Week One: I Didn't Drop the Class, I Threw It on the Ground.

I can't say with honesty that this week was overly eventful. There was only really one highlight, or , um, lowlight.

If you asked me what classes I was taking any time before 11:15 on Wednesday, I would have listed Mandarin as one of them. That, however, quickly became untrue. As much as I was excited for it, I thought it would be taught in the fashion all my other language courses had been. But no. The instructor planned to teach it in an immersion style. Immersion is great if you're in a country where that language is often spoken, or even just in an environment like that. But immersion for 5o minutes three times a week...at least for me, that would not work. She also wanted us to memorise and perform the dialogue from the CDs that came with our books. With out knowing the meaning of the words. Just the sounds...? What really made me decide to drop right away was that her syllabus was a Power Point--I could not print it out if I wanted to, and that we were getting the assignments only a week in advance, leaving me no real chance to get ahead if I wanted to. I knew I would get a bad grade if I kept the class, and I need to bring up my GPA. I also knew that it was a hard choice between Mandarin and a course on sound systems used in the theatre, which are being taught at the same time. So, for a third semester in a row, I have a class with Ken Golden (head of the the Theatre department) at 11:15.

All my other classes, being Intro to Theatre, Intro to Bible, and Victorian Literature (henceforth Vic Lit) seem like they are going to be really cool.

Today was the first fencing club meeting and it was great to get back to that. There were more new people there than returning members, which is great, but it was mostly teaching the newbies the basics, so not that riveting for those of us who couldn't really benefit from getting taught what they were being taught, yet not skilled enough to teach it in they eyes of the eboard.

Oh, and the chipmunk has not dared to make another appearance!

NEXT WEEK

Monday: Auditions for Caucasian Chalk Circle (call-backs Tuesday and maybe Wednesday)

Next Weekend: 24 Hour Play Festival

Hartwick and SUNY Oneonta Fencing Match

Today was one of the coolest days I've had in a long time. Actually, scratch that--it's quite warm under all that fencing gear.

As I am told happens most springs, Hartwick's and SUNY Oneonta (SUCO)'s fencing clubs met today. We fenced all three weapons, foil, sabre, and épée. Let me clarify that "weapon" is just what it's called in the sport. As you can imagine, it was a bit tiring, but fun. For each tournament, we split into two groups and did round-robins in each. The first fencer to score 5 points won. The points a fencer scored minus the points scored on the fencer gave us a number of points that decided the seed we were in the bracket, in which the victor is declared at 15 points. We all fenced in the same bracket, of course; splitting in to two groups for the round robins was far faster. It's true that the point totals would have been different if we had been in different groups in the beginning, but who knows whose favour that would have worked in.

The first up was the weapon I use the most, foil. I didn't win a single round-robin bout, but still wasn't the last seed, which was nice. I lost in the first round of the brackets, though. I was very disappointed with my performance, and I don't think I was being aggressive enough. My friend, Carson (also the club's secretary) won the tournament.

Next we had épée. Before today, I'm not sure if I had even ever picked up an épée. I won two out of the three round-robin bouts. I believe I was then the third seed in épée, and lost that match to the Hartwick club president 14-15. In the end, Carson won--again!! I was really impressed at how well I did with épée, especially considering it was my first time, and I was kind of like, "how do I hold this?" It was nice to do so well after such an upset for me in foil.

In foil, the target area is the torso, no arms or legs. In épée, if you hit the person, you get a point, even if you hit each other at the same time. In foil, there is something called right-of-way. This means if both fencers hit each other at the same time, the one who is advancing gets awarded the point. The only caveat to épée is that the point of the weapon has to touch, and the same is true for foil.

The last weapon we did was sabre. In this, you can hit with any part of the blade, from the waist up, including the head. I had used sabre back in jTerm and again last Saturday, so I don't have much experience with it. I did pretty okay with it. Alex won the brackets.

It was really nice that all the people who won the brackets were from Hartwick. There were only three people from SUCO. That is only a fraction of the team, and two of those people were faculty/staff of SUCO and only one student. Apparently the teams liked it enough that we will be holding joint practices once a week. It will definitely be interesting to see their styles of fencing, as there was a very palpable difference between the two club's forms going into the matches.