Tournament in Cannock

These are pictures from the Cannock Hockey Tournament we had. Then there’s the not so hot one of me wearing some of my goalie kit.

Monday, February 13, 2006.

Hey,

Been a long week, but not done much. Didn’t feel the greatest last week, but I seem to be feeling a little tired after the weekend. Mostly just went to classes last week. Saw the movie Munich last week which was about getting revenge for the kidnapping and murder of the Israeli Olympic team in the 1972 olympics. It was a great film, but there wasn’t much of a conclusion and the end felt a bit unresolved.

Thursday was my first ever visit with the GP practice I am placed at. I did a home visit with another student in the class. It was a really neat experience we got to learn about the illnesses (one of which I had never even heard of), and we had to learn patient history and mainly how the patient felt about the experience of disease and going through treatment. We also got a bit of free cookies and cakes with the visit. This week I’ll be sitting in with the GP at the practice for the afternoon watching him work. On Thursday night we all when down to a bar to say farewell to our anatomy demonstrators (TAs). At Bristol, we are all put into groups of 10 for each lab and there’s one demonstrator for each group. They’re all doctors a couple of years out of high school, who are great teachers and fun to be around, so it was sad to see them go, but another excuse to get out to the bar with medics. So all the first years and the demos met up for a few drinks and went out for the night. Lots of fun!

Friday was just classes all day, and I just stayed in with people from hall in the evening. There was a Chinese New Year formal, but I didn’t attend as I had missed the sign up last Monday.

Saturday was an early start playing a few rounds of squash with some friends from neighbouring halls. It was great exercise, but I wasn’t playing too well. Must have been tired or something after getting up early. In the afternoon there was a rugby match of England vs. Wales. The beginning of a six nations tournament between England, Wales, Scotland, France, Italy and Ireland. So, it was a pretty big match. England gave Wales a pretty good pounding winning 47-13. It was a good game at the start and then England really pulled ahead. Afterwards we went out and got a great thai-curry and then went out to the pub for the evening.

I was up Sunday at 6am to go 2hrs to Cannock, a village north of Birmingham. A medical group had sponsored a huge field hockey tournament for all the medical schools in Britain. We had to be up there by 9 for registration. It was a nice tournament, there were free meals, loads of chocolate and candy, t-shirts, umbrellas and of course, hockey! I got to play 6 matches and we won one by default because on of the London schools didn’t show. In my category we played Durham, Manchester and Liverpool. Not a lot of the team could come because other years were doing exams, so we were missing most of out offense. It was pretty hard to play a very offensive game when everyone’s used to defending. Also we didn’t bring any subs, and one of our players got injured, so we had to play half of the game against Manchester 1 man down, and then had to borrow someone for the rest of the matches. It neat though because I’ve never played those universities before because we play our medics matches against the medical schools in the south of England. We only won our first match, so we were in the plate (B level) finals. Our game against St.Bart’s (in London) was forfeited, so we went straight to the semi-finals against Southampton. We were completely worn out, and managed a shameful loss of 0-5. Still had a great day though, I played goalie for Sheffield in one match, in which we lost 0-2 to Nottingham, who were really good, had a great tournament, but wished we could’ve had the whole team there.

Came home Sunday night and all of the 1st years that played got together and made some pasta with tomato sauce and watched the movie shrek2 to celebrate our not too victorious day. No champagne though (all a bit to worn out). I came back to Wills for the 11:20pm kick off the good old American Football, aka The Superbowl. It was pretty funny, tons of people were watching, but few knew what was going on. I kept getting asked which team was which, “Are the guys in yellow the Pittsburgh seahawks?” , “No, the seahawks are grey and they’re from Seattle!” It was funny, most people had no clue and flipped coins to determine which team they vote for or betted on. I am still a bit of a Steelers fan, if I needed to pick a football team, but I was pretty sure they would win. People still be against them anyways. Good thing they won, eh? Rugby doesn’t stop as much as Football, and the clock almost never stops, so people seemed to be always asking, “Why have they stopped, AGAIN!” Good fun. After a full day of hockey though, and a superbowl that started at 11:20, I feel asleep during the Rolling Stones’ halftime show. So decided to head back to bed (1:30am) and brag to everyone that the Steelers would win, even after I left – which they did.

Classes were great today. Our afternoon lectures were cancelled, so we got it off! I played some more squash, and played much better. I did a bit of work, and then this evening I went down for a play practice. Yes, I’m in a play (how do I get involved with so much stuff?” It’s called the pre-clinical review – where people in the pre-clinical years (yr 1 & 2) do some theatre that makes fun of our professors, the medical school and Bristol Uni. There’s also a clinical one too, but of course, we’re not in that. So, I got a part and we had our intro session, met the cast, talked and read the script, I’ve got about 8 or 9 lines, but I managed to make it into most of the scenes, so that’s pretty cool. It’s a bit of a secret, but I’ll let you later my part. I think I got it because of my accent – I’m supposed to be a bit American or something. Hopefully I’ll pull off my outs and abouts at showtime!

Wow, amazing how I can stretch a fairly uninteresting week into a long winded story of my whirlwind adventures in the strange land of Eng-land. Got a group of friends to live with next year, so we’ve got a house viewing tomorrow, I’ll have to take a pic or two for you to see. Have a good week!

-Pete