Rowing

As I think I mentioned before, I decided to join the rowing team here at St Andrews. That wasn't the original plan; before I came I decided to use extracurricular time this year to focus on sports instead of music like I've done before, but I had wanted to be in the swimming club and go to all of their workouts (4 a week). So, I went to the "Sports Fayre" the first weekend I was here to sign up for swimming. All of the sports clubs had booths there and I had to walk through all of them before I found swimming. But as I was looking for the swimming club, I went past the booth for the rowing team and one of their officers noticed that I had an Oxford sweatshirt on. He said, "Hey, you went to Oxford, you must've done rowing there! Join the team!" I said, no, I never rowed at Oxford. "Well, row at St Andrews then!", shoving the sign-up sheet in my face. Serendipity! I am already obsessed with the Boat Club, I love everything about it, nothing is more exciting than the Boat Club and other things are just times in between Boat Club sessions. (*Note- when I find something that seems more exciting to me than my writing, it is a rare thing.)

There are 8 rowing workouts a week (including circuits and weights - only 2 sessions actually have something to do with a boat). The first one was last Monday, although it wasn't really a workout, just an introduction to the Boat Club and explanation of what the circuits are. There was quite a large group of people for this session, divided into the senior squad (people who have rowed before) and novices. Even though this was just a demonstration, I was hooked. The guy who demonstrated the circuits (the men's captain) for some reason reminded me of an ancient Greek athlete, so I thought of the ancient athletic routines that I'd heard about in middle school, the outdoor gymnasium I saw in Pompeii, and my ideal of Greek athletics and therefore all sport. I have this image of athletes running around a track beneath the sky/stars - in Greece, in Franklin Field, wherever - for the simple reason that they can, that man can achieve these things in sport so the athletes run just for the sake of running, of transcending their mortality to create one moment that is eternally meaningful because it existed. Anyway, I didn't always get excited about participating in sports but for several years I have idealized it, and now I finally get to be on a (really intense!) team. I further like the choice of rowing because it's a "classic" British sport, right up there with running with a storied history.

When I saw the demonstration of the types of things we would do in circuits, it didn't look that hard. Actually doing them was a different story! The first actual circuit workout was last Thursday, and immediately they had us running, sprinting, for quite awhile around the gym. I wasn't expecting that! Then we did some leg stretches and, still gasping, went right into the circuits. I DID NOT KNOW THE MEANING OF SUFFERING BEFORE. A brief synopsis of circuits: several minutes of running in place, faster, faster running, running with high knees, then lots of squat jumps, jumping really high. More running, running, running, squats, then these terrible things where you jump down into a pushup position, extend your legs, jump up again, do it over and over. Then more running, high knees, heels to butt, more running, squats, SIXTY reps of the Highland Fling (arms over shoulders, sweep down to the floor as you bend your legs, arms up to the other side like a weird golf swing), more running, high knees, faster, faster, more running, squats, arm exercises, more running, more squats, then pushups, more running, squats, situps, running, running, more running, squats, strength exercises - the bridge, the plank (for a minute! with someone walking around checking that you're doing it the whole time), the side plank (for some reason I cannot do this one, at all). That's the end of the circuit - then you do it all over again! The workout is led by the Boat Club president and the men's captain. First the president will do it for quite awhile, always saying faster, faster, to the point where you think you're going to die; then, he turns it to the men's captain, who does everything five times faster! And then back to the president. Half of the room was gasping, looking about to collapse, and the other half was going along cheerfully, keeping up with those two. At one point of particular pain the president yelled, "Faster! It's supposed to hurt! That's why you're here!" He is really inspiring, actually, and I will learn to like the pain. At any rate, I made it to the end of that first circuits workout and also of the second one, which was yesterday. Oh, but at the end of the first circuits, after we had done the whole thing twice, they said it was all over, all we had to do was go outside, but THEN there was more running, jogging, running, jogging - and then finally stretching and the real end.

You would think I'd hate rowing after all that. But I love it, love it, love it! This intensity is exactly what I wanted. This year is going to be so exciting. The first circuits were on Thursday, then on Saturday the novice men's and women's squads had a joint session to learn the movements and timing of rowing. We didn't have a single rowing machine for most of the time because the people at the gym front desk were being scatterbrained, but we sat in rows of four on mats and pretended to be in boats, "rowing" in synch. We were then supposed to sign up for times this week when the novice coach would give us an intro session on rowing machines and the president would show us how to use the weights. My "training buddy," Sarah (incidentally from pretty near where part of my dad's family is from in Germany), and I decided to do the very first session, 7:15am on Monday morning! It was actually pretty awesome being awake before the rest of the town and doing the 25 minute walk to the gym with only the seagulls and the sunrise. Strangely, the rowing movements came naturally to me and I was doing it right from the beginning (could it be I finally have athletic coordination??) - at one point the coach and the president were talking and pointing at me, and then the coach said I was looking really, really good! After the rowing machines, we went to the weight room with the president and he showed us the routine (seeing "weights" on the schedule two days a week made it seem like those were some relatively easy sessions to look forward to. Easy? Considering who set them up, umm, no). The routine is "power weights," the point being to lift enough weight that you can't finish your final set (so not many reps, but still really hard). I'm going to have to learn to do pullups, eek! Oh, I forgot to mention it was very painful for me to move around during this because I had walked 12 miles over steep hills the day before (more on that later, including pictures!). And then there was another circuit session Monday night, so I lived through two rowing sessions in one day. I felt like I improved a little already with circuits - the running/sprinting at the beginning wasn't a big deal, and although I still felt like I was going to keel over during the actual circuits I could always go faster and pick my knees up when told to and I could do the plank for 30 seconds.

