Just Keep Swimming!

Hello hello! Greetings from Wellesley!

I’m so happy to be back :). The last few days have been a blast, but as usual I’ll go chronologically…

The first big event took place on Sunday: Christmas! This year, I’m finally old enough that the majority of my presents were money rather than actual presents. I remember the Christmases when we would wake my parents at 5am, and open the mounds of wrapped presents from Santa, my parents, and relatives under the tree… paper strewn everywhere, taking photos so we could remember who sent what gift, video games for the entire day until my parents made us write thank you cards… those days have passed. Nevertheless, it was a quiet but nice Christmas, and my sisters and I received food, clothes, money, and books. I even gave presents this year, which is unusual for me, since my sisters and I generally don’t exchange gifts and I usually write poetry for my parents. We spent the rest of the day eating all the cookies my mother and my neighbor and I had made, sleeping, reading, and for my youngest sister, playing the new Zelda game. She ended up beating it by the time I left for Wellesley—Nicole is way too beastly a gamer!

Monday was nice too; another day of puttering around doing nothing very efficiently. My sisters packed for their upcoming trip to France—Nicole’s friend had moved away this year from Edina to France, and she and Leslie were taking a trip to visit him. They also took requests from him and his family—which ended up as quite the shopping list! All three brothers wanted the food that was not available overseas—Warheads, other American candies, chocolate, pies, etc. While my mother was not able to satisfy all the requests, she came back from Costco loaded down with desserts. One humorous element was that she ended up sending chocolate that was imported from France!

Monday was also my last day at home, so my parents and I (my sisters had boarded the plane by this time, so I was officially an only child!) went out to eat and shop. We had some issues with the eating, as my father had gone in to make a reservation while my mother and I sat in the car. He promptly disappeared for a good 15 minutes, and was not to be found in P.F. Chang’s, where we had decided to eat. Finally, he reemerged from the restaurant next store, having completely forgotten that we were going to eat Chinese Monday night :). He was much scolded by us, but we ended up having a delicious dinner at the Cheesecake Factory anyway.

After dinner we went shopping, which went as well as shopping can go. While when I was younger I hated shopping, during the last year or so I’ve come to moderately enjoy it. The problem is that it takes so long—I’d rather just have all the good clothes available when I walk in and then grab them, pay, and walk out. In reality you actually have to shop, which means that you wander for an hour or so to get maybe two articles of clothing. The time investment in shopping is rather insane, though once you eventually do decide on what to buy, the clothes last for years, which makes the occasional shopping trip worth it.

Tuesday morning dawned bright and early, as my flight left at 7:00am. I was finally able to experience hearing my name over the airport speakers, as I was one of the last to board! Security took longer than I expected—half an hour—and then I had to get the full body and bag search since I was carrying powder and my new pants set off the alarm for some reason. When I was finally released, I ran to the gate and was the last to board— thankfully it all worked out!

I also had some additional transportation issues once arriving in Boston. I had two choices upon arriving at the airport—go straight to Framingham by bus (Logan Express, $12), get picked up by Tiffany, and then be driven to Wellesley; or go by bus to South Station (Silver Line, $2), take the commuter rail to Wellesley Square ($5.25) and then walk to Wellesley. While I’ve decided I like the commuter rail route, since I can do it without making Tiffany pick me up (she already picks up quite a few people), on this occasion I needed to have Tiffany pick me up anyway, since I returned a day early. The Wellesley dorms opened for swimmers/divers on Wednesday, so I planned to spend a night at Tiffany’s house. The problem was, she thought she was picking me up at Framingham, while I thought I was being picked up at Wellesley Square, and my phone had run out of batteries the night before (I left the charger at Wellesley.) Result: after waiting for 20 minutes, I decided I needed to call Tiffany, but I didn’t have her number… but her number was online, so all I needed was an internet connection… so I ran around Wellesley trying to find an internet connection, but none of the shops had free internet… so I tried to get to Wellesley College, where I did have access… except there was construction going on the crosswalk to Wellesley College, and the pedestrian crosswalks don’t always work here anyway… but I eventually got to the other side of the road, after 5 minutes of waiting… so I ran to the science center, but had to run around the whole building because the doors weren’t open… I finally ended up getting an internet connection right in front of the library, but then I needed a phone and no one was around… so I ran back around the science center to the Greenhouses, where I was allowed to use one of the phones… and a full forty minutes later, I called Tiffany and got picked up on the other side of Wellesley campus. I was stressed out by the end of that adventure, felt very bad for Tiffany (who was stuck playing Frogger on her phone for an hour), and learned my lesson about the phone charger and reiterating my travel plans. Funny thing is, I scolded my dad for the same lack of communication yesterday. Will I ever learn? Sigh.

