Oxford vs Cambridge Rugby Match!

So it’s official… I now understand why the Brits always laugh at the mention of American football… It’s a pansy sport. And really, who can blame them when they’re used to watching rugby all the time!

And what caused this sudden change of heart you may ask… I finally saw my first rugby match!… But not just any match… I went into London for the annual Oxford versus Cambridge Rugby Match! And Oxford won 21-10, which was just icing on the cake! It was a lot of fun despite by naiveté about the game rules (which thanks to a very sweet Oxford alum and his Dad who sat in front of us, I eventually started to get the hang of)… The day was yet another surreal wake up call that says, “Yes, you are really going to grad school in England… It wasn’t just a dream.” :)

So now I know all kinds of new vocabulary, like scrum, try, conversion, and drop goal, that makes me feel rather self  important… Haha  Just kidding… I really didn’t understand half of the game, but I was kept entertained by the constant medic timeouts! (Hence my new formed opinion that rugby is way more interesting than football!) The medics took the field in a flurry of red coats no less than 4 separate times… One of which ended with a Cambridge player being wheeled out on a stretcher! I mean really! At times, I wasn’t sure if there was even a ball in the game or if it was just one gigantic dog-pile wrestling match! And with no helmets/protection what-so-ever… Which brings me to my next point for my gals back home… Yes, in fact rugby players are  much more appealing to watch (Yet another perk to not having all that padding/protection!) Haha ;) Apparently one Cambridge student felt that the players were actually monopolizing everyone’s attention a little too much, because he decided to streak the field in the middle of the game for several minutes before he could be  caught… And you know, sadly enough we all agreed that we knew exactly what was going through his head… We just sat there and thought "Oh look, that's what happens when an Oxford/Cambridge grad student discovers their thesis has been rejected... They go raving mad, freeze to death, and their team still loses..." Haha ;)

Well I think that’s all for now! I’m back in Oxford… Any chance that I was going to make it into London one last time this week, for a day of museum perusing has been completely dashed thanks to the university-fee riots… They haven’t caused too much trouble at Oxford, other than locking themselves in the Bodleian Library a few weeks back (which was a little stupid because the only people they inconvenienced were grad students like myself who were just trying to finish the Term essays that we also paid an outrageous price for)… But all the same, it seems that I’ll be staying in Oxford for the next few days now… Just running errands, catching up on pre-thesis research, and packing to head home to Germany this coming Thursday! I can’t wait! :)

With Love from Oxford… –Mary Elizabeth <3