Various shenanigans: some frisbee related, some not.

Well hello everyone,

The past week has been fairly busy, which is always good, and thus this post is a bit long. It includes frisbee tournaments, being a complete screw up, a mini Northwestern reunion, over-eating, and Ash Wednesday (woo!).

Lets start with the frisbee tournament. How did I get mixed up in all this frisbee business you may ask? Well one of my friends here is pretty intense about ultimate frisbee i.e. plays on his college's team and takes it all very seriously, which I respect, and he met up with an English guy who is also a good player and really into it and they formed a club team here at Queen Mary. Now they were fairly desperate for players, since the regional tournament took place shortly after they had formed the team so Jake asked if I wanted to play. I was all like "why not?, it'll be fun."

So theres the origins, now on to the actual tournament. We woke up at 6:30 am on Saturday (ugh) to catch a train to Chichester University, where the regional tournament was being held. Chichester is this tiny little town about an hour and a half by train from London. From the little of it I saw, it seemed to be a very nice little English town. As for the tournament, I was a little blown away by the magnitude of it all, since most of the other teams had full on uniforms and what not, so our team kinda figured if we won one or two games, it'd be a success. We were seeded last in the entire tournament since the team had just come into existence, and in our first game we ended up winning 13-1 (say whaaa?!). It seems we probably shouldn't have been seeded last, since Rob and Jake (the British and American co-founders of the team) are absolute frisbee studs. The rest of us were at least moderately coordinated/athletic and I was fairly happy with my play for the first couple games before I got super tired and cold, but those two would basically pass the disc between themselves while the rest of us tried to stay out of their way and not completely screw up on defense. That formula seemed to work, as we won our next two games against increasingly better teams. Now, remember when I said earlier that we were desperate to find players? Well, I have failed to mention thus far that we didn't quite scrounge up 7 players (the standard number of players on the field) so we didn't have any subs and played a man down the entire time. Thus, by our fourth game of the day we were absolutely obliterated (tres fatigues, as the French would say). I could barely move my legs, and my determination to never again touch a cigarette has never been greater. Despite our condition, we still managed to stay close to an absurdly good team, and ended up losing 13-11, I think. Finishing the day at 3-1 was better than any of us had anticipated, and we were feeling pretty good.

After the fourth game, Jake and I headed back to London for the night, while the rest of the team looked forward to a restful nights sleep on some random floor. We wanted to get back because it was one of our friends' birthday, and they were hitting up a cheap all you can eat sushi place that couldn't be missed, and it would also be nice to sleep in a real bed. So after dinner, I get back to my flat, completely exhausted, ready to hit the sack, and what should I find? The Brits are having a bit of a party in our kitchen, and I was convinced to stay for a couple drinks. Well, as tends to happen, one drink turned into multiple games of Circle of Death and before you know it I'm drunk and going to bed at 2 am, having to wake up at 7 the next day to get back to Chichester. And this is when I completely screw up. I apparently forgot to turn on my alarm and didn't wake up until noon. I had several missed calls and angry texts from Jake. Luckily, another girl joined for Sunday, so the team still had six people, but I still felt like a complete douche. The team ended up finishing tenth out of 23, which is amazing considering our situation, but it woulda been nice if I was there and maybe helping the team do a little better. (Afterword: The next couple days after Saturday, I could barely walk I was in so much pain. My whole body ached. It really makes me consider exercising more regularly.)

So after hitting up Draper's once again for 1 pound pints (glorious deal), Tuesday rolls around and the plan is to meet up with a couple fellow abroad Wildcats, Jessie Cai who is studying at the London School of Economics and Emily Winant who was visiting Jessie from Paris. We hit up Ice Bar, which is a pretty schazzy place made of ice (a little internet research tells me its in the location of the former royal wine cellars) where you have to throw on a goofy parka/poncho deal and pay too much for girly drinks in cups made of ice. It was really pretty cool, and it had been recommended to me by a couple people who'd been in London. After that, we went to Sports Cafe, which is basically an American college bar, to meet up with a few of my Queen Mary friends. The night quickly devolved into a shit show, in typical Northwestern fashion, with beer pong being played, pike songs being sung, and me being a stupid drunk dancer. Overall, a good time (I'm dreading the pictures the girls took going up on facebook).

Finally, today is of course Ash Wednesday, so I figured thats as good a time as any to go to Mass for the first time overseas. I decided to go to Westminster Cathedral, where I went to Easter Mass when I was in London back in high school. Its the headquarters of the Catholic diocese for London and a very cool church, built in the 1800's in a sort of Byzantine style. So I got my ashes and walked around the area for bit. It was a solid day, and tonight I have to decide whether I or not to participate in the great "grizzly challenge" where some of the Americans and a couple Brits have decided to have an eating competition where you have to finish a large doner from this skeezy kebab place and a big chicken meal from this skeezy chicken shop. Basically, you're taking a couple years off of your life in the spirit of competition. I dunno if my skinny frame and small stomach can handle it, so stay tuned for that. Oh, and I just remember you're not supposed to eat meat on Ash Wednesday, so maybe I won't participate. Whatevs.

Well, the big trip to Portugal starts Friday, and I am super excited about that. We've got all of our plans figured out and a quasi-itinerary made-up, which is good. After that, my Uncle Jack is in London for a couple days on his way to a business trip in Switzerland so I'll have an opportunity to show off my London local-ness. And after that it'll be March already. Holy Crap has time flown by over here. Its all been such an amazing experience and the fact that its almost already been two months is just mind-blowing. As I was walking around today after Mass, I think it kinda finally really hit me that I'm actually living in London. I guess before I was in the mindset of kind of an extended visit or vacation. It was a pretty surreal moment, and on that note, I guess thats it for now, thanks for reading.