Summer Daze of Our Lives, Part II

[Cut to]

Anya and Alyssa rushing through the busy streets of Oxford, sweat is flying, pedestrians bowled over… a massacre.

ANYA: This almost counts as training for the Enduro!

ALYSSA: I knew we should have called a cab…

Luckily, our heroines reach the station with just enough time to buy round-trip tickets from Oxford to Luton Airport. Their Swiss friend Martin is there waiting with two suitcases, a garment bag, and a guitar – his life in Oxford over the past year. The sisters sheepishly show him their two backpacks and giant duffle bag for their week-long trip to Switzerland.

Hey, to be fair those bags contained tents, sleeping bags, climbing gear, running shoes, and a clean pair of underwear! In any case, the flight to Zurich otherwise went smoothly. Martin’s dad Fritz picked us up at the airport and brought us back to their very nice home where we got our first taste of Swiss bread, cheese, and chocolate. Joygasmic, my friends. I had frequent Homer Simpson moments.

The next morning we got up early and met a friend of Martin’s for a day of excellent climbing. The trip to the climbing area was a little long (two trains, a bus, and a gondola) but the views and routes were worth it! We finished the afternoon with a dip in the cold-but-but-not-as-cold-as-you’d-expect lake. On the way back we had a short layover in Lucerne, so we got a quick walking tour with our expert Swiss guide (Martin). Saw a viola player busking! Then, back in Zurich, we walked down the river and met some of Martin’s old friends. The river scene was really neat – hundreds of people swimming, picnicking, playing music…

The following day Anya and I left (after a BBQ and a watermelon eating contest between Martin and I) for the fairly randomly selected town of Walenstadt. We picked it because it was next to a lake, had a campsite (you’re not allowed to just go out and camp in the mountains), and was between Zurich and Innsbruck. This final point was important because our good friends Dan and Kathy were going to be flying into Zurich and driving to Italy via Innsbruck the very next day! Our plan was to meet with Dan and Kathy, maybe spend an extra day, and then move on; however, Walenstadt turned out to be a gold mine of exciting activities.

After an excellent lunch with our friends, Anya and I rented mountain bikes and set out. Walenstadt is located on a valley floor surrounded by quaint towns and towering mountains. Great for the view, rough on my very unpracticed legs. We managed to try to ride across a shooting/artillery range, and found a few fun trails, but much of our time was on tiny paved roads that switchbacked up into mountains that looked impossible to summit by foot, nonetheless bike (or car!) Although there were hundreds of little tracks leading to hundreds of little houses and meadows, we realized that if you followed the yellow-brick “Wanderweg” signs, you could always eventually get back home. We found some delicious wild raspberries and strawberries and “stumbled upon” some less-than-wild cherries. We returned the bikes satisfyingly mud coated. (Not to say we wouldn’t have washed them if we could!)

We returned to camp tired and hungry… We sat down in front of our maps… so many trails, so little time! Will our heroines find the perfect trail up those inspiring mountains, or will they be unceremoniously booted out of the country for making fun of all the “fahrt” signs? Werkeinfahrt, like a workin’ fahrt! Ausfahrt, you fahrt, we all fahrt together!

Find out next time, on “Summer Daze of Our Lives…”

Alyssa and Anya

Summer Daze, Part I

Hi everybody!

I am so good at this not writing for months on end thing! Here’s the plan… over the next week or so I hope to put out a whole slew of the “Summer Daze Chronicles” to recount my adventures of late.

The story begins (or picks up) with the completion of exams, which were as horrendous as anticipated. But it was fun to watch Oxford fill up with nervous students all dressed up in sub-fusc and gowns, most sporting a carnation – white for first dayers, pink for middle dayers, and red for finalists! We had a very fun afternoon and evening after our final exam… swimming, picnicking, BBQs, burning notes, and possibly some booze.




The next day, Queen Anya arrived from the kingdom of Montana! We had a day to nurse her jetlag and buy/rent dresses for the upcoming Linacre Ball, and then we carpooled with some of my classmates to Wales for some British-style camping. We pitched tents in the yard of a beautiful old farmhouse and cooked giant meals in the neighboring bunkhouse… but we had a great time with music, “speeches,” and toasts with Mongolian liquor supplied by Bama.