Summary of a very long entry: rowing is awesome. I love rowing. Rowing, rowing, rowing. St Andrews Boat Club = fantastic, exciting, love it, love it, love it!

Still getting settled in

I have now been here for a little over a week and am still trying to get things in order so I can function properly! I can finally access wireless networks on my laptop, so no more going to the library once a day to check my email on their computers. However, I'm still trying to get internet set up at home. It's a pretty complicated process: the internet will be a cheap broadband package, but in order for it to work there has to be a landline, which was disconnected in the house and has to be reconnected first. They say someone has to come out to check that the house already has a BT (British Telecom) landline installed, which it does, so it will take a few days for them to take care of that. I can't order internet until I have a phone number, and then the internet installation package takes 5 business days to arrive by mail.

Despite all the problems, I really like where I'm living. It's a first floor apartment (“flat”) in a building with 4 apartments, and the apartment has its own front yard and half of a backyard. The inside is nice – wood floors, nice decorating. There are 2 bedrooms (I have one housemate), a bathroom with shower and tub, a living room with couches and a TV(so I can finally watch a lot of British TV, which I didn’t get to do in Oxford because I didn’t have a TV in my room), and a kitchen (with dishes, pots and pans, etc., so I didn’t have to buy any). There is a washer/dryer in the kitchen so I don’t have to go to a laundromat.

Although this is a really small town (15,000 - okay, not small compared to Plains but a nice change from Philadelphia), I still don't know which streets go where and exactly how to get home if I'm anywhere out of the town center. The old part of the town has a few straight streets, but lots more winding medieval streets whose directions/endings are unpredictable. My house is in the newer residential part of town, built in the last century as St Andrews was expanding, and the streets in that area are NEVER straight so it can be hard to find my way back! For example: the first day I was here. I slept in until 1 in the afternoon that day and by that point hadn’t eaten in almost a day and hadn’t showered for over two days, so I wanted to find a store to get some food and shampoo. I had heard there were several grocery stores within a few blocks of the apartment. However, I apparently went in exactly the wrong direction because I spent about 2-3 hours wandering around various residential streets before I found a grocery store – hard to do in a small town! And at first I thought the store I finally found was a car dealership because I thought the sign said “Audi” and there were lots of cars in the parking lot. Actually the sign said “Aldi,” a supermarket chain! And then it took me forever to find my way back because I didn't know where any of the streets led; since they're not straight, they often curve around in a direction you really didn't want to go when you started down it.

On top of all the directional difficulties, it's been a little hard getting settled into life as a student here because this seems to be a place where no one tells you (or has any information when you ask) where to go, what to do, or how to do it. St Andrews is even worse than Oxford when it comes to being organized - didn't think that was possible! It was difficult to find out how to matriculate (formally enter as a student and get my i.d. card) because my advisor forgot to give me the form when he was supposed to, and when I finally had the form they wouldn't let me have my i.d. card because the university's automatic system had never issued me a computer account username a month ago when everybody else got theirs. It took another day to get that straightened out, with my parents checking my email for me back in the U.S., calling me to tell me what was in it, and then impersonating me if a reply was needed.

Fortunately the School of Classics did have some orientation-type events. One afternoon there was a lunch for all the new postgraduates (the term for grad students here), so I got to meet people in my program and also some of the professors. The next night there was a social event for all the Classics postgrads, including returning PhD students, and I went out to eat with some of them the next two nights. Everyone seems nice; about half are English and the other half are American, with a couple Scots and a couple Canadians thrown in the mix. I also got a tour of the Classics building from the school secretary and a tour of the Library from the librarian, so once classes start I will actually know where to go to get work done. Ahhh, classes. There's another problem with organization here. I'm supposed to be in a Latin language class for the whole year, but I had never gotten any emails about when it was supposed to start. I just happened to ask another new student in my program if he knew when it was going to start, and he said, well yeah, it starts on Monday at 3! Then Monday at 2:50pm I checked my email and there was a message from him, saying just in case I didn't get the next email (no, of course not!) the classroom had been changed. Of course I didn't know where the new building was, so I walked around the block a couple times and was 5 minutes late (not a big deal because lots of other people apparently couldn't find it and were late, too).

I have Latin four days a week (off on Wednesdays) and my core course for Classical Studies will meet weekly, on Fridays. I also am taking a class on Scientific and Encyclopedic Writing in the ancient world, which will be taught in tutorials (one-on-one with the professor like at Oxford) every two weeks. I decided to join the St Andrews rowing team so will have as many as 8 exercise sessions a week for that, plus 4 nights of swimming a week with the swim team. More on that later!

This is a really long entry, so I'll leave it at that, but later I'll post more on ST ANDREWS! I love this town and the surroundings are so beautiful.