Wine Tasting and Torpids

Last week I felt like I barely spent any time in Oxford. I was in Oxford, of course, to go to class, but because Lauren couldn't stay in my house, we both stayed in a youth hostel near the train station. When I collapsed into my bed on Sunday night I realized I hadn't slept in my own bed since the Thursday before last, before I left for Venice. After all that, I needed to spend a few days in Oxford. I'm glad I did because I got to do a wine tasting and cheer on my friend in Torpids.

Monday night was the St. Anne's MCR Wine Tasting. MCR stands for Middle Common Room, of which we are members. The Junior Common Room is for undergrads, the Middle Common Room is for graduate students, and then there's another common room for the professors. While we eat lunch with the JCR and the MCR students, we mostly socialize with the MCR students, because they're closer to our age. The average age of the students in our program is probably 25 or 26. I'm the youngest in the program by about a year.

Anyway, the wine tasting was really fun! I don't know much about wine, and I'm not sure I learned much, but I'm going to keep trying. I am finally beginning to have opinions about wine, which is probably a good start. I can tell what I like, I just can't necessarily describe it. I did learn that wine can be described as flabby! All the wines we tried were from France, which was pretty cool. While they were talking about the places the wines came from I realized that I would like to do more travel in France.

On Wednesday afternoon, even though the weather was cold, windy, and rainy, my friends and I walked to the river to watch Torpids. According to my friend Josh, Torpids is the "largest, most exciting regatta of the Hillary Term, [...] a four-day series of races that features all 38 colleges in an aggressive "bumping" race. Essentially, different divisions of boats will be racing about two boat lengths behind another college in front of them on the river Isis, trying aggressively to knock the boat in front of them out of the race. Boats that bump move on. Others get relegated." My friend Josh is on the St. Anne's M2 Crew. They succeeded in bumping the boat in front of them! It was really cool, although it was over very quickly. I'm sure it seems like a much longer time to the people who are rowing!

St. Anne's M2!

Returning to the dock

The one in black is my friend Josh

Victory!