Take Your Marks...

I'm just under 48 hours from making my Olympic Rowing debut! It's not quite in the fashion I'd like it to be, but I think sitting on the bank at Dorney Lake watching all but two New Zealand crews storm past isn't a bad alternative! 

The weather gods have been kind this week and it's going to stick around until Saturday by the looks of things, so looking good for the one day I'll be at the Olympics! (Touchwood!)

I'm staying with the son of family friends in London before I go to Europe for a month on Sunday, and he managed to find another ticket to go along with his, so I'm quite stoked - and thanks Mum and Dad for paying! 

On the subject of rowing, I did actually make my international debut on Saturday! The Home International Regatta between Wales, England, Ireland and Scotland was held in Cardiff bay and I represented the Junior Men's team in the Coxed Four and Eight - coming second in both to the English crews. The Eight was by the smallest of margins - about eight or ten inches and we were all absolutely gutted!

Oh well, I'm sure I'll get my revenge when I pull on the black singlet next time!

I'm so freakin' keen for my Euro Trip! I'm away for a month and I go to Paris, Lyon, Barcelona, the French Riviera and Monaco, Venice, Rome, Florence and Pisa, Milan, Ibiza and Valencia, all topped off with La Tomatina in Bunol!

Europe. Here I come!

Love you all x

Three Weeks to Summer!

So the title is pretty self explanatory; there are three weeks of school left this term, then I'm on Summer Break until September! Gonna be so sick and I'm totally amped!
The last month has been pretty cool actually. I think that's the first time I've said that this year, so take note people - I'm not totally pessimistic!

This is what's happened in the last month in terms of rowing in the least number of words:

• I won the IM2 single at Monmouth Regatta without even racing - my opposition scratched because he got sun-stroke,
• a whole bunch of 17, 18 and 19 year olds beat a bunch of 15 and 16 year olds in an eight,
• I raced with some J16s against some burly men and got destroyed,
• The crew I coached came 5th at National Schools,
• The 1st VIII came second at Nat Schools, coming down in 6.03, just 2 seconds off first place.

Now here's the actually somewhat, almost exciting stuff. AKA the point where you need to stop reading now, Mum. Please.

I went into London for a few days to see my sister just before she left to go back home. She's been travelling since February and had been in London for a few weeks. We went to the oldest bagel shop in London for lunch, watched the Queen's Jubilee stuff in Hyde Park, at cupcakes, watched John Key be interviewed on what the Monarchy and Queen means to NZ - a lot apparently; "she's been to New Zealand four times!" Good one, Johnny.

We also went to the Camden Lock Market and looked at all the retro/indy/hipster/vintage/hippy stalls and ate Churros! Yum! I stayed with Kate at her friends' flat in London that night as I didn't really want to sponge off our family friends yet another time.. Though this was okay for some reason... IDK.

The day Kate left to go back home/to Toronto then home, I went up to Arsenal to meet the mysterious Anna R. She's been a mate for a couple of years since she was dating a mate, and for a bit of weirdness, although we've known each other for a while, we'd never actually met until now... She lived in NZ for a bit, then moved to Canada, and now lives in Oz. She's over here for a holiday, and since we were both in London at the same time, why not meet a random stranger who knows far too much about you! 

She thought I was coming at 8:30 at night, so was a bit shocked when I turned up in the morning... She was pretty happy about it though, as she thought she was going to have to find something to do by herself that day. Anyway, we went back to Camden Lock Market again because it's freakin' awesome and found this seriously awesome/terrible shop. It was like a bad 90s rave party (or how I perceive a bad 90s rave to be like). It only sold fluorescent clothing and everything was under UV lights. It looks awesome, but since the real world doesn't live under UV lights, anything outside the shop would have just looked shockingly bad.

And, keeping up with our traditions in London, we went on a pub crawl. We were such bad-asses and pre-drank in our hostel room before going down to Leicester Square. It was only 8pm and we were way too drunk... we took about 30 selfies on the tube and no doubt attracted a fair amount of disapproving looks. Oh well. Yolo. We got back at 2am after somehow managing to catch the right bus (unlike last time when Andy and I tried to get back to the same hostel and got totally lost) and ran down the street singing/screaming 'Starships' at the top of our voices. I was on a 2pm train back the next day, so spent most of that time recovering from the night before, then the rest of it feeling sorry for myself because I was hung over. I got back to Motown alright, but somewhere along the way, managaed to lose my money card - it turned up four days later in the pocket of the hoody I was wearing (after I cancelled it, of course!). 

