The week after the Devon (I) trip was a quick one. Monday I woke up and returned the rental car with Valerie. The same unfortunate clerk was working and he was as terrible as we remembered him. We couldn't get him to agree to drop the extra driver charge so while we were waiting for him to finish processing our return Val called customer service. After explaining how unhappy we were the customer service rep agreed to tell the clerk to remove the charges because we were not pleased. He takes the phone from Valerie (we had been waiting for over 30 minutes at this point to return the car) and starts telling the customer service rep that we weren't waiting as long as we claimed the first time and that's when I broke in and started yelling. "Don't you CALL me a LIAR to my FACE!" "I didn't" "YES you did! You said we weren't waiting for as long as we said we were, we marked down the time, don't you stand here and say in front of me that didn't happen" "But I don't have any help" "That's a different thing, you can say, yes those girls did wait but it was because I didn't have any assistance, but don't you say we were lying!" He finally took off the extra fee but did notice the bump in the tire (the only part of his job he's apparently good at), thank goodness the insurance on the credit card agreed to cover what would have been a 116 pound new tire.
My original plan was to spend Monday doing all sorts of work and catching up on things, instead I found myself exhausted from all my travels and just slept for five hours and went to the gym. Tuesday went off without a hitch, successfully made it to both classes and then Wednesday I was a busy little bee.
Wednesday was the fast of Esther so I was without food or water and I made the mistake of going to the gym for BJJ class at midday. So I was extremely thirsty and it was raining and all I could think about was how much I wanted to lick my umbrella. I survived, even though I had to spend a little bit of time picking up ingredients for Shaloch Manot for my friends (Cadbury roses and an apple). I was so chuffed (ahhahaha) when I got home and my shaloch manot from my parents had arrived, thanks for the nutella guys! I even had time to drink some water before the Megillah reading at the Western Marble Arch Synagogue. I got there early enough for Ma'ariv and then wore my glittery purple masquerade mask during the reading itself. The man who read did the voices and someone in the crowd had an honest to God trumpet as a noise maker. It also started and ended on time so I was even at Marissa's birthday dinner in Soho basically at the appointed hour.
We had Moroccan food and watched a belly dancer. I gave Marissa a BeauSoleil (best of vintage live hits) CD and Valerie finally found a use for the champagne bottle shaped candles I made her buy for Valentine's day.
After dinner I went home and packed for the next day's surf trip. I had a 9 am meeting with my professor to discuss possible topics for my extended essay and then rushed around finishing up getting ready before the 1pm Megillah reading in the Student Union building. There was a surprisingly large crowd and it was literally the fastest reading I've heard in my life. This boy blazed through it in 19 minutes.I don't think that even the people planning the event expected that because the pizza for lunch arrived a solid twenty minutes later. Once class ended I had to run home, change, grab my bags and hit the road.
I took the Tube out to the NW, where one of the other surfers picked me up and drove us both to Dror's house (the main driver). He packed us into his car and then we took off to pick up the last member of the car trip at the train station. The drive down was fast and I managed to catch up on some sleep on the way. We got in close to midnight and had a few beers before bedding down for the night.
The next morning I got my first chance to really admire the house we were staying in. It was huge.
Easily sleeping 15+ people. Being one out of three girls I was upstairs sharing a double bed with an en-suite.
From the kitchen and living room windows you could look straight out over Widemouth bay.
The first day we got a late start. The conditions were cold and messy. It was a tiring paddle out without much reward at the end. I stayed in for about an hour but only caught about one wave. It was so luxurious to come right inside and have a hot shower instead of having to change in a car park. That afternoon just watched the movie HP7 and discovered after that getting into a wet wetsuit is unpleasant even if not outside in a car park. This time we tried a slightly different area of the bay (to the right of the house) and the higher tide and different sandbars combined to make some fun surfing.
That night Dror and some of the other guys made an incredible spaghetti dinner for us all to share, at which I learned that no one on this continent knows what a "s'more" is. First, no one has any idea what a graham cracker is and they think Hershey's chocolate is garbage. After dinner was cleaned up we drank some beers and learned to play Jungle Speed. It's a relatively simple game (rules-wise) but it requires the players to quickly recognize subtle differences in patterns drawn on playing cards. I wasn't particularly good, but being risk averse still did well by the second game. I didn't stay up too late, because the plan was to get up early the next morning for the best conditions. I was successful at the getting up early part, but it still took a bit of time to get into the water. The conditions really were best in the morning but after about an hour the tide had dropped enough that they had deteriorated and once I got swept inside and stuck in the impact zone I gave it up as a bad cause and went back inside for an early Cornish pasty lunch. I decided to wait quite late for the tide to come back up and paddled out late in the afternoon. It was a bit too big and outside for my taste so even though I had a fairly easy 10 minute paddle out once I was out decided I would in fact be happier inside rather than out. A contributing factor was also that I had decided I hated wearing a hood enough to just give up on wearing one and my hair tie snapped as soon as I duck dived my first wave.
