So from the 1st through the 4th of June (the end of 5th Week), SBH Boat Club raced in Summer VIII's, which was a series of bumps races just like Torpids only in much nicer weather. I thought the team did incredibly well. On our first day we rowed over (didn't get a bump or get bumped), the next day we bumped Osler House but they didn't recognize it before we were bumped by Queen's College, the next day we were bumped by St. Anne's, and the last day we were bumped by Wadham. So we didn't get Blades, but we didn't get Spoons (meaning that we got bumped everyday) either. And the team looked absolutely amazing on the water, which makes me think that if they continue to train as they have been, next year they'll be a definite threat.
The Banner
And Next Stroke Legs for Ten!
Why is Tea so Therapeutic? Boiling Water Raises Your Self of Steam
Summer VIII's Team
Summer VIII's was my last time racing with SBH Boat Club, which is hard for me to believe. I spent a lot of time with these guys and made quite a few friends. It's hard for me to imagine the rest of my time at Oxford not racing down to the river and yelling commands at these guys at least three times a week. I had an absolutely amazing time this year, so thanks, guys. I will miss all of you next year. Hopefully, I'll be able to come back and cox for Benet's again, but in the meantime, I'm sure they'll keep working hard and blow Osler out of the water. =D
So, while digging around and organizing my photos, I stumbled upon a couple of things. The first were a few funny photos I took of the television set while my friends and I were drinking Pimms (at 11am, I still can't believe we did that...) and watching the Royal Wedding.
Jonny Being Patriotic
Evidence that the English are Crazy (Yet Pretty Wicked =D)
The Happy Couple on Jonny's Television Set
The second was a recording I took of the Magdalen College Choir singing at the top of their tower on May Morning. May Morning is the morning of the 1st of May, and as Jonny explained it to me, for some reason, it's tradition for many Oxford students to stay up all night of the 31st of April, drinking heavily, and then get breakfast extremely early before stumbling down to Magdalen Bridge to listen and watch the choir sing at around dawn. Jonny and I skipped the drinking bit and just had breakfast and watched the choir sing. And I just happened to take a recording of it.
Anyway, I'm working on getting a quick Summer VIII's post together as we speak, so until then,
Well, at the moment, I'm beginning my fifth week of Trinity term, and I'm procrastinating on reading about the beginnings of what appears to be Buddhism in ancient China and DH Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. And people claim I'm a good student. =P So to make me feel better about my procastination, I've decided to be "productive" and catch up on all the blogging I should have done weeks ago.
So, here's a quick (and poorly constructed) video with the bit of footage I had:
Let's start off with Greece then, shall we?
GREECE
I think when I last left this place with an actual blog post, I was getting ready to hop on a plane to Greece at a rather ungodly hour. Well, I did get on that plane with three of my friends, who were about to become my travelling companions for the next month, and about five hours later, we landed in Athens a little tired but in one piece. We spent our first afternoon and evening checking out the areas in Athens nearest our hotel and ended up eating in an outdoor restaraunt in the fading sunlight. It was pretty surreal, and the moussakka I had was absolutely delicious. The next day we explored the little pockets of ruins scattered throughout the city, and imagine our surprise and delight when we discovered that our Oxford Bod Cards got us into all the ruins for free. =) Needless to say, we took full advantage of our Bod Card. So the ruins we visited included the Tower of Winds (which I recently discovered that Oxford University has an observatory tower designed to look exactly like it =P), the Agora, Hadrian's Library, the Roman Agora, Dionysus's Theatre, the Temple of Zeus, and of course, the Parthenon. It was strange to think that I was walking in the same places ancient peoples had walked, and I don't think I really believed that I was in Greece, a place I never thought I'd visit. We also visited the Panathenaic Stadium and had a great time walking around it while listening to our somewhat kooky audio tour guide. I highly recommend visiting this site, especially since the views from the top seats are breathtaking.
Anyway, after about two days of exploring Athens, we got on an overnight ferry to Heraklion on the island of Crete. James and I had planned to spend a majority of our time in Crete soaking up sunlight (or in my case curled up under an umbrella), reading for fun, and sipping on gin and tonics. James had even booked a hotel that was about 100 meters from the beach. Well, when we arrived in Heraklion at around 5:30am with cloudy and drizzly weather, these thoughts of sandy beaches and gin and tonics were the only things that kept us awake and determined to make it to the city's center and eventually our hotel. We did make it to our hotel, and while we were waiting for our room, we decided to check out the beach. And here's what we found (it's at the beginning of my Spring Adventure video):
...Which wasn't quite what we were expecting.
That morning I seriously believed that we had missed a zombie apocalypse and were wandering through a Grecian ghost town. James and Tom eventually discovered that the reason for the emptiness was that the spring tourist season hadn't started yet, and we were actually the first tourists of the season. Unfortunately, this isn't as exciting as it sounds, but we still managed to have a pretty good time in Crete. Of course, we had to abandon the whole sitting on a beach with gin and tonics plan, but we did manage to visit the ruins of the Palace Knossos and spent the rest of our time cafe hopping and sitting in front of an ancient fountain for quite a few hours (which became a reoccuring activity in all the places we visited in the future).