That was half-term over, and back to work for this week just gone. Monday was just like any other day back to school after holidays - it was horribly long and boring. Tuesday was a bit different though. Anna came to Motown because there wasn't anyone in London that she knew, and she didn't fancy spending the best part of a week by herself in one of the world's biggest cities. We had another totz adorbz bro date involving far too many selfies, getting rolling drunk on a school night and nearly staying up until sunrise before we decided we should probably call it a night... at 4:30 in the morning. And yes, Starships was played numerous times again...

After Anna left to get to her Top Deck tour, I went back to work. Teaching 7-10 year olds how to play cricket, throw a vortex and play tennis. There was also the standard rowing training, and the first training with next season's novices. They're actually the best bunch of novice rowers I've seen since I've been rowing (except for my year, of course ;D) so there's a little bit of hope for them in the future. It'll be interesting to see how they go over the next few weeks, then next term.

This weekend I'm off to Dorney Lake for the last regatta held there before the Olympics - just 40 days left! I'm finally rowing here after several failed attempts at past regattas! I'm in the eight mentioned at the very beginning, with just one change - one of the guys from the 1st VIII is also in the boat, and based on how the boat was going on Wednesday afternoon, it will go very well tomorrow! I'll update this tomorrow and let you know if we did do as well as I'm hoping!

Viv also gets her in a week. But meh.

Catch'a later!

This is the closest I'll get to the Olympics...

I can't believe it's only been a month since my last post! I couldn't even remember what I wrote about so I had to re-read it!

As usual, there have been highs and lows in the past four weeks; the lows being the same old Mo-Town being shit boring except for Friday nights, but at least the highs are different! 

So what's happened since last time? I basically moped around for a week after the Monmouth School rowing camp.. the weather was atrocious and I couldn't muster any motivation to go outside to do anything except to buy £1 frozen pizzas from the super market.. Sam was on Paddywagon in Ireland with his mates from Oz and Andy was skiing in France so I was left alone.

I eventually met up with Andy in London for the final weekend of term break and despite him being in London on about six different occaisons, had never actually seen any of the place! Our first port of call was Buckingham Palace, then Big Ben, the houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and the London Eye. Yes.. all that mandatory touristy bullshit.... but you gotta do it.

Next came something a little more unusual... we walked through Green Park and were amazed at all the squirrels out! Andy happened to have a packet of gummy bears open, so, I'm sure you can picture what happened... for those of you who can't, have a look at this.

Then came something even more surprising! Everyone who has seen Fenton chasing deer through Richmond  Park would have had exactly the same reaction as me... A woman had let her dog off of it's lead in the park and it had decided to chase after one unfortunate little squirrel. The lady ran after screaming at the dog in vain hope it would stop. All I heard was a woman crying "FENTON! OH JESUS CHRIST!". Andy and I were in hysterics as this little grey furball was hurtled through the air, limbs flailing!

Oh Jesus Christ!

The very first time the three of us were in London was to go to a party at Walkabout in Sheppard's Bush. On our stumble back home that night we stopped in at a pizza shop.. we thought it was absolutely amazing and the best pizza we'd ever eaten! We weren't sure if this was just because we were a little socially lubricated or if it was actually amazing, so we headed back to the little pizza shop on Bayswater Road which we now know is called Mr Pumpernick. We ordered a large double pepperoni and true to expectations, it was bloody good! Seriously guys. It's about 5 minute's walk from Sheppard's Bush station towards Bayswater. It's worth the detour, and even better if you are in the vicinity! 

The rest of the night was filled with the usual... things Mummy doesn't really want to read about..

The next day we continued on the tourist path - we headed to 221B Baker Street to solve a couple of mysteries. Or Andy did at least; learning that Sherlock Holmes never actually existed. This was followed by a short ride on the Tube up to Abbey Road to the famed Zebra Crossing - backing up traffic as we pose, lamely trying to recreate the Beatles' album cover.

Our visit to this area of London was really for one reason - the above were actually distractions from the true mission - Lords; the Home of Cricket. Unfortunately, the weather packed in as we arrived, so we called it quits for the day and hid inside Starbucks for about two hours until the rain eased off.