After that episode, though, all went well. We got to Tiffany’s house, and then went shopping at Costco with her mom. Since Wintersession doesn’t officially start until January 3^rd, the Wellesley dining halls aren’t open, and so we are responsible for feeding ourselves until we leave for Hawaii on the 1^st (we are also responsible for feeding ourselves during our stay in Hawaii, but I’m treating that as a separate issue.) Thus the need for the trip to Costco—where I happily consumed samples, and we bought quite a bit of the food we’re still eating. Then Tiffany went to swim practice with her sisters, I wrote one of my essays for Education, and then we ate a fantastic dinner (so many vegetables, seafood, and fruit!). Following that, I watched Pixar shorts with Abby, Tiffany’s youngest sister (watch the alien one. It’s good.), and then the whole family watched Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I’ve decided that movie is much better the second time around—the first time, I had no idea what was going on, and spent most of the time asking questions of the irritated moviegoers around me…

On Wednesday Tiffany picked up Allison and Megan from Framingham (see, I told you she picks up everyone!), they slept on the couch until noon, and then it was time to return to Wellesley College! We had to undergo the arduous task of moving from our normal rooms to our Wintersession rooms—during Wintersession, everyone who stays moves to the “new dorms”—Bates, Freeman, and McAffee. Luckily, Tiffany again came to the rescue; she and her car helped me and Allison move all of our stuff from Cazenove Hall (the furthest dorm from the new dorms) to McAffee. I have no idea how I would have transferred my stuff without a car, especially since I have a disturbing lack of luggage. I ended up carting almost my entire room over to McAffee, where I am sharing a room with Kendra. We finished barely in time to make our first returning swim practice—3 pm sharp at the pool!

After swim practice, we needed to get more logistics straightened out—most importantly, FOOD. When swimmers have just finished a two-hour practice, and it’s 5:30pm, it’s unlikely that they will take the time to go to the store, go grocery shopping, and make a meal… which is why six of us ended up in Tiffany’s car driving to Lemon Thai, a local restaurant. After being fed, we went and did real grocery shopping. Funnily enough, we ran into two other swimmer/diver groups that were at the same store, so it was a communal activity, though we each chose what we wanted to eat and pay for. The college had given us each $230 to spend on food from Wednesday to when we got back from Hawaii, so we had cash to spend. I had never really gone shopping for myself, even though this was only for three days, but I think I did fairly well. I bought spinach, carrots, bread, hummus, apples, cereal, and bananas, for around $20. Others bought very similar items, with pasta, peanut butter, jelly, milk, meat, and more fruit as the different items. I’ve been eating cereal and fruit for breakfast, hummus and spinach sandwiches with carrots and fruit for lunch, and leftovers for dinner. The leftovers keep on happily appearing—yesterday, the college sponsored an Indian meal which I kept in Tupperware for dinner, and tonight we have the Progressive Dinner put on by our fellow teammates. As Gabby pointed out, unlike in high school, where the seniors didn’t do anything, here the first-years don’t do anything. For the progressive dinner, the sophomores are making desserts, the juniors appetizers, and the seniors the meal, which they are placing on different floors. It’s bound to be lots of fun, and with lots of great food!

Back to Wednesday though—after we had gotten all we needed to do done, there was still two hours to burn before bedtime. It was crazy not having anything to do—usually, I’d head straight to my homework! So I ended up messing around, reading some while others watched movies before bed. Then we got up for Thursday’s practice—9-11am—which was rough, since I was tired from Wednesday. However, we made it, and Kendra, Grace and I went and had lunch in the apartment Tiffany, Gabby, Veronica Lin and Veronica Yu are sharing. It’s a great meeting spot, since it’s on the ground floor and it’s huge. Somebody mentioned last night how we’re supposed to be bonding with the team, and yet we seem to be bonding exclusively with the first-years! Then again, we’re the biggest first-year class in a long time, since there are nine of us (the two who were missing were Sabrina and Taylor, who I believe are sharing a room, and I assume had lunch somewhere else.) After lunch, Karina, Tiffany and I retreated to my and Kendra’s room, where we talked about what we were going to eat/do in Hawaii. For Hawaii, I’m sharing a room with Karina, Tiffany, and Gabby, so I spent the remaining hour and a half searching out what was available next to our hotel. Looks to be lots of cheap restaurants, two grocery stores, and diversions (mainly the beach!) available within .5 miles… it’s going to be a blast. After sending out that information to the team, Kendra and I headed off to practice number two—3pm-5pm (which makes it seem like it’s just a time interval, but there’s a lot of work involved ;)).