Anyway, we returned to sunny Athens and wandered around some of the ruins I mentioned earlier and ate copious amounts of Nutella gelato before returning to cloudy England. To sum up, Greece was pretty amazing.
PARIS, FRANCE
After spending a couple days in England doing laundry and repacking for a three-week trip, Miranda and I hopped on a 7:30am Eurostar train bound for Paris. If anyone is ever thinking of traveling from London to Paris, I highly recommend the train. It is a bit pricey, but if you manage to secure tickets in advance, it's definitely worth it. The ride only lasted for about 2 hours, and I was far more comfortable on the train than I have ever been on a plane.
We spent our first day in Paris taking the Metro to our guest house, which was called Namdemun Guest House and was pretty amazing, and exploring the surrounding neighbourhood. The next day, we headed into the city to be tourists. We walked through the Pantheon (where we saw Voltaire and Rousseau's crypt!), Notre Dame (which was bigger than I expected and extremely crowded), and Saint Severin's Chapel (whose stained class I liked a lot more than the Notre Dame's *gasp*). We also visited the Museum d'Cluny, which had a lot of medieval pieces, including old worn statues from the outside of the Notre Dame. My favourite piece in this museum was the Book of Hours with its painted pages. At one point my friends lost me, because I had stayed behind to take a picture of every single page they had on display. Yes, I am a dork. xP Anyway, we spent the rest of the afternoon souvenir shopping in the Saint Severin Chapel area before heading back to our guest house for a Korean dinner.
In the following days, we visited A LOT of sites and still didn't manage to see everything Paris had to offer. We spent an entire day in only two museums: the morning in the Louvre (which I had no idea was a large as it was) and the afternoon in the Musee d'l'Orangerie (where I saw Monet's Water Lillies, which are actually large pieces by the way). On another day, we were so tired and sick of museums that we spent the entire day sitting in front of a fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens having a picnic lunch, reading and (in my case) napping. Of course, we also visited the Eiffel Tower and ate ice cream in the grassy area in front of it, celebrated with our friend James, who ran in the Paris marathon, by the Arc d'Triomphe, and went shopping on the Champs Elysses.
On our final day, we regrettably had to move out of our guest house into a hotel closer to the train station, since Miranda and I had to catch another early morning train the next day. After our move, we spent the day wandering around by the Seine and had dinner in Montmarte, which is the neighbourhood where the Moulin Rouge is located.
SWITZERLAND
The next morning, Miranda and I hopped on an early train bound for Switzerland. By this point, I was pretty exhausted from Paris, so I was looking forward to spending a rather "lazy" week at our friend Emile's place. Well, it wasn't a very "lazy" week. Emile and his parents went all out in making sure we had as much fun and food as possible. I seriously don't think I've ever eaten so much chocolate in a week in my life, and for those who know me, that's really saying something. Anyway, we visited so many villages and towns and did so many things that I really can't remember them all. But what I do remember (apart from the kindness and genorosity and hospitality of Emile and his family) was the landscape. We drove through fields and fields of bright green and cows, alongside babbling rivers and creeks, and up and through towering mountains. All of it put together, the fields, rivers and mountains, really reminded me of my grandparents' village in Japan...only less humid. So in a weird way, Switzerland felt incredibly homey for me, and I loved just about every minute of my time there.
On our last day in Switzerland, James, Miranda and I caught yet another train to Zurich, so we could then catch a plane to Ireland. Zurich was an incredibly nice city but extremely expensive. We were so tired that we didn't really do much other than hunt for postcards, which were nearly impossible to find, and sit in front of a river and read before catching our plane to Dublin, Ireland.
IRELAND
We finally made it to Dublin, and it was quite a change from Zurich. I really don't know how to describe it, but Dublin didn't really feel like a city to me. And it was strange and relieving to hear the English language spoken by practically everyone again.
Anyway, by the time we made it to Dublin, I was so sick and tired of being a tourist that I told everyone that all I wanted to do was find a nice part of the city where I could sit and read, which I did in addition to walking through a park, seeing the Book of Kells, and shopping in Temple Bar. The Book of Kells was beautiful, and my favourite part about it was this poem that supposedly one of the monks wrote while working on the Book of Kells. It's called "Pangur Ban," and it's about a cat:
Pangur Ban
I and Pangur Ban, my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will;
He, too, plies his simple skill.
'Tis a merry thing to see
At our task how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
Into the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den.
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!
So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine, and he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade ;
I get wisdom day and night,
Turning Darkness into light.'
Anyway, after our short time in Dublin, James's godparents invited us to their house near a village called Drogheda, and even though we were only there for an evening, we had a great time laughing and chatting.
At the end of it all, I was eager and happy to be back in England. I remember briefly talking to Jonny on the bus ride from the airport and telling him how happy I was to be back, and he said something along the lines of, "It's because you're coming home." And he was right. It's scary to think how homey England's become in such a short period of time, and it's even scarier to think that I'll be leaving it soon.
Well, for the time being, I'm going to try not to think about it as I force myself to get back to working.
Until next time,
Cheers!
Nutmeg
P.S. All the pictures from my trip have already been uploaded to my Picasa account. So enjoy! =)