The next day was considerable more successful as the Lord shone down on Middlesex as they took on Durham. It wasn't exactly a cracker of a match, but a few England test players featured - Strauss, Collingwood, Onions and Mustard (yes...)

That night we decided to be incredibly frugal and slept at the airport before we picked up boarders the following morning. WORST. DECISION. EVER. It was a horrible night; I had next to no sleep and had to keep buying food at the coffee shop so we could sit on their seats - the only couch in the whole airport.

That's London over until tomorrow for Six60, so I'll truck on with the rest of the details. It's basically been rowing and swimming, tennis and cricket lessons with the prep school. Last Sunday I was at Dorney Lake with the senior rowing squad as they competed in their first 2000 metre regatta of the season - the build up to National Schools in three weeks and Henley in 7 weeks. The 1st VIII came fifth in the final - very commendable considering the River Wye looked more like Wellington Harbour in a howling gale rather than the serene stretch it had been in March - there was no water time at all, so this was literally the second outing this crew had together.

It also happened to be my 18th on Sunday so when I got home at 11pm, Andy, Sam and Sam's mate Matt AKA "MALLEN" sprinted off to the pub for a couple of birthday brews - the first legal ones of the year! We had the Monday off since it was a public holiday so there were laughs all into the morning - only to be ended (for me anyway) when I copped one in the nether regions from Mal playing indoor cricket. With a hard ball. Lesson learnt... for the night!

No regattas on this weekend so Andy and I are headed to London again for Six60 on Saturday night. The fourth show of their world tour, and there are going to be familiar faces for both of us, so we'll all catch up afterwards! Sam isn't coming this weekend because, in true Sam style, he was too late.

"Dude. Have you got your Six60 ticket yet? They'll probably sell out"

"Nah I reckon it'll be sweet as. I'll get them in a couple of weeks."

The next day...

"Dude. Six60 just sold out. Did you get your ticket?"

"F*************************K"

Some parts of this are true.

Anyway, that's tomorrow night so we'll be hitting it up hard with the rest of the kiwis in London.

Talk soon
exohexoh

Ghent? No.. Sorry guys. It's actually Gwent.

This is a bit of a rant, sorry everyone.


It's Easter break here and it's just gone midnight on a Thursday/Friday night-morning.. (you get the idea). I'm back in Monmouth after a week in German. I had a great time in Münster with the Hey family. They were the family Andy stayed with when he was over there for his three month exchange. They made me part of the family for the time I was there and it will be an unforgettable experience! The highlight by far of my week in Germany was seeing Seb for a day. It's been about  9 months since he went home and about 6 since anyone from Coll has seen him. It was definitely a bit of a warm fuzzy seeing him, especially since he's the first person I've seen since I moved here that I actually knew.


I'm sure you lot who are reading this have seen my photos, but here's the link in case you haven't... http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.402990493044723.101307.100000013266911&type=3&l=f724991698


If you're wondering why I'm still hanging around Mo-town in the middle of my holidays there is a reason, albeit not a good one by anyone's standards.. The school is having their training camp this week and I "volunteered" my time to help out. Bullshit. I was told I had to help out.
Usually the school goes to Ghent in Belgium, but this year the teacher in charge of rowing decided to go skiing for a week instead. But don't worry... this wasn't one of the main reasons I wanted to come here.. I love having to cut my holiday short to come back to where I live for ten months of the year.


On the bright side - oh. Actually. I don't think there is one... 


Oh well. Shit happens. I know I'm still a lucky little bugger being so close to Europe and I'm only a couple of hours from London.. Speaking of which, about the only thing I do have to look forward to these holidays now is meeting up with Andy and Sam in London next weekend before term starts again. The three of us haven't been in London together yet so we're going to hit it up hard I expect. 

Sprechen Sie deutsch?... uuuuuh.... No?

I'm sitting in the living room of the family Andy knows in Germany right now. They're a really nice family and have welcomed me into their home knowing next to nothing about me which just goes to show their generosity!

Fortunately they make up for me not knowing a single word of German. I can count to four, ask if someone can speak German, say yes, no, please and thank you.. that's it...  Everyone in the family is almost totally fluent in English so I'm safe on that front!