Back to Oxford the next day to catch the Linacre Ball, themed “Vintage Vegas.” Unfortunately, I had to work the bar from 12-3am and left Anya at the mercy of the Linacre lads. Fortunately, as we all knew, Anya knows how to take care of herself! In the end, a good time with the Wechsler gals obviously stealing the show.

The next few days were more relaxed. Running tours of Ox. A visit to the famous Pitt Rivers Museum, a collection of Brittan’s colonial exploits (and, incidentally, where Philip Pullman’s Lyra looks at the trepanned skulls… we got to see them, too! Plus real shrunken heads. Yummy.) Punting and pubbing. Anya tried her first English bitter (ale). Her description: warm, flat, and… bitter. Who knew? Not to worry, she chased away the nasty with some delicious “black ice” gum which turned out to be black licorice and mint. Good fun.

On the first of July, an uncharacteristically hot day for England, the sisters Wex strapped on their matching North Face Gompa packs and slung a giant Atmosphere Mountainworks duffle full of camping and climbing gear over the shoulder. Being Wechslers, time was ticking toward bus departure as the girls sweatily weaved through the throng of robe-wearing students and camera-slinging tourists. Will they catch their bus to the airport? Will they ever get to explore the mountains of Switzerland? Will they get to hobnob with the rich and famous? Or will Alyssa’s sweat destroy her passport and Anya tortured by an herb-wielding hippie? Find out in the next installment of “Summer Daze”…

Alyssa (and Anya)

Out of the dark!

Hi all! Last I wrote, it was.... well, it was a long time ago. Can you believe it's been four and a half months?! Needless to say, I've been slacking on the blog -- one or two things have happened since February! The biggest overall news actually comes from the States. I have a new sister! Perry and Julie went to Ethiopia last week to adopt the lovely Mebrat. I can’t believe I have to wait until my visit in August to meet her! I cannot wait -- I’m so happy to have a new member of our family. My family(ies) is what you might call an ultra-modern one! Or maybe post-modern… I’ll have to think on that one. The biggest news on this side of the pond is that I applied and got accepted to the University of Edinburgh! However, love's a fickle thing, and when I also got an offer to stay on at Oxford for an MPhil, I couldn’t refuse. So essentially I am staying for a research-based continuation of my current program, meaning I get an extra 8 months or so to write a longer, better dissertation. Which should leave adequate time to put into my new posts of the rugby team’s Social Secretary (I plan the parties!) and Treasurer. On that note, anyone with amazing party theme ideas should let me steal them!
Varsity Match, 7 March, Before and After...
A rundown on life since February. Suffered an incredibly busy and stressful term (initiating my lack of communication). Played and lost the grand Cambridge vs Oxford Varsity match. Went home to Wyoming for a happy visit (got to do all the quintessential WY activities -- horseback riding, skiing, Yellowstone, Jalan Crossland show, Buckhorn Bar, hiking, driving long distances, perfect sunshine, raging blizzards, not to mention friends and family! I guess I missed climbing, but not for lack of trying (thanks Frank!)
Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, birthday shots, and Dublin Castle

Got back just in time for a Marshall trip to Northern Ireland with a stopover in Dublin (where I had my birthday!) Then essay-writing deliciousness and a class trip to Paris to present websites we designed to Bruno Latour, one of the head dudes in my field (which apparently is some blend of Science and Technology Studies, Human/Economic Geography, and Anthropology… not environmental policy as I’d once thought). That was fairly intense, reading Latour’s work all year and then showing it to him in a website! On a lighter note, it must be said, for any Lost lovers, I may have geeked out in Paris and gone to the Jules Verne Awards to see the creators of Lost given lifetime achievement awards. Plus, Kate and Ben were there! Very fun…

	Then my third term began (which sounds a little too pregnant, but there you go.) The last few months have been short on classes, but heavy on writing and studying. We had a big literature review for our dissertations and then studying for our upcoming final exams. I have three three-hour-long essay style exams, so a total of nine essays in nine hours. More on that next week after they’re done! I have been having some fun in the middle of the studying (or revising, as it’s called here) and dissertation. The most exciting bits have been a ball (yes, a ball!) that almost everyone from my course went to. Basically an opportunity to get really dressed up and eat, drink, and dance from about 8pm to 4am. Then, I went on a day-long climbing trip to the Wye Valley (right on the border between Wales and England). It was so beautiful! Big cliffs perched right up above Tintern Abbey! And the climbing was much less sketchy than the Lakes District.

