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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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Hi!
Sorry for the lack of updates. School’s actually been pretty busy for the past couple of weeks and the site was acting up. The past couple weeks have been okay, nothing too exciting has happened. I’m actually having difficulty remembering exactly what I’ve been doing lately. The time’s just flying by!
Well, let’s start off with some more crew stories (I hear that they’ve been a hit). Our race is in exactly 6 days. As luck would have it, we’ve hit several more snags in our training plan (and more boats and the pillar of a bridge, but more on that later). Things were progressing quite nicely. We managed to find 8 girls willing to get up before the sun 6 mornings a week, as well as a cox that wasn’t going away the weekend of the race. However, last week it all fell apart. The first problem was that Liesel, one of the two girls with crew experience and the powerhouse of our otherwise weak and measly team, re-injured her back and is now out of the race. To make matter worse, at our next practice, Adrianne hurt her back and she still isn’t sure if she’ll be about to row (but we’re keeping our fingers crossed). She hurt her back while we were in the middle of the water in a four-seater. We couldn’t really continue with practice with only 2 of us rowing, so our coach decided that our cox would row and Adrianne would be the cox for the rest of practice. So Adrianne and the cox were trying to change places in the middle of the water via the coach’s motorboat. It was funny. Sas turns around and is like, “because my travelblog isn’t crazy enough.” I was thinking the same thing. Despite the confusion, we managed to get everyone settled in their new places. Peter was now sitting in seat 1 and took off doing like 30 strokes a minute (crazy fast). The rest of us were trying to keep up, but couldn’t. We were totally off balance, oars were flying. I’m sure we looked just horrible. To make matters worse, Peter’s oar was catching the water funny and kept splashing Hye Won (why is it always Hye Won??). By the time we stopped, Hye Won was drenched.
Anyways, the week progressed and we found a replacement for Liesel. Fortunately, Mia also has experience so hopefully not all is lost. Our first practice though with all 8 of us wasn’t very good. Poor Hye Won (again, I know) kept getting her oar stuck in the water. It’s really scary when that happens because not only does the entire boat lurch off to a side, but your oar also comes flying back at you. Let’s just say that by the end of practice, Hye Won was getting really good at ducking her oar.
To make matters worse, that was one of our better practices lately. We’re just hoping that everything holds together until the race. Fortunately, we’re not the only ones out on the water humiliating ourselves. I didn’t see it happen, but apparently the national team fell into the water right in front of the dock the other day. I guess our practices could be going worse.
In other news, a couple of weekends ago Lauren took a few of us along to have lunch with a family that her father knows. The daughter is also a student at AUC. They live in a gorgeous apartment in Cairo. Chandeliers and oriental rugs were everywhere. The lunch was amazing! Her mom went crazy in the kitchen and made us a lunch similar to their dinners during Ramadan-- tons of salads, stuffed vine leaves, rice, and tons of other dishes. All of this was topped off with desserts, teas, and Turkish coffees. In addition, they sent us home with even more food. Her mom was telling us a lot about Cairo and we had some neat discussions about Islam. Overall, it was a great afternoon.
I heard some crazy stories a few days ago. Remember the ISSO trip to the oasis was ended up being not a lot of fun? Well, apparently this oasis is the only place in Egypt where malaria is still prevalent. The story is that one of the guys from our group is now in the hospital with malaria, and another guy is sick as well. Pretty scary. Hopefully, they’ll be better soon.
That’s pretty much it up till now. If I don’t post again before the race, think of us this Friday morning (Thursday night back home), and wish us luck and a safe and dry race!!
More later,
Katie
By the way, I've included some random pictures because I haven't taken any lately.
previous travel blog entry
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