Kolja (17) and his older brother Tim (22) are taking me into Münster today to have a look around. We're riding bikes into the city as, apparently, Münster is the bike capital of Germany. I'm told there are nearly as many bikes in Münster as there are cars. That could mean there are an awfully large number of bicycles or just not many cars... I think it's probably the former though.

As a total sidetrack, Gotye has just started playing on the radio and The Phoenix Foundation was on before. Interesting hearing NZ and Australian music on the other side of the world.

I haven't experienced any German traditions yet but I'm sure Kolja and Tim will enlighten me today. I've been told about Currywurst (Curry Sausage) and that I have to try it. I'll let you know how that gets on, but apparently Andy loved the stuff when he was here, and everyone else is quite fond of it too...

Seb is visiting on Wednesday - the first time I would have seen him in nearly a year so I'm looking forward to that. Hopefully he'll still be full of his slightly inappropriate double entendres!

Thrilling times in Mo Town

This isn't going to be a full on 'heaps of stuff is happening' update because, to be honest, there hasn't been much new - I'm just bored and this is a good way to fill in some time.

There's been some good news on the German front though - I now have a place to stay at the start of April after I unfortunately couldn't stay with our favourite German Seb! I'm staying with Andy's friends in Münster which is only about 30 minutes further north than Seb in Mülheim so I should be able to visit him for a couple of days too! I'm considering myself very lucky that first of all Andy has friends where I'm flying to and secondly that they're incredibly generous and are letting me stay with them (they also said if I have a friend over here that they can stay too if anyone's planning on being in Germany for the first week of April).

What else has happened? Oh yeah. Paint Balling. Good good fun. We played at a place set in some Welsh woodlands and it had about seven or eight different playing fields. Sam had never played before and - without wanting to sound like a dick - I definitely let him know what it felt like to be hit. I think all the games Mikey Tong played against me has made me used to being hit by paint balls too... Nothing can be worse than point blank onto bare skin I don't think...

Last Friday we FINALLY met the 6th form lads. It's the first time in about 10 weeks that they've actually been out on a Friday night and we had such a good time with them. They're all funny guys and the amount of quality banter would rival some of the best in Coll (it's actually much better but you didn't hear that form me).

You won't hear back from me until Mid April probably since I've got a weekend for Welsh trials and I'm in London for a few days rowing, then it's term break and I'll be all over the place. Turns out I do actually have a little bit to talk about. Maybe I'll have a quick update soon. Ish.

I've started using Twitter a bit more now so here's my page if you want to follow me: https://twitter.com/#!/zacnewton17

Zac out
#Banter

East and West (And Everywhere Between... Sort of)

I've been back at work this week after having a week off for half-term break and I have been all around the place! I've been to National Parks, world heritage sights, battle grounds, seen some of the most famous sights in the world and met a whole bunch of people!

Half term has so far been the best week I've had in the UK. Sam and I went all over the place during the week while Andy had set off to Portugal for a little bit of sun and surf. Basically we skirted the south coast of Wales from Newport - you don't want to go there - through to a sleepy little town called Tenby before heading back to London for a few days.

We didn't have the best start to the week.. As much as I love him, Sam's time management isn't exactly... existent... and we missed the bus we were meant to be catching to Newport to catch our train to Cardiff. Oh well - all part of the experience! I learnt my lesson... leave him behind next time!

Cardiff started off so well, but unfirtunately turned out to be a bit of a bust. We didn't plan our week very well and turned up during the most boring part of the week. We didn't know this at the time but we found out pretty quickly. Student night in Cardiff is on a Wednesday and we were there for Monday and Tuesday. We did make up for this however by having an absolute blast in London later in the week (I'll get to that).

First stop in Cardiff was Cardiff Castle. I don't know how to actually explain why it was interesting other than the fact that shitloads of people tried to siege it and failed... and IT HAS A MOTE!! There wasn't a lot else to Cardiff unfortunately. The Dr Who exhibition was closed down while it was being made bigger and better so we couldn't see that :( and there wasn't (as far as Lonely Planet AKA The Bible was concerned). Anyway, we made do, and headed off to Spoons for a few. 

Next stop was Tenby - a sleepy little seaside village on the southeast coast of Wales in Pembrokeshire. The Bible had a field day with this place. Not only was Katherine Zeta Jones born here, it also features a house on Grand Designs! It was the house that sold it for us. True story. But in all honesty, we were there to walk down part of the coastal track. It's a 190 mile long walkway extending all the way around the region and the part we walked was about 8 miles. It was a tiny little town about half the size of Monmouth but it was really nice, especially since we were staying about 50 metres away from a really nice golden sand beach!