Well, enough from me, for now. I’m off to write a three-hour practice exam! Kill me now!!! I miss you all, and I will really try to get posts out regularly again. Bad as the exams are, I think the worst is behind me.

Your bar-hopping, ball-bopping, rock-topping American transplant,
-Lyssa

A Love Story

Friends and family, I have some exciting news to report. After years of waiting, I have fallen in love. I didn’t previously believe in love at first sight, but after only one week of knowing mon amour, there is no doubt that I am head over heels. My love can be a bit of a wild, rugged individual, but is also distinguished and (dare I say it?!) beautiful. We share a passion for whisky, wool, and long walks down rocky coasts. I know it’s premature, but I may be moving in next fall. We do have some problems to work out. It would be hard for me to leave Oxford now, and I’m not sure if I am ready for this commitment. And the trifling matter that we have an age gap of some 350-700 years (depending on how you look at it). Of course, I speak of Scotland.

Last we spoke I was sizzling away in Portugal, and so much has happened since then! I know these events are all a month old, so bear with me! I left Portugal for Scotland on the evening of January 8 and spent a sleepless night in the London Gatwick airport. I had found out on the 7th that my Grandma Carol passed away that morning, and I’d been racing around since then to find a way to Skype home. The airport at 2am wasn’t ideal, but it was the best I found. It made me feel particularly alone and far from home. I will miss her so much, and I am eternally grateful for my weekend in New Mexico last fall and her words for me on Christmas day. All my love to my family – I wish I could be there with you.

Luckily, I had good friends to help through hard times. Brady and I met up in Edinburgh and had a great time exploring a bit of Scotland. I decided from the moment I arrived that I was in love with Edinburgh, and my regard has spread to all I’ve seen of the country so far. Its sights and history are stunning. Brady and I climbed “Arthur’s Seat,” a very tall hill/small mountain in the middle of the city when I arrived on Friday and took a seven or eight mile jogging “tour” of the city the next day. That night, we took a tour of Edinburgh’s “haunted underground,” a series of vault-like rooms that were formed as the city built up around the arches of an old bridge. There are tons of ghost stories associated with the underground from satanic worship to hundreds of fatalities from plague, fire, murder, etc. Didn’t get to see any ghosts, but I was thoroughly creeped out for the rest of the night. I highly recommend taking the tour if you’re ever in Edinburgh... it’s one of the few tourist attractions I’ve felt deserved my £10!












We travelled to Aberdeen Sunday for Brady’s geology conference, and then I popped back down to Edinburgh for a meeting with the director of the Environment and Development masters program at the university. Turns out she’s from Boulder, CO! (But I won’t hold that against her...) On my way back to Aberdeen, I did a six-mile coastal walk across the bay from Edinburgh. Along the way I explored some caves with Pictish rock carvings and the ruins of MacDuff castle (from the family of Shakespeare’s MacDuffs!) Brady and I met up again and continued on to the little town of Elgin, launching point of the famous Whiskey Trail of Speyside. We only toured one distillery, Glen Moray, but it was amazing and included an excellent tasting at the end. Since we were the only tourists silly enough to brave Elgin in January, we got the extended tasting experience.













Now I’m back in Oxford – finished my essay (barely,) and am working too much for my own good. It’s going to be a busy term! A very nice diversion last week with a visit from a Laramie-turned-Oregonite – Elijah was here and I had a good time showing him around Oxford on a lovely sunny day and then he got to see me pummelled in a rugby match against UWIC (that really, really good team we played last term). I’m afraid I couldn’t be a great hostess, what with classes and rugby practice, but it was still grand to catch up! Now I’m off to more rugby practice in the freezing cold followed by a sickening amount of reading... wait, this sounds familiar... reading reading reading rugby! reading reading rugby!
All my love,
Alyssa

Festas Felizes!

