Oxford has 860 societies (clubs) to join. That's not including the sports teams for each individual college, of which Oxford has 38. I learned a long time ago that if I don't have a reason to go outside when I could be studying, I won't see the light of day. So I've been looking for a sports team to join. After asking around a bit, the one thing I keep hearing I should do is join the rowing team. This is Oxford, after all. So this morning I heard there was a rowing "taster" for Hertford at 2. I showed up, and had a blast!
I met up with 3 guys, 2 girls, and the co vice captain of the womens rowing team for Hertford. Oddly enough, one of the two girls was from Chicago, and the other was from Anaheim (5 minutes from Chapman!) How weird is that? Neither of them were too friendly though, I actually hit it off a lot better with Louise, the vice captain. She's this sweet German girl who walked us down to the boat house, which is on the Thames. As we were walking down, a bunch of guys were practicing on the river, and I was thrown back to a scene from The Social Network where "The Winklevi" lose a boat race to the French team as "In the Hall of The Mountain King" plays epically in the background. So while I'm watching these Oxford guys row, I can't help but sing the song in my head. Eventually, my film major side completely takes over and I start geeking out hardcore. I shared my enthusiasm with Louise, to which she replied "Oh yeah, people say that all the time." Yay, I'm not the only weirdo.
We learned basic rowing technique indoors before we went out on the boat. I was worried that rowing would make my arms super huge, because I have strangely big biceps already, so I was thrilled to hear that rowing mostly works your butt and thighs. YES! Honestly, I thought it'd be a lot harder than it was. I signed up for 3 days a week. There's a race on 4th week and I really hope I'll get to race!
Afterwards, I came home and got ready for my interview. I created a profile for an Au Pair website around a month ago- thinking if I found a really nice family to work for I'd stay overseas a little longer and work for them. Anyway, I've been talking to some families here and there, but this really promising family contacted me last week. A German mother and an Italian father with 3 kids who live in London and the Mother works a somewhat philanthropic job. Their kids are adorable! We set up a skype interview for today, and I had to go to a pub to do it because we can't do video streaming at our flat, the broadband can't sustain it. Anyway, it went pretty well and I'm going to London on Tuesday to meet the family. We'll see how it goes!
After the interview, James was waiting for me at the pub and we were having some snacks when Trivia night started.
Urgh, Trivia Night. It was free, so we joined. We shouldn't have joined. All the trivia was English themed because St. George's day is tomorrow. I don't even know who St. George is- that should've been the first clue. We named our team "The Dumb Americans" as a joke.
Too true to be funny. We got 2/20 right in round 1. 0/20 in round 2. 0/20 in round 3. And when we tried to quit in round 4, they told us we could use the internet and look up the questions. We tied for last place with 6/20 in that round. It was so embarrassing.
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