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!
No comments:
Post a Comment