Game Day and such ...

Yet another exciting week here in Newcastle. As if Oktoberfest wasn't enough of a party for one week, Monday night was the Fresh Duck'd bar crawl. Basically, all the Freshers at Newcastle University invade the town for one last group party. The bar-hopping started at 5pm, but since I had rugby practice until 8 I met up with my flatmates later in the crawl. Oh, college ... where else do you go out until 4am on a Monday night?

Tuesday was packed with classes. Biochemistry, Archaeology, and Sociology are luckily getting gradually more interesting. There's a lot of reading outside of lectures that I have yet to do, but I have more important stuff to be doing (like country-hopping, playing rugby, and going out with the flatmates!).

Wednesday I flat out skipped my Archeology lecture to travel to Sunderland for my first rugby game! All 35 of us loaded the bus around 10am only to return to the University at 6pm. Long day, but SO much fun. There are so many girls in the rugby club because we have 2 teams. The 1st team is like the varsity squad, and the 2nd team is mainly Freshers and plays in a different league. All the girls split the time on the field for the game against Sunderland so us Freshers could get a sense of the game with some veteran players on the field. I played an entire half of the game at "Hooker." (No ... not that kind of hooker. Go Google rugby positions and look it up.) Apparently I'm the perfect size being short but really strong, and can run faster than the other forwards. Basically, I'm at the front and center of the scrums, I get picked up by my shorts and grab onto the players in the prop position to fight the other team for the ball, I get to be a driving force in all the mauls and rucks, and throw the ball in at line outs (yeah ... I perfected the spiral throw!). I'm battling and tackling girls twice my size! I really caught onto the game well and apparently had some really great plays. I had no clue I was doing well until the veteran players kept telling me that I was doing extremely well. At the end of the game, each team does "Man of the Match" where the captain of each team picks the best forward and back from their own team and the best player from the opposing team. Guess who was named "Forward of the Game"? ME! No joke ... I rocked my first rugby game so well that the captains had a hard time believing I had never played before. Later on at the weekly rugby social the captains told me that right now they're thinking about putting me up with the 1st team. How can I be ready for the 1st team?!?! I'm a little hesitant ... since I'm only here for a semester I'd almost rather get more playing time and start on the 2nd team than be the back-up for the 1st team, then again the 1st team girls are so much fun! We'll just see what happens. All I know is that I must find a rugby team to play on when I get back to the States. This is SO much fun!

More boring lectures today, but I finally got my package from home that I've been waiting for. I had rugby training (again!) today which was really tough since I was so sore from the game yesterday (getting hit by opposing teams' props literally twice my size hurts a bit). I decided to take the night off and just stay in and recover tonight from all the rugby games and socials.

Tomorrow I head up to Edinburgh, Scotland with the Loyola group. We'll be there until Sunday! It's such a beautiful city, and we seem to have Saturday pretty booked up with touristy stuff, then on the way back to Newcastle Sunday we stop at an island to explore.

I'm booking my flight to Rome for the weekend of Thanksgiving to see Anna and Janine as soon as I find a travel buddy. I just need someone else from Newcastle to go with me so I don't have to stay in a hostel by myself. And apparently the Rome ladies are heading to see Clarice and Mary in Paris in November for my birthday weekend ... looks like my 20th birthday party will be in France! Life can't get better than this ...