Archery and the other Mundane aspects of my life

I  realize that over the last couple weeks, my blog has been saturated with archery talk. To be fair, archery does take up a majority of my time, somewhere a little less though quite close to 15 hours is spent at archery shooting or travelling to archery (it is nearly an hour round trip). This doesn't include the nearly full days I spend at competition every once in awhile. I love going to archery and I love building up the skill and getting better. I think I have diagnosed these feelings to a deep psychologically trained need for competition. I have always done sports and in the last two years, I haven't. Some part of me really misses the thrill of competition and being a part of a team.

 But that being said, archery is quite universal. When I talk about archery, I am not doing my job in telling you about England and those unique experiences I am having here. And I realize that this is mainly due to the mundanity that accompanies spending a lot of time at one place. Over time, life becomes routine and I have told you about how each of those unchanging parts has occurred over the last couple of weeks. I feel conflicted as there really is not much I can still contribute to the discussion.

Nothing of very great significance occurred over this last week in England.

The thanksgiving holiday passed and if it weren't for the fact that I am American in the UK, I and others would not have been remotely aware. I skyped my family, but this was extremely difficult due to the time difference. Saturday night, the MCR (graduate aka middle common room) hosted a thanksgiving and there was turkey and lamb and so many potatos. There was some stuffing and cranberry sauce and most of the things you would expect at Thanksgiving. I made sweet potato mini pies (recipe here: http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/6172/mini-sweet-potato-tarts.aspx?o_ln=RD_MC_Photo%3a+1_SimilarRecipes&o_is=RD_More+Choices) which turned out great.

Afterwards, I went to the Christmas drinks for archery and once again spent more time socializing and building bonds for the team.

Most of the UK is ready for Christmas. As a result there are a number of Christmas parties and dinners and musical events for the Christmas season this week. I wont make most of them, because I will be beginning my long bout of travelling for the break (beginning in Edinburgh).

For the most part all the travelling is planned and after I print out some things and finish the itenerary, we will be on our way. It feels a little unreal at this point and I still have plenty of work and packing that I need to complete in preparation for leaving. I am leaving some of the trip up to chance, as certain details can't be finalized at this moment, and that has contributed to some of my anxiety about the trip. That being said, I am flexible and confident that Sara and I can manage.

Alright wrapping up the update with Archery, because as few things have happened since the last post.

Last week in Loughborough, our team didn't do as well as normal. I shot decently well and my score did manage to qualify as one of the top 4 scores of the team. (only the top 4 contribute to the team total). The trip to Loughborough was not particularly remarkable in itself. The university is abnormal in my opinion because it is entirely devoted to sports. Even in the US, I feel as though sports is alway a part but not a whole of the university community. We went out to dinner and following, I carelessly expected the more experienced archers to know where they were going. As a result, we got a little lost. There was tons of food at the competition and my flapjacks were quite the hit! The bus ride too and from was about 2 hours and I ended up entertaining everyone with pokemon on my laptop. So on a whole trip was quite a lot of fun and took the entire day! 9am-10pm

We had county champs on Sunday, which wasn't an official university competition but was rather something that anyone could do or join. There were quite a few archers from the surrounding area and from other archery companies. I came in second place among the female novice archers and I won a shiny medal (shown below). It was also a pretty frustrating shoot because my first 18 arrows were pretty miraculous but then I introduced something into my form and shot terribly the rest of the time. I got a 401 with zero misses though, so I am pretty happy. Just means that I have to keep working hard and I know that I can do better.

To wrap up this rather rambling post, I want to include a distinction the English (british) that I learned today. So, I knew that biscuits were essentially what Americans refer to as cookies and that cookies in England was also something but more specific. So I have been given clarification from my lovely friends at archery. Cookies refers to any circular baked good that has chunks of chocolate, nuts or fruit. Biscuit refers to cookies and anything else. So an oreo would not be a cookie but it would be a biscuit. The things to learn, and the language quirks that exist. Oh well. Next time I post, I will likely be outside of Oxford.

Adventures Await

KH