The UK Saga: Part 1

So, perhaps it is a good thing that I waited to write my update on what's been going on here in the UK until today, because otherwise it would have missed out on some entertaining tidbits. But I'll give the highlights up to this point.

We arrived in Scotland on Tuesday morning at about 7:30am, without too much trouble (other than some serious jetlag and one unfortunate passport-losing incident). When we arrived we all got settled into our rooms at the HMS Caledonia, which quite a number of us were familiar with seeing as we are in the same place as the last UK tour. Lunch came and went and many of us crawled into our beds for the deadly pre-practice nap. I woke up slightly disoriented due to the surroundings and the exhaustion, and stumbled my way out to the playing fields. We had a brief handling practice just to take some of the edge off of flying and (I think) to keep us from sleeping the rest of the day away. After practice was dinner and then a short meeting. A quick glance around the room by Kathy, told her all she needed to know... watching the Scotland match from last year was not going to happen that night. Quite a few of us (me included) were using all left over energy stores just trying to stay vertical and keep our eyes open. Shortly after the meeting adjourned, most people were sound asleep. I forced myself to stay awake until 9pm, in an attempt to get on something resembling a normal schedule.

Despite the nearly 10 hours of sleep I got (some got closer to 14), when my alarm went off at 6:45 I muttered a few choice words, and rolled out of bed for the day to begin. Breakfast (poached & fried eggs, stewed tomoatoes, baked beans, and potatoes) came and went - I can't really say for sure whether I was even awake for it, but supposedly I was there. We then had a meeting (i think, the days are all starting to sort of run together) or maybe that was after lunch. I think it was after luch. In either event, we went to practice and spent the better part of the morning working on decision making and tackling. The weather was remarkably mild, and the fields were soft, so it was actually quite pleasant. Our time on the field looked a lot like some sort of strange dance though because we had to constanly move locations to avoid ripping up too much of any given piece of ground. After practice we came back and changed into dry clothes and headed to lunch. Following lunch there was a team meeting to talk about the afternoon schedule and to announce the squad for Scotland. It was 1.Burke 2.Miller 3.Ottens 4.Trucano 5.Crouse 6.McMahon 7.Ham (I am not even going to attempt to spell her last name) 8.Nesberg 9.Braymer 10.Hale 11.Neder 12.Warner 13.Jervey (I could be wrong on whose IC vs OC, but I am a prop so I sometimes don't pay attention to these things) 14.Karvoski 15.English 16.Wallace 17.Joyce 18.Barth 19.P. Knight 20.L. Knight 21.Aerts 22.Kosanke. Knowing the squad helped with the afternoon practice, which involved scrummaging, lineouts, backline stuff, and general game play... I know I am missing things in here, but really it's been a lot of rugby and I can't really keep track of everything we've done on any given day. After practice we showered and ate dinner. Then there was a little free time before we had a team meeting where we did in fact watch the Scotland match, and tried to breakdown some of our tendencies that did not suit us very well last time. Following that there were individual forwards and backs meetings to work on whatever it is that backs talk about and for us defining our scrum calls. That evening we all just hung around (some people stayed up and watched a rugby game that L. Cabrera had brought with her on DVD) and went to bed. I spent some time on the computer trying to figure out the rest of my life, seeing as I have a grad school interview in NH the day after we get back from the tour and no way of getting there.

Thursday was a fairly mellow day (relatively speaking). We had our usual breakfast and then a team meeting. We were supposed to meet from 8:15am to 8:45am and then practice from 9am until 12. Sadly (I don't know if you can sense the dripping sarcasm, considering my love of 3 hour practices- and I don't think I was the only one not too disappointed) our meeting didn't end until 9:15, so we didn't start practicing till a bit later. That morning we started out working on some more scrum stuff and then went into a lot of slow ball work. We ended the practice with counterattacks. Yet again the weather held out for us, and it was breezy and a little drizzly, but nothing too bad. It was definitely not like the artic tundra we had been expecting. After practice everyone hustled back to shower and change because we had the afternoon off and so a group of us were headed into Edinburgh to hang out for a few hours. Another group opted to just hang around the base and watch movies and relax.

But alas, I will have to continue my story (and right when the entertainment of last night and thismornings practice were getting ready to come up) later when I have more computer time. We have limited access, and with 30 people trying to use one computer it can get a bit hurried. Hopefully this evening I can get everything updated.