All the pics from our walk are on Facebook. You'll be able to see that we weren't the luckiest with the weather on Thursday when we headed out, but we did have a great time. We finished up in an even smaller village called Manorbier and again had a little difficulty with the bus... It drove past 10 minutes early while we were sat in a little cafe totally drenched, trying to heat ourselves up with a nice cuppa! Fortunately the people running the cafe were extremely generous and actually gave us a ride back to Tenby! Props to the Beach Cafe in Manorbier! 

Friday came along and next stop? London - bring it on! We left quaint little Tenby for a little more of a... living... environment. There weren't many people in  Tenby and we couldn't wait to actually see London in the day time. Finally things started going our way, and what better time? We left Tenby just before the rain set in again and 5 hours of train rides later we found ourselves standing outside SUNNY Paddington Station! It was time to bust out the sunnies and head to Hyde Park for a little frolicking. We were meeting Sam's friend Hamish at King's Cross and we had a little bit of time to kill so we decided to walk... The long way. We honestly couldn't care less. It was beautifully sunny and we were in one of the most famous cities in the world!

After we eventually found ourselves at King's Cross with Hamish and and Maddie we headed to our hostel. First experience in a London taxi... I felt like a total tourist (don't worry... I know I am!). We met up with the other gaps Hamish works with for dinner then went into Piccadilly Circus. Sam was convinced it would be really lame, but I think he actually had the best time out of all of us! It was absolutely packed - even at 1 AM when left the club. We managed to talk our way into the club for free (the lengths you have to go to on a gap wage!) and we all had a great time - even the girls when they weren't stuck in a circle of sweaty men old enough to be their parents!

That was Friday night out of the way and on Saturday we did all the touristy stuff - we went to the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels and had lunch in the sun on the bank of the Thames. We walked across Tower Bridge and headed to the tube to go to Westminster, Big Ben and the London Eye. Yes... we got all those ridiculously cliched photos... plus way too many selfies :D Next on the list was Buckingham Palace. Queeny wasn't in when we were - she goes up to Windsor Castle during the weekends. When we'd finished up the sightseeing we readied ourselves for the night ahead. Mum - stop reading here because I SWEAR NOTHING ELSE HAPPENED!

Time for the partying. On Friday it was just Sam, Hamish, Maddie, Kate and I who went out because Will (finally another Kiwi) and Lauren were pretty tired but tonight everyone came out. We went on a pub crawl through Leicester Square. We went to five bars and clubs in five hours and paid £15 to get on it. We all got a T-shirt. WOOOH! And a free drink and entry plus awesome drinks deals at all the places. £2 pints anyone?? We stayed at the last club called Zoo Bar until 3 am and had the most amazing time. 

You can start reading again now Mum.

On Sunday (after checking out over an hour late when the receptionist came up to our room) we went back into London for more. Hamish had to get a bus back to Edinburgh with Kate, Will and Lauren, but Maddie was here on holiday and was flying home on Monday. The three of us walked across the Millenium Bridge for obvious reasons... and went to the Tate Modern gallery on the otherside. Art isn't really my thing but I tried and found one artist I really liked called Yves Tanguy - a French surrealist painter. I hope you're happy Emma.

We also went to the British Museum to look at all the Egyptian stuff. I loved that part so much. I find it so cool that all this stuff is thousands of years old yet so complicated - how do we call ourselves more advanced? No-one in the world now could do what they did! Being there made me want to go to Egypt to see where it all came from. Maybe not this year, but it's on the bucket list!

Andy met up with us in the museum looking nice and brown after a week in 30+ weather. Not jealous one bit. We then headed to the bus station. As the saying goes - third time's a charm - we got on the bus! I don't know how we managed that. It even turned out to be the right bus as well!

That was half-term in a nutshell, and now time for the necessary bit about rowing... this week I officially became a British rower! Even got a card to say so! I just came back from Cardiff again today, but this time it was for a regatta. The river wasn't frozen over this time, and I even got one better than just coaching - I got in a boat to race, and we actually won our division! Hopefully this was the first of many successses this season, especially with Welsh trials in three weeks today!

I'll be back in a month to fill you in on my life.

x0x0

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