I'm tired of wet underwear

I meant to post this last night, so the timeline will be a bit off, but I can't be bothered with that right now.

I've officially joined the kayaking club, and while I absolutely hate it, I love it, too. There's something about being on the water and zipping around on a river that's really awesome. There's also something about being in a tiny boat that will tip if you lean ever so slightly in the wrong direction that isn't so awesome. I have yet to kayak without flipping...but I've never flipped more than once in the same session...sooo...we'll call it even.

We had a session on Saturday that was in a nice warm pool. This is where we did the majority of our capsizing training, so I spent a majority of my time on the water, under the water. My best piece of advice to anyone who wants to start kayaking is to take your instincts and intuition and throw them out. Nearly everything you need to do in a kayak, especially while you're under the water, goes completely against what your body is telling you to do. So to survive on the water, you have to let go of all those animal instincts that helped us to evolve into the intelligent, lazy people that we are today.

Back to my main point, though. Noone likes walking around in wet underwear. I did it two days in a row. The first day, I went out early, before heading to the pool, to try and find some swimming trunks. One of the main stores didn't sell them at all, and the other advised me to "go check the sales area by the ladies' fitting rooms," as they were now out of season and everything out of season is hung on a rack with a bunch of women's clothing. Needless to say, I gave up and left. So I show up at the pool in athletic shorts, which isn't too bad, except for that I didn't pack any other boxers, assuming that I'd have had swimming trunks on, instead of underwear, when I took the dive. Wrong.

It wasn't enough that I was going to have to walk back in the biting cold, from a part of town that I wasn't yet familiar with, with a backpack full of wet clothes. I now had to take that walk with a squishy, clingy, really cold fabric between my legs the entire way. Now I realize that I could have tried to go commando and just avoid the complications of wet underwear, and normally i would have, but it seemed somehow wrong to go commando in England while I wasn't yet familiar with the country. It'll take more than a month of wining and dining before I'll let England get that far.

This brings me to day two, Sunday. We went out on the Thames again, and did some slightly more advanced stuff. In theory, learning all this slightly more advanced stuff is fine. It's only when they ask you to paddle as fast as you can, then turn as hard as you can without turning over that it gets rough. I turned over.

They taught us how to stay upright a little better, and how to stay upright while you were taking a hard turn. The only problem was, when I focused on learning how to make the kind of hard turn they were trying to teach me, I completely forgot the whole "staying upright" part of it. The river was really, really cold, but as time went on, and more and more beginners also took the plunge, I got over it. I met a couple of other Americans in the club, as well, but it seems like everyone from the states that's over here is doing graduate work. I also met a couple of doctors who were in the club, today, so at least I know that when I'm out in South Wales a couple of weeks from now, I'll have someone who knows how to save me should I come perilously close to death. And if the one does manage to save me, the other has experience in plastic surgery, so he'll be able to put humpty dumpty together again if anything horribly traumatic were to happen to my face. I need my face.

I'm kind of rambling now, and it's nearly 3 am, so rightly so. I kind of forget, from time to time, that I'm really three thousand miles away from home. It's both good and bad, I guess. Let me first reassure my parents and say that I still miss you, no worries there. As far as actually being in England goes, though, I no longer think of it as "being in England." It's more just like, "being," now.

Procrastination

So...I have a paper due tomorrow. And then I have a paper due the next day. I haven't yet started to write either of them. This, of course, doesn't mean I'm not ready to write them, though I'm not really ready to do that, either. I see two very long nights ahead of me...

That said, I'm naturally procrastinating so I still don't have to start writing.

I MISS CHIPOTLE! We found a replacement, it's called the mission, and it's actually pretty good. Only problem is they're not very good. Over here, rather than Mexicans manning the Chipotle as one would expect from the Mexican restaurant, the Brits have a random assortment of foreigners who are quite hard to understand. I still have yet to figure out what accent they are speaking with, but they don't even have the decency to be Spanish while preparing my "Mexican" food.

As for the food itself, it's alright. The chicken is weird and pulled, rather than diced, but is still tasty overall. They also have a sauce called "Habenaro Salsa." I'm not one to settle for anything less than the spiciest sauce on my food, so of course I decided to try it the first time we visited The Mission about two weeks ago. I didn't buy a bottle of water to prepare myself for this sauce they had labeled "Extra Hot," so I was fully unprepared for the utter misery I was about to put myself through. (They had no tap water available, and I wasn't about to pay for water, but my principles really didn't do me any favours this time). About four bites in I had to stop and rest and try to deal with the fire that was in my mouth. By the time I was halfway done I'd switched to a different strategy of trying to eat it as quickly as possible. That didn't last very long. Three quarters through my eyes were watering, my nose was running, and I was about as close to hyperventilating as I've ever been in my life because most of my energy was going towards breathing quickly enough to keep my mouth cool.

Obviously, after an experience like this, I'd learn my lesson. Not quite.

Today, for lunch, we stopped by the mission again. This time, in a fit of cunning, I insisted that we get them for take away, and then head back to our houses to eat. This way I would have access to water because, once again, I could not settle for anything less than the spiciest on my burrito. Quite proud of myself, when we returned I prepared myself a glass of water and set to work on my food. Two bites in and I had to stop and take multiple gulps. About an inch down the burrito and I was nearly finished with my first glass. All in all, I finished four+ pint sized glasses of water with my burrito, and my mouth was still burning.

The Mission: 2 Kyle: 0

So. Looks like it's going to kind of just be a marathon to the end of the trimester here. I have a paper due thursday, one due Tuesday, and then another due next week sometime(probably). ~15, 10, and hopefully less pages on the last one, respectively. Aside from that craziness, everything's kind of calmed down here now that everyone's settling into a pseudo-work theme. That said, I do need to start working again. Not having your reading done for the 15 pages due in two days that you also haven't begun to write is not generally a good idea.

