Epic Weather & British Summer Time

We were lucky that we didn't end up going to Glasgow on Saturday after all because it was epic gale force winds (i.e. 30mph!) that were bending all the trees in the back garden and rattling my windows all day! The top two boats did go out to our training facility Auchinstarry and said that it was absolutely killer! Made me kind of glad that I'm only in the 4th boat right now... Sunday was the end of British Summer Time which means it gets dark WAY TOO EARLY now! To be fair it was nice to get an hour back in the day today that I then spent watching telly but oh well!

Union Canal Edinburgh

I had another canal outing this morning on the Union Canal which is only a 15 minute walk from my place. Again really nice and there were no other boats to contend with! It was a good prep for our race tomorrow. I decided to walk home along the canal to see where I could access it near my flat. There is a really nice path that runs all along the canal right into the Tollcross area of Edinburgh, but I've been afraid to go on it in the dark. This will definitely be a running route for me since it's flat and goes 30 miles all the way to Falkirk, not that I'll ever run that far, but bike maybe... Successful morning all around only to find out later this evening that the races tomorrow had been called off on account of high winds and fast currents... oh well I guess my UK racing debut will have to wait

Too Many Trips to the Gym!

I made the critical error of going to the gym 4 times today! It went something like this: team erg test, postgrad tutorial, make-up erg, work, cheerleading dance practice, and weights induction. Slightly masochistic but I needed to do all of them to get better at both my sports. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep as soon as I got home!

My Daddy's Birthday

Tuesday which means busy as always with all my classes, cheerleading and rowing. Today was extra busy since I don't normally have an actual rowing session, but we do today! So we had to be extra productive at cheerleading practice since I had to leave early to get to the boathouse. We did learn ground-up liberties with cradles (which are tricky, especially for the main base!) Mad dash across town to the Union Canal for my first boat outing in Edinburgh proper. We went out in a 4 in beautiful conditions, the water was pretty calm and the stars were out! Really reminded me of rowing back at CSB/SJU on Lake Sag in the early mornings of winter... Today is also my dad's birthday so I called him when I got back from rowing. It was really nice to talk to him since I hadn't since I moved over here, he's been away a lot for work.

Being the Beckhams

The Edinburgh University Boat Club (EUBC) had their annual Families Night tonight which is the first major social event of the season. What happens is that all returning members of the club are sorted out into a boy and girl pair and they become the mum and dad of a family. The children are all the newbies in the club, regardless of being novice or senior squad, sectioned into equal sized groups and then assigned to a set of parents. Families Night is a fancy dress (aka costume) party where each family chooses a famous family to be for the event. My family's theme for the evening was The Beckhams and since there is only one female in that family I guess my persona for the night was just going to have to be Victoria Beckham aka Posh Spice! We all gathered at mummy's flat for dinner and drinks before meeting up with all the other families at Pear Tree. Then it was off to Potterrow for Societies Night where the boatclub won £500 by having the most people there! Some of the other familes were: The Simpsons, Flintstones, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Smurfs, Greek Gods, Mafia, Brady Bunch, Addams Family, Wombles, Incredables, and the Sound of Music. By the end of the night most people had a bit of some color of body paint on them since there was blue, green, yellow, white, brown, and even some red and black I think... Also tonight was initiation for the EU Vixens Cheerleading Squad, which I joined up with when they arrived at Potterrow too! I had my Vixens blue ring on so I was alright all though I never got my hair ribbons :( Spent the rest of the night going between the straggling rowers and the cheerleaders until the night was over at 3:30am! I haven't stayed out that late in a long, long time!

Getting Ready to be Victoria Beckham

The next few days were consumed with running around trying to find the perfect (cheap that doesn't look cheap) dress, tights, handbag, sunglasses, fake eyelashes, and the whole nine yards. Of course obviously on a budget! This was a wee bit tricky since things open after 9 and close at 6 so arranging shopping inbetween 3 classes and work was trickly. Thankfully, due to some amazing power shopping, and at least 2 trips along Prince's Street, I had gathered everything I needed, and just in time too!

Work Field Trip to the Chinese and Indian Embassies

So the fun part of working at a film school is getting to run errands such as sorting out visas for trips to film festivals around the world. Today I was sent to the Chinese Embassy to collect the visas for the Beijing Film Festival and then directly over to the Indian Embassy to drop off all the passports again for the Kolkata Film Festival. But they were impossible to work with and keep asking for things that weren't applicable! A real pain in the bum since we'd been talking to someone to make sure everything was correct!