Dear family and friends,
My first week back after spring break was the usual transition between my “normal life” attitude and my “studyharddon’tsleepgeteverythingdoneArrggg!” attitude. As I watched my family drive away Sunday night I felt pretty hollow and lonely inside, but by Monday morning I was more or less over not seeing them again for another two and a half months. It’s been pretty hard getting back in the swing of things though, because I don’t have class till 10:30 every day (I did this on purpose so I would get enough sleep this quarter). I feel rather sluggish, even though I still get up at 7 or 8 am. I guess I feel like I get things done better when I am under a lot of pressure, and when I’m not under much pressure I tend to feel like I can slack off and relax some. Hmm, better work on that.
I had a very interesting Wednesday night because I went to an etiquette dinner. It was planned for business majors, but the coordinator said I was welcome to come if I wanted to. This was a wonderful opportunity to work on my social skills while getting a delicious four course meal for FREE!! Very exciting. I learned a lot about social etiquette (I hope your proud of me Nana), and I’ve kind of figured out I need to work harder on making sure my manners are up to scratch, since I often don’t care (yes, you can glare at me Mom).
The big amazing super awesome cool thing you’ve all been waiting to hear about is of course my rugby team’s trip to Nashville to participate in the Nash Bash rugby tournament. We left on Friday at 2pm (actually we didn’t really leave until 3pm) and drove down to Nashville, spending the night in a slightly questionable Super 8 hotel. Fortunately I didn’t have any classes I had to skip on Friday. God, in his infinite grace, worked it out so that my first Chinese Calligraphy class that would have been Friday from 2-5:30pm was cancelled, so I could go on this very important trip with my team.
We had two games on Saturday. The tourney took place in a set of very large fields on what looked like somebody’s farm, as opposed to a sports park. This was a very big tourney, there were six fields and around 30 teams participating. We won our first game pretty easily, 15-0. I don’t remember who we were playing (in the heat of a game, who you are beating the *** out of isn’t really important to you). Tired and muddy/wet, but content, we waited around in the COLD (about 50 deg. with a high wind chill) until our next game about two hours later. This one was against a team from Illinois, and we lost it 0-10. However we and the coaches still felt pretty good about it since we fought very hard and they were a good team. We could definitely make improvements though.
Just a reminder, I had been moved from #2 hooker position to #12 strong center position, which is a change from being a front to being a back. This is a pretty drastic change if you know anything about rugby: fronts hit people and pretend to be bulldozers, backs have to run really fast, dodge a lot, occasionally hit people, and be able to throw and receive a ball very well. I like being a back sooo much better than my former front position, but this was my first time playing as a back and so I was still learning.
Sunday we had one game, which…..drumrolll……yes we won 22-10, yeah!! And I am especially proud of it because we fought very hard, after two other games the day before, plus the other team was very good. I also did much better in my position and made a few very good runs, one of which scored us a goal. Then there was the very long drive home, do a few chores back at my dorm (like washing my bag full of very wet, very dirty and stinky rugby clothes) and finally falling into bed. I did manage to get through the weekend with only a few bruises, Praise the Lord, and thanks to your prayers.
Hope that satisfies you, and I hope you didn’t die of desperation and pining because you had to wait a whole day longer than usual to get my update ;)>
Finally, I have PICTURES!!!! (hint hint go look) I got a very nice camera for my birthday and will be uploading pictures onto our family blog which you should find in the next blog after this one. Please check it out and see us in action.
In Christ
Lydia