I've been back at Vassar for exactly a week now. It's been a little weird because almost no one was here for the first four or five days. But it was fun, because I hung out with the fencing team mostly, and we were doing a lot of fencing, so I haven't really been bored.
We came back early because we had a tournament at West Point on Sunday. The concept of "Army Fencers" is more than a little intimidating, but we ended up beating all the teams including the Army one. Although I personally lost all of my bouts. Ironic, because I was actually fencing sabre this time, which I have more experience with. Oh well. It was fun.
We were all really surprised because West Point is an absolutely gorgeous campus! It's a pity it's so closed to the public. We all had to present ID at the gate and explain that we were there for the fencing tournament, and there were many jokes about how we were bringing huge bags full of weapons onto campus and they should really search the cars better. Actually, there were a lot of jokes about a lot of things. Especially the fact that the campus is like a maze, the building we were fencing in required about a week's worth of physical activity just to get into (about 10 flights of stairs, and a short hike), and that once we got in, everything was incredibly disorganized: they needed our strips, then they didn't, then they needed one, then both again, then parts of both, and the men started really late and no one knew who was going first. Isn't the army supposed to be a well-oiled machine? Oh yeah, and we were fencing in a ballroom right across from the auditorium, and apparently during the 2006/07 theater season, Annie was there. Something about the mental image of a bunch of army dudes watching a little girl sing "Tomorrow" is highly amusing to me.
Some other interesting things about West Point:
--I knew that there was a rivalry between the army and the navy, but I didn't expect "SINK NAVY" to be written in huge block letters on the roof of the army pool house.
--They refer to their dorms as barracks and their individual rooms as "Cell Block XX" (with XX referring to the number)
--The colloquialism for Juniors is "Cows"
--And Benedict Arnold used to run the school when it was an extremely critical army base. In fact, his act of treason was to attempt to sell the fort to the British.
I don't think I'd survive for five minutes at that school.
We got back from the tournament in time for me to watch almost the entire Packer game, bur I almost wish I hadn't seen it. It was so incredibly painful. The worst part is, as soon as we won the coin toss in overtime I knew how the game was going to end. I love Favre, obviously, but EVERY TIME we get the ball first in overtime he throws an interception. Stupid stupid stupid. And why did we let Harris keep going one-on-one against that Plexico guy?! Harris is great, but he couldn't keep up, and it was crucial to stop that guy. I have never had any urge to be a football coach, but there were a couple times during that game when I wish I could have been calling the shots. I won't be watching the Super Bowl, but I guess that just gives me more time to work on homework. Goody. Just what I've always wanted.
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