Hello and happy holidays from Portugal!

All right folks, brace yourselves, ‘cause this is a long one!

The actual holidays are over, but the fun is just beginning! I arrived in Faro, Portugal yesterday with my rugby team for a week of intensive training. It is absolutely beautiful here – we are living in villa-style apartments at a world-class rugby training centre (that happens to be a 10 minute drive from the beach!) The weather is perfect for rugby, mostly sunny and probably 65 degrees. Oh, and the icing on the cake is the professional men’s rugby league team sharing the facilities!

Portugal follows hard on the heels of a great holiday run. My course mates put on a music and food-filled solstice bonfire that lasted into the wee hours of the morning. Oxford emptied around the 21^st, but I stayed on, continuing to work 6-9 hours a day on my environmental economics essay that is due the first day back in class. I’m enjoying the topic – the importance of economic assessment of the London 2012 Olympic Games’ sustainability initiative – but it’s taken a lot of work and research. Our professors said these essays should be of publishing quality, plus they make up about a quarter of our grade for the entire year.

I felt I was being too productive (I’m so used to procrastinating!) so I took an essay break for Christmas. Christmas eve, I went out to dinner with Sarah Nichols (from the varsity ski trip) and her parents. We ended up going to a midnight mass at Christ Church College. I was glad my first midnight mass was conducted by an Oxford theology professor – despite the late hour it was a very intellectual and engaging service. Christmas morning, Sarah and I rode bikes 5 miles out to her cousin’s house (pictures of Christmas with the Nichols family above). We had a lovely time with her family and then mid-afternoon I rode back to Linacre College where a few of us teamed up to cook a goose and countless side dishes. (We got the goose from the covered market, left, where the butcher shops all had full deer, wild boar, and fowl carcasses on display. It all felt very Dickens.) We ate in Linacre’s fancy dining room and had more food, champagne, wine, and port than I care to relate. We ended the night with homemade ice cream and a $75+ bottle of Scotch whiskey. Amazing. (More Linacre Christmas pics below.)

New Year’s turned out to be a lovely surprise. I got an email from my old high school friends Ashley Roberts and Stephanie Stalker saying they were to be in London on New Year’s. I made the trip down to London on the 31^st. Ashley and Steph were staying with their friend Lav, and, joined by Lav’s friend Pricilla, we made some amazing brie and cauliflower risotto for dinner. Upon discovering a bar with an 80’s theme night and enough jazzercise spandex in Steph’s suitcase to clothe the lot of us, we hit the town. Turns out we were the only ones gutsy enough to dress up, so we were quickly the life of the party (I say modestly). We were even invited to do our jazzercise routine on stage! The next day, Steph and Ashley came back to Oxford with me for a night of catching up, movies, and slumber partying followed by a day of discovering Oxford’s eating and drinking establishments.

And that brings us back to January 3^rd when I left for Portugal! A fun-filled (but also work-filled) break so far. And more yet to come! On the 8^th I fly directly from Portugal to Scotland to meet my Laramie friend Brady for some whiskey and Guinness drinking... I mean sight-seeing. Hopefully I will have time to write again from Scotland before I dive head-first back into classes. By then, I might need a vacation from my vacation! Happy holidays to all – I miss you! Good as the holidays have been, they’ve also spurred my first bits of home sickness. So to all, be well, do good work, and keep in touch. For everything, extra big hugs and kisses to my family this week. I wish I could be there with you.

Love,

Alyssa

Mixin It Up

Good day y'all!

