You know how I said that I would post on every Friday around 9pm if I could? Well, as you can see, I have not kept to that very well, between play rehearsals, homework, and me being an absent-minded doofus. I'll try to reform, but no promises. Matt, if you're reading this, here you go! Sorry to keep you in such suspense.
Note: This is the third time that I've been sick since I got here. Aside from being in a new country with tons of new pathogens, I'm really gaining a firsthand perspective on the adage stating that guy's dormitories are just huge petri dishes. Some of these guys are just, well, guys. I really can't find a better way of describing it. So illness has been a real downer, plus the lack of sleep from trying to throw together a trip to Italy for half-term, leaving me drained of my usual exuberance.
Anyhow, as I mentioned last week, I tried my hand at archery, rifle shooting, and fencing. Archery I was fairly experienced at, consistently hitting within the red ring with the school's considerably lighter bows (28-pound draw as opposed to my 50), and thought myself well on my way to improvement. That was before the school's coach noticed me. Looking at my stance and posture, he found five mistakes right off the bat. He corrected them, explaining why each adjustment would make me a better archer and consistent with my shots. I soaked it all up like a sponge and followed his instructions with enthusiasm. I nocked an arrow, drew back with his lessons fresh in my mind, readied myself, loosed the shaft, and missed the target. I think that I must have left about a foot of air between the backboard and where my arrow flew. I gave the coach a look and he said "Okay, that was a bit far to the right, but the point is that you'll be consistent, so you can compensate and adjust your aim now." If by "compensate" he meant "struggle to regain the accuracy that I had had with my previous technique while failing to come near the bulls-eye," then he was dead on the mark. By the end of the night, not including my first two volleys which were uninhibited by technique, I only hit the center circle once and dotted the target with such random holes and marks that I could have sold it as a sculpture in tribute to Jackson Pollock. If it wasn't for the instructor's logical explanations and how each of them made perfect sense, I would have started ignoring him half-way through. However, as the man could explain each detail of the technique's rational to me, I will trust his judgement that I will improve much faster now, though the evidence informs against him.
Regarding shooting, there's really little to say. I hit the target and beat everyone in my group by a hair's breadth (133/150 points when rounded down), but then noticed how I was nowhere near as skilled as any person (or most of the kids) on the squads. Simple as that. Fencing, however, proved to be more intriguing than the other two, as I had never fought in such a way before. For one, I was told to stand on the heel of my front foot. This goes against everything I've ever learned from dance or Bridgewater, which stated that I must stay on the balls of my feet. I mean, for fencing it works, but for anything else, it would compromise my balance and send me sprawling if I happened to take a misstep or make any mistake. Then, after about five minutes of the instructor fixing my stance and a myriad of other things, I realized that there was a steady trickle of younger kids coming into the room. I finally asked the coach where the people my age were and he said "Oh, well the time tables got a bit shuffled, so the younger kids are taking lessons now. You're a beginner though, so this could be really good for you!" Thanks. You just put me on par with a bunch of prepubescent girls, half of which can't stop giggling long enough to get their gear on. Real self-esteem booster coach! The man was quite kind and a good teacher, but I wish that someone had told me beforehand so that I could have learned among my peers. It didn't help that the girl that had to spar with me (age twelve? thirteen?) seemed too afraid, or perhaps too guilty, to attack an older, newbie guy. The poor kid only stabbed at me four times, scored only once, and suffered a counter-attack that was sevenfold as vicious as hers (so probably about as aggressive and effective as a chihuahua with a Napoleon complex). As soundly as I "beat" her, I'm sure that the girl could have cleaned my clock with her sword any day of the week if she wasn't inhibited. Why else would she have all of her own equipment if she wasn't taking it seriously or had skill or at least experience? Younger though she was, her ability would probably have trumped my thirty minutes of holding an épée without her even breaking a sweat. Afterward, the coach found me and told me that, for someone who had never fenced before in his whole life, I was pretty good and would probably do well to join the older group. Yay! Now I can be totally humiliated and thrashed by people that I'll see during school! That wasn't supposed to be sarcastic, by the way. I'm a fan of the "sink or swim" learning method when it comes to sports.
Apparently here, nobody looks forward to the school's open houses (aka "Open Days"). I was a tour guide at my last school and enjoyed showing visitors around campus, chatting with them, and giving them some insider's info that some of the teachers probably wouldn't want me to say (such as "Our football team only started winning games these last two years after about two years of no victories" rather than "our football team is definitely improving"). A part of me was looking forward to open day. However, as I am new here, I was relegated to my dorm where I got to tour one family around for five minutes. Other than that, I sat around with a few other guys and the house mother for over four hours, chatting and sometimes trying to get some university application stuff done. During this time, someone started asking the foreign students about what language they dreamed. Most said that half of their dreams were in their native language and half in their other language(s). One of the Germans said that, when they dream in English, the dreams are more absurd and fantastic, while the ones in German are realistic. Everyone was rather perplexed as to why, but I have a theory. His unconscious mind probably has to work twice as hard to dream in a foreign language, especially one as hard as English, so perhaps his mind is so focused on making sensible speech that it lets the dream's continuity and realism lapse. Along the same lines, it could instead be that his analytical mind is so focused on coherent speech that his creative mind is less inhibited by rational, mundane thought processes and allowed to flourish. Opinions anyone? I'm curious to know if you guys have any thoughts on this. Aside from that conversation and making an obscene number of crepes that night with the guys in the dorm, Saturday was a bit of a bust.
I discovered that one of the universities that I'm applying to doesn't require anything from my current school, as I already graduated in the U.S.. I could include grades and recommendations from my current teachers if I wished, but it would only supplement my main application. If the other universities are of the same mind, I might just tell half of my homework to go jump off of a cliff! A lot of this stuff is really interesting and I've got teachers giving me additional work that piques my curiosity, but some of it I've already studied before and/or have no use for. Instead of taking my media industry homework seriously, I could spend more time working on my middle-ages independent study or on my fiction writing. That might irk the teachers, but I'd honestly get a lot more out of this year.
Speaking of extra work, I've been helping someone with their IB math homework these last two weeks and I found that (I can't believe I'm saying this) I miss calculus and trigonometry. They're like puzzles that work a different part of my mind. When I don't have to do it every night for homework, it's actually kind of a pleasant pastime. Never thought I'd actually enjoy math...
Which reminds me, I haven't been homesick once. I find this particularly odd as, last time when I was away from home, I was gone for two weeks and became pretty morose toward the end. It's been, what, five weeks now? Terrible as this sounds, the thing I miss most is my dog Thurber. Neither my parents, nor my friends, nor memories of my old school strike a sharp pang of longing in me, miss them though I do. Talking to one of the day students that shares my room, he said it was probably because I'm having a good time. That's probably true. Each time I got homesick, I spent days on end with minimal structure or work, as I was at summer camp or in rural Virginia, yet I was still having fun. However, there was little challenge to it. Complain as I might about homework, I actually do enjoy my studies. I'm like a boarder collie. I need work. I need occupation. Otherwise, I start gnawing on the furniture.
Okay. I know that this entry was a bit helter-skelter, but honestly, this week was unexciting with only these events punctuating the monotony. If Shakespeare is right and fate is like a wheel, where things get worse before they get better, then perhaps this week will be an improvement! Until then, if you have comments or criticisms that could make this blog better, then please contact me! I wish you a good week and hope to write you on Friday!
P.S. I just found out that the school blocks my blog between 11pm and 8pm, so late night entries like this (11:34pm) will have to be late if I can't quite make this window of opportunity. Either way, it should be my job to get this done.
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