't know how you were laughing and singing along the whole time"... It was wild. I had a lot of fun.

This afternoon, we are supposed to row in order to qualify for the tournament this week, but the river may be too high. I haven't been told whether we're rowing or not yet...

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on"...

Stratford-Upon-Avon! Such a cute little town. We first took a tour of William Shakespeare's home:


They had tour guides in each different room, and they were all exceptionally creepy. They made sure to tell us that we were walking on ground that Shakespeare walked on, and that is pretty cool I guess. And I learned that the phrase "sleep tight" originated from trundle beds that were just a mattress atop a rope wound between the wooden structure. After being slept on, the rope would slacken and need to be tightened, so "sleep tight"... Makes sense. I never think about random phrases like that, and it's kind of fun to learn where they come from.

Ryan, Amanda, and I went to dinner at one of the first pubs in Stratford. But beforehand, we went to a little ice cream parlor:

We had been CRAVING ice cream very badly. We tend to crave things quite often. And then hate them after eating them for a week. The parlor was also a candy shop, so I bought some Turkish Delight. I had no idea what it was before I got it, and I don't know what Edmund Pevensie thought was so great about it...

Then to see The Tempest!

I really enjoyed it. They did a great job. But, that's to be assumed. The Royal Shakespeare Company really shouldn't mess up a Shakespearean play in his home town. It was a very African version of the play, complete with bongo drums playing with the orchestra. The costumes were great too. They made huge, brightly colored puppets to represent the spirits. It is a shame that photography was prohibited during the performance because I really can't do everything justice with words. The set was very minimal, which is to expected of a deserted island setting:


The lighting was funky, but you get the idea...
Then on the way back to the bus, we came across this sign:

"Elderly People". What? Greatest sign ever.

I slept entirely too late today, but I guess I needed it. My Egyptology tutorial was at 3.00, and I had not attached my essay when I sent an email to Gareth before leaving for Stratford. I sent it as soon as I got home and read his "I didn't get it" email, but I felt badly for sending it so much later than he prefers. But it didn't really matter. I got to the cafe before Gareth, and when he arrived, he was all excited about my essay. It was about the Hyksos Dynasty. Hyksos means "rulers of foreign countries"; they were from around Palestine and they ruled Egypt for 100 years or so. But there is no written testament of their dynasty by them.. only from later Egyptians. So it is all very interesting because the Egyptians make us believe that the Hyksos were terrible people and they destroyed pretty much everything from the Hyksos period. Anyway, they used the term "Hyksos" in a very negative manner, but I couldn't figure out who used it first. I suggested that maybe the Hyksos used it first, to refer to themselves in their own history, because they were ruling in a foreign land, Egypt, and then later Egyptians twisted it in order to make them look bad. Apparently this is a new idea. Gareth said he had never come across it before, but it was incredibly interesting, and he asked me if he could look into it and perhaps write a research paper about it. So that made me feel pretty good. He always tells me that it's fun to read my papers because I have the outlook of an "outsider", meaning I haven't studied this stuff non-stop, so my opinions haven't been shaped like typical Egyptology students' have. Fun stuff.

We had rowing in the gym tonight. Some of the other girls showed up this time. Yeah! Our tournament is scheduled for the end of next week, but it may be canceled because the river is too high from all the snow that melted. I say "all the" as if there was a lot. Three inches. Maybe four. But it had a significant impact on the river. Plus, it has been raining a bit. I will be very disappointed if it's canceled.

I finally went grocery shopping tonight. One can only eat stuffed baked potatoes so often...