Although the weather is grim, grey and hesitantly rainy again, this weekend was absolutely beautiful – clear blue skies, sunshine, and…dare I say it…actual warmth. Thanks to my enthusiastic addiction to signing up for activities (as discussed in my previous blog post), I am currently a member of an intramural softball team, and we had games on both Saturday and Sunday.
“Softball” is a total misnomer, as the ball is not soft, it’s just bigger than a baseball. I have played softball before, but having mostly played in England, I had forgotten that it’s virtually against the law to have not been on a Little League (baseball for kids) team at some point. Consequently, everyone except the Brit can hit the ball nice and far. My mantra is “eye on the ball and swing through”, usually followed by a rapid-fire burst of swearing when the desired hit doesn’t materialise.
For our game on Saturday, we could barely muster enough players for a side, and the other team looked far more professional, some even sporting sunglasses and baseball caps, whilst most of our lot were dressed in jeans. We still managed to lose, despite being up 10-3 at one point, but not by much. Sunday was a different story – we had a full complement of players plus extras, the team we were playing only had seven guys, but they resoundingly thrashed us, although I had my own personal success as I managed to score a run.
If I hadn’t been playing softball, I would probably have been working indoors all day, but now I’m slightly less pale and sickly-looking, which can only be a good thing. I don’t know what it is about this week, but I seem to have a lot more work than normal: researching a twenty-page paper on terrorism in Pakistan and a fifteen-page paper on Indian missionaries, compiling a digital database of documents relating to revolution, and deciding whether I want to write about Mexican travel writing or the U.S role in the genocide in Guatemala during the 1980s. And along with all that, there’s the rest of my normal work – reading books, writing responses, and taking part in far too many extra-curriculars.
On Sunday night, the Reverend Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader and occasional Presidential candidate, spoke at Haverford and I covered his speech for the Bi-Co. I had been hoping for something revolutionary delivered in his trademark firebrand invective, but to my ears at least his diatribe sounded tired and rehearsed – he spent far too long talking about WMDs in Iraq whilst only briefly mentioning his support of gay marriage, a hot topic in the U.S. As the speech was on Sunday and finished at 9:30 p.m, I only had an hour to write a 700-word article, which certainly tested my abilities. Upon reading the Bi-Co yesterday, I found that my article had been pretty much left intact, which was really heartening.
Less heartening was the fact that I was assassinated on the second day of water-tag. My manager at Phonathon managed to squirt water on me as I was leaving work, and so my target has now transferred to her.
This weekend looks set to be exciting, with the exchange students and some of our friends hosting a huge party that we have named “Eurotrashed” (as who doesn’t love a good pun?). My cousin, Graham, is also coming down to visit, so there will be a lot happening that I will no doubt fill you in on next time.