Before i go, though, I want to point out that I refuse to use the bus while in Oxford. this means that some days I will be walking upwards of five miles, including the return trip, to my tutors. Lots of exercise here! I can't really see myself returning to driving to class once I get back...

Early to bed, early to rise, makes for bad business sense.

Today was a long day. A very long day. We set off for Warwick castle at 9. I still don't know when we got there, but we explored the castle for a few hours, and it was all pretty cool. The history of Warwick is really colourful and full of a lot of blood and political intrigue. For that reason they also had a dungeon display, which was alright. More cheap thrills than anything substantive. The castle itself was really cool, though, and the view from the top was worth the major climb it took to get there, even though some of the others might disagree. Joe and Bernice certainly didn't enjoy the heights...

From there we were off to Stratford-upon-Avon, which is where essentially everything Shakespeare happened. We toured Anne Hathaway's cottage and Hall's Croft, the former of which was more interesting simply for some of the pictures I got while walking the forest around the cottage. Then we toured the house where Shakespeare was born, which was far more interesting, for me at least.

After a good dinner at a cafe in Stratford, and a general lament of the fact that nearly everything in England closes by 5-6, we went to see The Winter's Tale in an indoor-Globe experiment that wennt pretty well. It's a tourist area..and yet all the restaurants and shops were closing by 5:30, and were all closed by 6. It seems to me that they could make a fair bit more money by having hours better than 10-5. That's not even a full business day! As for the theatre...the seats were more comfortable than the original Globe, and there was no chance of rain or bad weather while at the play. Right now, however, I am very tired, and lectures continue in the morning. Have a lot to do after we get done there, so I'm off to bed.

Students, Townies, and Oxford

The Purple Turtle has come to represent so many great things in my life here now. It's the Oxford Union's club, and it's not bad. Now, I must issue a disclaimer here: British people can't dance, and that kind of detracts from the club atmosphere. Also, British people don't really know, due to the fact that they don't know how to dance, what kind of music should be played to be danced to. Therefore, we end up with a bunch of people swaying slowly to "Eye of the Tiger". Yeah. that wasn't even close to the worst dancing song they played. Also! British people like to ruin American songs, apparently. I don't know how many chipmunked versions of good songs I heard tonight, but it wasn't cool at all.

Aside from all this, our trip is finally reaching the most interesting point. People are now getting tired of each other! I know that for normal people this might not sound so cool, but for me, it's great. At the beginning of any new situation where a bunch of people are thrown helter-skelter into a new place, everyone tries to get along. Everyone makes friends, and everyone likes each other for a while(kinda, exceptions are always made). But now we're finally onto the point where people aren't "new" anymore, and therefore less interesting, and therefore cut less slack. Now we've been friends for a while, and nerves are grinding, and anger is flying. this might sound uncool, but I absolutely thrive in this kind of situation. I'd never be able to explain it completely, but I love this kind of drama; there's nothing greater.

In other news, we toured Kelmscott Manor on Friday. This is the Manor that William Morris and his family owned for many a year, whiched contained a lot of great art and architecture. Rosetti also housed here for a while, who apparently had quite a number of flings with Mrs. Morris while William was off to Iceland and such places, though our tour guide failed to mention this to us.

Thursday we toured Oxford with a focus on Shakespeare, and saw, among other things, the fountain where his (probable) illigitimate son was christened. We also saw a room in which he oftened stayed in his travels, and two courtyards where early productions of Hamlet and Othello would have been performed, on of which still contained the original pub which was still in service.

Wednesday, as I mentioned before, we headed to The Globe to see Shakespeare's As You Like It. It was great, even when it was raining. Surprisingly, the entire play ended with a big rendition of the closing dance from Slumdog Millionaire, which I apparently really need to see now. The play was cool too.

Uhmmm...I'm going to bed. We have tea tomorrow with the Warners, who I should devote an entire post to at some point. I'm going to need to look sharp. Beauty rest!

Work Ethic

Okay, I promise to:
1. Post pictures.
2. Say important things.
3. Actually inform people that I have a blog.

Aside from that....we went on a pretty cool tour today. After a lecture on Pre-Raphaelite Art, which is pretty awesome, we toured a lot of it in Oxford. Rosetti, Morris, Holman Hunt, and Millais are all over this place. My favourite was definitely Hunt's, though, with The Light of the World. So much symbology and expression in that painting, it was awesome. A lot of architecture, both medeival and pre-raphaelite, is around Oxford too. Not to mention classical...but blegh. This city is home to the roots of so many cultural, spiritual and artistic movements.

Heading to the Globe Theatre tomorrow to see Shakespeare's As You Like It, should be pretty fun. Then on Thursday we have a tour of Oxford with a focus on Shakespeare... There's a lot to do, and it will involve a loooot of walking. Looking forward to it!

Alright, so we're closing in on a week of being in England, and I think we've mostly gotten our routine down. We've located a number of local pubs, cheap places to eat, cheap places to stock up on groceries and, of course, McDonalds. Though, over here even the fast food restaurants are more sophisticated. Last night was our first clubbing experience(sort of), and it didn't go quite like we'd expected. Due to the 6 pound cover charge, half of us opted for a nearby (free) bar instead.

Yesterday during the day we saw Hampton Court Palace. I really wish I could post picture from it, but as I forgot my camera, that's quite impossible. I'll have a lot of chances to take pictures in the future, though, so hopefully I'll be able to make up for it.

I still need to finish unpacking...

First Post

Alright, so this is just a post to show that I set up the blog and that I am actually here and alive. I'll start from my first day later, since right now it's almost midnight and I've got to get up early tomorrow. Started lectures today! Barely managed to stay awake, though, so it's time to go to bed...