Again, yes, yes, it's been much too long, especially considering I ended my last entry by saying something like "I'll have a new post up early next week." That was just about a month ago. So much has happened since then! Namely, I've finished my first term (called the Michaelmas Term) and the holiday has begun! I'm staying on this side of the pond for the holidays and plan to write a few essays, do a lot of reading, and get my notes from the term in order. That, of course, in addition to some travel with friends (both from back home and my course) and a mid-season rugby tour to Portugal! But I'll talk more on those as they come. For now, I'll try to keep it to the highlights of the past month: 1) climbing in the Lake District, 2) Thanksgiving, and 3) the Varsity Ski Trip. All were a welcome diversion from the usual reading and rugby!

Last time I wrote I was just heading off to go on a climbing trip with the Oxford University Mountaineering Club. The Lake District is in northern England and is BEAUTIFUL! The climbing was... exciting. For those of you familiar with the Diamond in the Snowy Range, picture that with more route finding, less protection, and more water (although less height and fewer pitches, to be fair.) I was in a slightly awkward position because I had enough lead-climbing experience to be put in charge of leading a group, but no familiarity with the area or type of climbing. So I'm afraid my routes were rather boring for those following me. We all had a great time, though, climbing all day and walking off the slopes in the dark to dine on classic pub fare at the picture-perfect pub in the valley.

Thanksgiving in the UK turned out to be great fun. Each year, the first-year Marshall Scholars at Oxford are expected to host all the other Marshalls for a big T-Day feast. The day starts with an American touch football game against the Rhodes Scholars (to show 'em their "athletics requirement" part of their scholarship is rubbish), move on to a cooking extravaganza proceeded by an eating extravaganza, and end with a night on the town. Everything went splendidly. We beat the Rhodies at football (I couldn't play because I was getting over a nasty stomach flu, but just wait till next year!) We also hired out the University Club and used their industrial kitchen to cook 6 turkeys and all sorts of sides. After feeding the 75-100 guests, we rallied the troops and stormed the pubs and clubs of Oxford. It was great to see my Marshall family again, and it felt really good to spend Thanksgiving among friends, even so far from home.


Yesterday, I returned from a week on the slopes of the French Alps with my friends on the Varsity Ski Trip! Students from Oxford and Cambridge (Ox-bridge) go on a ski trip together to learn to ski, rip up the slopes, and compete in several ski events. I went with Olly (the punting master) and a bunch of his friends from his course. We left the Friday evening of the last day of term -- 2000 Ox-bridge students on a gaggle of coaches for a 20-hour bus trip to Val Thorens, France. (Val Thorens is the highest resort in the French Alps, so it is all above the tree line. Rather than having runs cut into the slopes, pistes are marked out and groomed. Everything else is "off-piste" and not fully controled for avalanches. It's quite strange to be in a resort under a cable car assessing the avalanche potential of a slope.)

We arrived Saturday afternoon to three feet of snow that had been falling over the previous week. It snowed all night, but we woke up to a clear blue-sky day. Sick freshies all day, dudes! The lack of tele gear cramped my free-heelin' style, but I had a great time relearning my alpine technique. After 2.5 days of perfect weather, the slopes were feeling a bit icey, but Tuesday afternoon the clouds rolled in and the snow started falling again! We had a few days of zero-visibility weather which made the off-piste very... exciting. But it meant that when Thursday afternoon rolled around, I didn't mind taking a few hours out of the white-out ski day to watch the Oxford rugby lads crush Cambridge in the annual varsity match! The Varsity committee had set up three giant screens in a Val Thorens bowling alley, and tons of people (from both universities) crammed in to cheer for their boys. There was plenty of Oxford gloating at the apres ski that day (like us mocking the Cambridge "cat" below. A little, ahem, healthy competition never hurts!) Cambridge won the grand slolom ski event this year, but Oxford won the cuppers tournament and the rugby match, so I'd say we won the war! Then, we awoke Friday to one final blue-sky day with even more fresh snow! Even better, I finally managed to find some tele gear for the last days and showed those Brits and Frenchies how to free their minds! Absolutely awesome trip. I'm planning on doing a little movie of more of our pics and video clips -- I'll post it somewhere and let you know when it's done!



Well, I guess that should be all for now. I know I got a little carried away on the ski chat, but those freshies are still fresh in my mind! :-D Until next time, my friends, live long and prosper. Oh man, I am such a nerd...

Love,
Alyssa