Last regatta of the season!

It’s been a while, and a lot has happened. I of course put off writing about anything, because no matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to find it a way to let out my feelings because I have a negative perspective toward writing in general, like all the years of writing papers, and it just takes time and such. But I think about blogging a lot, and all the things I would like to remember, and it is easier than journaling, even though I do like the actual handwriting aspect of journaling. Anyways, moving on to actual stuff.

Thursday was my last day of boredom before I got to head home. I actually went and walked down Grand River with Katrina and we hung out at Barnes and Noble for a long time, and I was tempted to buy books but I resisted because they are so expensive and I can always go to the library. I really want to read Paper Towns and Maureen Johnson books and classics like Pride and Prejudice and everything, but I can wait for now. Then we went to Insomnia Cookies and I had a snicker doodle and a chocolate chunk cookie and they were delicious, even though I probably should have spent money on a book rather than cookies. Then I think I probably watched more TV or something, until it was time to get ready to meet at Dem at 1:00 a.m. to depart for Tennessee. Emily also came by the house after her practice because she was dropped off and had nowhere else to go, and I hadn’t seen her in about a week since we had different practice times and she was going back and forth from school a lot.

Then we had a 12ish hour van ride down to Tennessee, rigged the boats, had practice, the lightweights and coxswains weighed in, and then we went to the house of the grandparents of a girl on the team where we ate dinner. The neighborhood was amazingly nice, even nicer than my mom’s friend Phyllis’s house! The team was split up to stay at 8 different houses nearby of very nice hospitable people, and everyone got a bed or at least an air mattress to sleep on, which was very nice compared to the floor that I’ve been on for the past 2 weeks. The house that my boat stayed in was so nice, very spacious and they had 2 double beds for us in the basement, and they let us use all 3 of their showers, and they were even kind enough to give us towels to use. I kept thinking the whole time, people actually live there! I could not imagine living in a house that nice. Not to mention they probably have a spectacular view in the backyard, if it’s anything like the other house where we ate, which had a deck upstairs looking out on the dock where they had a boat and beautiful mountains in the background over the water. Tennessee is definitely up there on my list of favorite states.

The next morning we woke up early like usual to head back to the main house where all the vans would drive us to the race site, which is the same one as SIRA, which is soooo pretty. My first race pretty early, and my parents came all the way to watch me. I felt bad that they were mostly just standing around because they don’t understand anything about rowing and they don’t know anyone and it is just a lot of standing around anyways, but it was nice of them and they enjoyed it a little at least. In my first race we came in 2nd in our heat out of 3 heats for the WV4+, so we had to come in 1st in the semifinals to move to the grand finals, but we came in 2nd again. Both races were close though, we were behind near the middle and then we moved through other boats and both times we were in the boat of the 1st place. So we ended up in the petite finals and we got third, which didn’t really matter anyways since it doesn’t count for anything, but we had a good last race of the season, at least in my novice-in-a-varsity-boat opinion. It would probably help if I was a more competitive person, but it is kind of unmotivating if you don’t have a chance to win anything no matter how well you do.

This is getting pretty long, and it’s a lot later than I wanted to stay up, so I’m going to continue it tomorrow…

I have forgotten songs of the day in my last 2 posts, but I actually remembered this time!
Song of the day: Dave Matthews Band—Funny the way it is