Almost the holidays

It seemed like spring had well & truly arrived, we had a couple of weeks of very mild weather, & all the daffodils & spring bulbs are out in force. Lo & behold, things took a turn for the worse at the start of this week with icey winds that apparently were coming right off the Artic. Tuesday & Wednesday we even had a bit of snow!

On Tuesday night we went to Will's parents place near Oxford for dinner which was very nice. We picked up the bird table that his dad had made me for my birthday. It's very cool, but unfortunately the squirrels have already discovered it. Now I don't have anything against squirrels, I just prefer it when they aren't eating my bird food! Not a huge amount happening at the moment, school is winding down... We break up on Wednesday for the Easter holidays. We get 2 & a half weeks off which will be very nice... I'm not planning on doing a huge amount, perhaps just a little bit of walking in Wales. Speaking of holidays, I've finally booked my South America flights for the summer. I fly into Quito in Ecuador, then fly out of La Paz in Bolivia 5 weeks later. Will is joining me for the last 3 weeks which will be nice. The highlight is going to be walking the Inca Trail together. Tomorrow i've got a rugby game against Richmond, who are top of our league, but unfortunately, due to injury & various other reasons, it looks like we'll only have 13, so it's not going to be much fun! The good news is that touch rugby starts in a few weeks, so we are all looking forward to that.

The day after...

Last night Will & I had our engagement party. It was a very enjoyable night with a really good turnout. It was quite strange having so many different people, from different parts of our lives, together in the same room. Put it this way, the clientele ranged from Will's fellow academics, to the girls from my rugby team! We held the party in the common room at my school & everybody seemed to have a good time. A big big thank you to those of you who bought us lovely cards & gifts. I know that the numerous bottles of champagne will definitely be enjoyed over time! We finally called it a night at around 3:30am. The last hour or so was very chilled however. Will had brought along his guitar, so the lights were dimmed & the small (but select!)group that were left at the end sat around & had bit of a singalong. Scottie, my head of department knows an impressive amount of Crowded House (especially for a Canadian) which was much appreciated by the kiwis! It was a lovely way to end the night.
The next morning, after a suitably restorative sleep-in, we were ready to face the carnage that was the common room! In saying that, it really wasn't that bad, & didn't take long at all to clean up. There was a very impressive collection of empty bottles though! Huge thanks to my friend Nic who had stayed the night at mine & helped Will & I clean up in the morning. Surprisingly enough, considering the amount of alcohol drunk, not a single one of the 60 odd glasses we had hired were lost or broken! That is despite one rather dodgy moment when one of my rugby mates discovered a football & started kicking it around the room... Rich, Dodgy Rog actually bettered your feat of jumping over the big oak table, because he did it over all the bottles as well! It was very impressive, if a tad heart in mouth... No other news really... As you might imagine, the rest of the weekend was rather quiet... I watched the England/France rugby game today & thought England were OK, & probably did deserve to win, but France were awful. This evening I've just enjoyed chilling out & reading the Sunday papers.

A great weekend

Gidday,

I've just had a very good weekend. It all started with a few drinks at our local pub, the Walters Arms, Friday night. This is a 'proper' English pub just 600m or so out the College gate. It used to be really smokey & not a pleasant experience at all, but it is ahead of it's time & went non-smoking last year (they don't HAVE to be non-smoking until this July). There tends to be a regular bunch of staff always there on a Friday night.

On Saturday morning I reffed my first ever proper rugby match at school. I had been told I had to do at least one this term, & wasn't looking forward to it. Despite my apprehensions, it went really well. The opposition coach was very complimentary & told me I did a super job, & that I was 'spot on', but that was possibly because his team won! There were a lot of parents from both teams watching, but they were really good & didn't give me any grief from the sideline which was nice.

That afternoon I went to watch London Irish (our local premiership team) play Newcastle at the Madejski Stadium, aka the 'Mad Stad' in Reading. It is also where the Reading Royals

premiership football team is based. My friend Claire had got me a ticket for my birthday, & Nicola was also over for the weekend, so

it was really nice to spend some time with my friends. It was a great game, Irish won 38-12, despite the presence of Jonny Wilkinson playing for Newcastle. He had a very ordinary game... Irish had the kiwi duo of Flutey & Mapusua to help them along. The premiership is full of kiwis! It was a lovely sunny afternoon, & we enjoyed a lot of running rugby & a lot of tries scored.

Nic stayed Saturday night at mine & cooked a nice 'birthday' dinner for

Will & I. I'm loving this birthday, it just seems to be going on for ever! On Sunday I had my rugby against Thurrock, who are top of the table. I didn't play them in the first round as it was when I was in NZ, but we got a hiding of more than 30 points. The score today was 5-3 to them. It was a really hard, close game. Conditions were absolutely awful. We've had a lot of rain lately, & the pitch was just a mud bath! After 5 minutes you could hardly tell who was in which team, we were all so muddy!!! I basically went into the showers after the match wearing all my kit... Nic & Will came & watched in the pouring rain, so I was pretty impressed!

No more news from me... This Saturday Will & I are having an engagement party which we are looking forward to. No doubt you'll probably hear all about it next week! It also conveniently doubles as a 30th birthday party...