After that was dinner—I ate with Kendra and Grace, who made themselves pasta. Kendra had picked up a “Parmesan-Style Topping,” which I found infinitely amusing, since it’s not actually cheese and rather composed of food starch and casein (what is that?). It tastes fine, but it’s kind of weird, so Grace and Kendra hunted down some butter to go along with that and had their meal on plastic plates with plastic utensils. It’s really funny how hard it is to remember all the details—most people don’t have utensils or plates, and often forgot to buy the little parts of a meal like olive oil, cheese, or salt. We’re rather helpless, though I’m still surprised by how well we did in buying food for ourselves (especially for those of us for whom this is a first time), all considered.

Then Kendra, Grace and I joined Ika, Annie, Kathryn, and eventually Karina and Keelin for a rousing game of Balderdash, taking the Myers Brigg Personality test (funnily enough, all of us there were introverted and ‘judging,’ which means we like structure in our days ;)), and watching Beyonce youtube videos. It was an awesome night, especially since I actually got to spend a whole night socializing—which has never happened to me while school is in session. What keeps hitting me is that we actually have nothing we’re supposed to be doing here; there’s no reason to go do something productive, since all we have to do with swim and bond. It makes me feel a little restless, and yet it’s wonderful to do what I had heard the whole college experience is supposed to be about. It makes me wonder how people find this for themselves during the normal school year, when there is very little time for things-that-are-not-schoolwork, at least in my case. It makes me very grateful to be on the swim and dive team, and with such a wonderful group of girls. I highly recommend varsity sports, readers… especially winter sports and swimming/diving, since we get this period where 1/5 of the students at Wellesley are swimmers/divers, and we’re all in the same place and with the same schedule.

So that was my happy experience yesterday, bound to be repeated today with the Progressive Dinner. This morning Kendra and I woke up at 8am for our morning practice—“I don’t want to do the whole thing over again!” were the first words out of Kendra mouth (I refrained from saying anything, because I am similarly always miserable when waking up to the expectation of exercise)— but again, we made it through. I must mention, though, that doubles (swimming two practices in a day) are rather painful. I had to do them during my one club summer when I dedicated myself to hard-core swimming (after that I decided not to do it again.) My conclusion then was the same as it is now—when you’re swimming doubles, you really don’t have time or feel up to doing anything else besides swimming. I feel tired getting into the pool, morning or afternoon, which is obnoxious since by that point I haven’t even properly started practice. There’s also the need to sleep a lot, and I hate naps—I’ve avoided it thus far, but I’m going to have to eventually. It’s also very easy for me to get depressed—not actually depressed, but so dreading the next month of hard, double practices that I’m anxious and unhappy all the time. I’ve gotten better with my mind game, especially since the practices usually aren’t all uniformly hard (usually the morning is harder and the afternoon is more technique/sprint work), but it’s a continuous struggle. I suppose that’s why we’re all here together, and there is nothing else planned—it definitely helps having enjoyable breaks with fellow swimmers/divers, and doing all the hard stuff together :).

In other news, the weather had improved since yesterday morning, when our walk to the pool was dreadfully cold. The problem with the new dorms, beside the fact that they’re really far away from my normal dorm, is that they are really far away from the pool. It’s a mile walk from the dorms to the pool, and I’m doing this walk four times a day (there are three swimmers/divers with cars, and they drive whoever is lucky enough to ride with them back to the dorms.) Thus, in addition to swimming close to 10,000 yards a day (we’ll hit that mark shortly), some of us are walking four miles a day! However, I do like the walk when it’s nice out, which it has been, though I’m usually wearing a hat, lobster gloves, two pairs of pants, and four layers on top (I’m an overdresser, but it’s cold.) Luckily, all this exercising means we get to eat a lot, and that part (besides worrying over what I’m eating) is great!

Next time I’ll post, I’ll have spent almost a week in Hawaii already! It was fun writing this post, because this has been a sharp difference from what I was doing last week, and next week’s will probably even be more full! I can’t wait to see what my first training trip is like—though my club held them, this is the first time I’m actually going on one. And with such a great group of girls, too :).

Anyway, I was thinking of what I’m supposed to be writing on this blog again (always consider the audience—it’s been drilled quite loudly into my head), and I apologize, but the next month or so is going to be all swimming, with the same people doing most of the same activities, all the time. What can I do since that’s my life right now? It’s so weird that college has such a long break, with so little expected of us (shouldn’t we be required to learn something?) so it’s going to be different from what all the high school students are doing throughout the month of January (oh god, you guys still have finals.) Nevertheless, I hope you’ll bear with me, and if not, please ask me my opinion on something. I can ask around for other’s opinions, too, if you want more info! Even old questions are fine, since my opinions keep on changing (for example, the all-women question again. Nobody ever gets tired of that one :)).

And with that I’ll leave you to a happy Friday afternoon :). Congrats to our five new Wellesley Class of 2016 swimmers, good luck to everyone else on all your college applications, and feel free to comment!

Monica