Rowing

Before I start talking about rowing, I found out what Cambridge students are called! I got used to being able to call Grinnell students Grinnellians. Cambridge students are called Cantabrigians (and incidentally the City of Cambridge rowing club is called the Cantabrigian rowing club) and Cantabs for short. I don't think there's a name for Churchill students, but students studying various disciplines are referred to by different names... mathematics students are called "mathmos." Sometimes I think British English is fairly manageable, but I have absolutely no intuition for how people decide to abbreviate names for things... for example, I thought, from context that "ents," which always seems to go with a list of planned events was short for events, but it's actually short for entertainments.

I've been rowing crew here at Cambridge and I rowed in my first race out on the river this Saturday. I rowed with the women's novices from Churchill College at Winter Head, which is a 2500 m race on the Cam. This race didn't have a lot of novice teams rowing in it, and so our time of 15 minutes 28 seconds was comparatively slow, but there were several other boats that came in behind us. Actually, this was only the second outing we'd been on where we had actually rowed with all 8 people at one time. The first one was the day before the race, so I think we did well.

Rowing for 15 minutes as hard as you can is really exhausting. I had a blister on my right hand from the day before and it, as well as another blister that formed during the race broke open, which was really nasty and hurt the rest of the day. But fortunately I am getting some calluses on my hands now, so this should get better. And no, we're not allowed to wear gloves for rowing. For people who row in very cold weather there is something that fits on the oar over their hands, but rowers' hands need to be in contact with the oar; it's the rules for races. After the race I was tired and hungry for the rest of Saturday.

So more about rowing... all the colleges in Cambridge (perhaps excluding some very tiny ones?) have teams, so it's not that big a deal to go out with the novice rowers. It's very friendly and accepting, so everyone who wants to try rowing gets a chance. Here at Churchill once we get past the first term we will probably have first and second women's teams as well as first and second men's teams.

As far as how rowing crew works, there are 8 people in a typical boat as well as a cox, who gives us instructions for maneuvering and keeping in time over a microphone. Each person rowing has one oar that goes to one side. I've been rowing at spot number five, so my oar is on bow side (to my left) and I'm roughly in the middle of the boat.

Although power is important in rowing, being in time is in some ways more important. When we were rowing in the race Saturday, whenever we got in time better we would have a big burst of speed. So I found out the crew is kind of different from a lot of sports in the sense that if you're not in time with you're team, you are messing things up for them, so even if it's miserably difficult you just kind of have to keep going, which is pretty rough. If you pull your oar out of the water too late, it gets stuck, which is called crabbing your oar, or catching a crab. Also, when you row you have to turn your oar on the recover, which is called feathering your blade. I think having to turn my oar has been the main source of the blisters on my hands.

Going out rowing on the Cam in the morning is a lot of fun, though. We typically practice about twice a week; the Churchill boathouse is about 10 or 15 minutes by bike from the college. Out on the river, there are lots of swans and ducks as well as people's house boats. And it's a pretty good feeling when everything is going right and the boat starts to move really fast. So I definitely feel like I'm getting the authentic Cambridge experience.

Guy Fawkes Day

Today is Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Bonfire Night, when English people all get together to celebrate Guy Fawkes's attempt to blow up Parliament some 400 years ago.
So, for a study break tonight I went to see the fireworks at a big carnival here in Cambridge. The carnival was huge... crowds, big spinning rides, flashing lights, loud music. I also saw a carnival game where the prizes included the usual stuffed animals, but also cans of Foster's beer and for one of the larger prizes, a giant handle of Jack Daniels. Somehow I don't think this would happen at an analogous family event in the U.S.
I think the closest thing I could compare the whole celebration to was the Fourth of July. I suppose one of the good things about it getting so dark here so ridiculously early here (I think we're at roughly the same latitude as Maine) is that we could have fireworks at 7:30 in the evening. The fireworks were pretty spectacular and directly overhead of me and my friends. In fact, so directly overhead that my friend standing about three feet away from me got hit by a very fast-moving small cardboard tube that must have been casing for one of the fireworks. She was fine, but a bit startled.
As far as other notable events recently, of course yesterday was election day. Late last night I went down to the Cambridge University Union with some of my American friends to watch coverage. I could pretend this was really cool, but actually it was really crowded and they didn't have a very good sound systems set up. So after watching cnn without being able to hear it for about an hour, I got tired and went home before any states were called. Some of my friends were up until 3 last night to find out the outcome. I got up at 6 this morning and so I found out the result then, and then I went out for rowing practice, which was a lot of fun. It's definitely not anywhere near as cold as it gets in Iowa right now so this morning it was really nice out on the river.
I hope to be able to make some more posts soon and I have some photos of the math building to put up, but right now I'm really busy with my courses and a handful of various applications. We are reaching the halfway point of Michaelmas Term so things are getting pretty rough. I keep telling myself that if the work here were easy, I'd feel disappointed.