The last night there we ate a delicious BBQ and dedicated ourselves to ridding the house of alcohol. As you can see from the picture from the next morning we were wildly successful.
When the booze ran out we walked up the road to the local pub for a drink then came back to have a large group sing along (with guitar accompaniment) and play croquet on the pitch behind the house. I went to sleep way to late and woke up way too early. I had trouble motivating myself to go out in the cold but eventually gathered my things and struck out for the beach. I caught one wave quickly and then paddled for half an hour fighting to get out. Once I finally did the wind died and the waves turned glassy. I caught a few but struggled with my pop-up (partially because I was wearing one too-large bootie because mine has a hole in the bottom). We stayed out for most of the morning then came back in to pack and clean up. We left around 1pm and headed back for London. I took the train home from Amersham which was questionably quicker than the way I had come out. My souvenir from the trip was the nasty rub marks my wetsuit gave me, something that had never happened before and that I am guessing was due to the combination of my rash guard under my wetsuit getting into a fight. It did not look pretty.
Overall the trip was great even if my surfing continues to be sub-par. The people were generally really nice and I know that I will only get to be a good surfer again once I'm back to doing it (close to) every day.
I had one night to myself to unpack and then the next week (which you will hear about in detail in the next post) was both the last week of classes AND the week that two of my friends, Deborah and Juliana, came to visit me! As for how I'm doing - right now I'm just planning my next trip which kicks off on Thursday when I fly to Warsaw and ends two weeks later when I fly back from Croatia to spend Pesach in London.
Love,
My original plan was to spend Monday doing all sorts of work and catching up on things, instead I found myself exhausted from all my travels and just slept for five hours and went to the gym. Tuesday went off without a hitch, successfully made it to both classes and then Wednesday I was a busy little bee.
Wednesday was the fast of Esther so I was without food or water and I made the mistake of going to the gym for BJJ class at midday. So I was extremely thirsty and it was raining and all I could think about was how much I wanted to lick my umbrella. I survived, even though I had to spend a little bit of time picking up ingredients for Shaloch Manot for my friends (Cadbury roses and an apple). I was so chuffed (ahhahaha) when I got home and my shaloch manot from my parents had arrived, thanks for the nutella guys! I even had time to drink some water before the Megillah reading at the Western Marble Arch Synagogue. I got there early enough for Ma'ariv and then wore my glittery purple masquerade mask during the reading itself. The man who read did the voices and someone in the crowd had an honest to God trumpet as a noise maker. It also started and ended on time so I was even at Marissa's birthday dinner in Soho basically at the appointed hour.
We had Moroccan food and watched a belly dancer. I gave Marissa a BeauSoleil (best of vintage live hits) CD and Valerie finally found a use for the champagne bottle shaped candles I made her buy for Valentine's day.
I took the Tube out to the NW, where one of the other surfers picked me up and drove us both to Dror's house (the main driver). He packed us into his car and then we took off to pick up the last member of the car trip at the train station. The drive down was fast and I managed to catch up on some sleep on the way. We got in close to midnight and had a few beers before bedding down for the night.
The next morning I got my first chance to really admire the house we were staying in. It was huge.
Easily sleeping 15+ people. Being one out of three girls I was upstairs sharing a double bed with an en-suite.
That night Dror and some of the other guys made an incredible spaghetti dinner for us all to share, at which I learned that no one on this continent knows what a "s'more" is. First, no one has any idea what a graham cracker is and they think Hershey's chocolate is garbage. After dinner was cleaned up we drank some beers and learned to play Jungle Speed. It's a relatively simple game (rules-wise) but it requires the players to quickly recognize subtle differences in patterns drawn on playing cards. I wasn't particularly good, but being risk averse still did well by the second game. I didn't stay up too late, because the plan was to get up early the next morning for the best conditions. I was successful at the getting up early part, but it still took a bit of time to get into the water. The conditions really were best in the morning but after about an hour the tide had dropped enough that they had deteriorated and once I got swept inside and stuck in the impact zone I gave it up as a bad cause and went back inside for an early Cornish pasty lunch. I decided to wait quite late for the tide to come back up and paddled out late in the afternoon. It was a bit too big and outside for my taste so even though I had a fairly easy 10 minute paddle out once I was out decided I would in fact be happier inside rather than out. A contributing factor was also that I had decided I hated wearing a hood enough to just give up on wearing one and my hair tie snapped as soon as I duck dived my first wave.
The last night there we ate a delicious BBQ and dedicated ourselves to ridding the house of alcohol. As you can see from the picture from the next morning we were wildly successful.
Overall the trip was great even if my surfing continues to be sub-par. The people were generally really nice and I know that I will only get to be a good surfer again once I'm back to doing it (close to) every day.
I had one night to myself to unpack and then the next week (which you will hear about in detail in the next post) was both the last week of classes AND the week that two of my friends, Deborah and Juliana, came to visit me! As for how I'm doing - right now I'm just planning my next trip which kicks off on Thursday when I fly to Warsaw and ends two weeks later when I fly back from Croatia to spend Pesach in London.
Love,
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