‘Sup With Pete

This is me in my goalie gear for field hockey after the match on Sunday (at 5:00pm!).

Tuesday, November 8, 2005.

Hi,
I always seem busy here, but I think I’m just keeping myself busy all the time. It’s really weird when I get some time to myself – then I wonder what I should be doing, or it seems like there’s something I should be doing, even though I know there’s nothing to do. (does that make sense?)

Last week was another great one, except it’s been really rainy lately (I know I should’ve expected a lot of rain being in England, but it’s very frustrating!). Last Wednesday was the usual Rugby practice – they had us doing fitness, running and pushups and stuff to try and get some of the guys in better shape (I wasn’t at the game the weekend prior, and I guess they really slowed down at the end of the match). It was still a good practice though. Thursday and Friday always seem to drag on, as they’re my heave 9-5 days. On Thursday I had my first introduction to histology ( a bit of a boring subject ) . It’s the study of tissues, so this week we did “Epidermis” – so I spend 3 hrs making notes and looking down a microscope at epidermal cells throughout the body (skin, sole of the foot, stomach, esophagus, etc). Then had a physiology tutorial (which my TA was not prepared for, so it dragged on, followed by epidemiology for 3hrs (not so fascinating either, learning about Standard Errors and Confidence Intervals for hrs at a time). It’s not all bad, Friday biochem was neat learning about metabolism – and the afternoon was anatomy where I got 13/14 on my spot test.

Friday night I went to formal dinner – very good this week, chicken/veggies/wine/rocky road pie. Then went down to the pub and out to a club for the night (it’s closing down for 2 weeks for refurbishing, so they were giving away tons of free stuff, I didn’t win anything though).

Saturday, I spend the afternoon playing squash with some friends, played some Snooker after dinner and got some work done.

Sunday was a LONG day. I got up, and was invited to come play Cricket for Wills Hall. They needed players even though I have no clue how to play Cricket. It was indoor cricket, so it wasn’t too hard to play, just the rules are confusing. Ie: there’s no strikes (just swing as much as you want), you can also get people out if you catch the ball off the wall - not just in the air, you’re up to bat in 2s, and you two work together to guard 2 wickets (bases standing up on their sides), the fields try and hit the wickets while you’re running, but it’s a hard thing to do. You score pts by you and your partner running back and forth between the wickets while the fields are trying to get the ball – the fielders try have to get you out so they can get up to bat and score pts like in baseball. You only get to bat once though. There’s still tons of other rules I won’t go on about. Basically I played terribly, but the English guys all had a good laugh (I held the bat backwards when I got up to bat for instance). We managed a win at 74-73, so all in all it was great.

Afterwards, I walked back in the pouring rain, only to miss Sunday lunch, by 10min. So I made some cup-a-soup and had a sandwich and went to hockey. I played a stellar game, and was voted “man of the match” – lucky me, eh? I didn’t let in any goals the entire game, and then at the last minute (honestly) they scored in a big confusion into the left corner. The ref blew the whistle right after the next “face-off” it’s not really a face off, it’s like a kick off in soccer. We won 2-1.

Sunday night, I still managed to play squash for 2hrs, amazingly. I also managed to get hit on the side of the head and sprout a nice goose egg bruise. To be honest, cricket was a very leisurely sport, so not much exercise, and I play goal in field hockey, so not much exercise either. We played a little tournament, and then played ‘king of the court’ for about 45min. I came home and talked to Dad, Mom, Aunt Wendy, Uncle Barry and my cousin Brian in a bit of a conference call on Skype. It was neat.

Monday:
Same old day of 9-5 lectures. Got back at about 5:30, after walking in the rain (again), and went up to dinner. Dinner was just what I needed, I think my entire tray was full of good food and I finished off the whole thing. Afterwards we headed out for a special night. We went to a local pub named “Coronation Tap” aka: Corry Tap for some special local cider (like beer, ie: strongbow), in a little area west of me called Clifton. You have to understand though, this cider is 8-10% and tastes like apple juice. They only serve it in ½ pints. This is because I can sleep in on Tuesday (along with may people here) so we decided Monday night would be good. Well 8 half pints later I left the bar in a well done stupor, and decided not to go to the club afterwards. There was tons of drinking games too at the pub, and they always play International Drinking Rules – so if you do things like swear, call someone by their real first name, drink with the wrong hand, etc. you have to drink). It was great fun, and I must say, I was really dehydrated the next day. But can you imagine drinking beer that tastes similar to apple juice, it was amazing.

Today, I got in a few rounds of Squash this afternoon, watched some movies, and got some work done.
-Pete