Leeches Have Mouths With Three Sets of Jaws and Between Sixty and One Hundred Teeth

Wow, this week has been packed full of excitement that was stuffed with a clam bake consisting mostly of dynamite and a fair share of grenades and motion-detector mines. Exams have to be the craziest first-time experience at college, especially if one has one in four classes. I have my Folklore exam in all of 25 minutes, so I thought I’d type the first half of an action-packed entry before running off to have breakfast with a few friends, swinging swords about, and acting rather foolish. It’s going to be an outstanding time. J
Back from the exam, hours later, and for the reader no time at all has passed! (That whole time concept has always intrigued me! I unfortunately missed out on the Time tutorial this fall, but my good friend Jubal had it, so maybe she could help enlighten me on the subject!) I’ve never had such a fun exam, with everyone talking about all sorts of things! My group had all sorts of subjects that we discussed the folklore of, ranging from a family’s thanksgiving traditions to folklore in film! Over all it was a rather interesting and unique approach technique to giving an exam! (Being the first to present to the teacher doesn’t help nerves, though, let me tell you! I had no idea where to start.)
Packing up for break is a bit of a bother! I have no idea what to do with an entire month of being away from here; what to bring home? What to leave?
At least I’ve had time to fit in all sorts of FUN(!) and EXCITING(!) things just before leaving! Shannon popped over several times this past week to watch some films, which was beyond outstanding. We saw Love Actually and Finding Nemo, neither of which I’d ever seen before. Very enjoyable, and a great stress reliever when those exams were beginning to loom! The smoothie party our neighbor Whitney held was also outstanding, and hopefully will become a weekly tradition! I also had time to put together a small Venture Brothers season 1 marathon with the one other fan I have managed to locate on campus. Go team Venture! Any idea how cool it is to spot an old high school chum while en route to sell some class books and buy some tea? It’s outstanding, especially when you get to talk with both her and your other high school friend that you never seem to see on campus(Jubal!) We did the standard catching-up thing, traveled about the bookstore for a bit, and I got rather excited that the bookstore bought all but one of the books I wanted to sell! And what’s wrong with a spare copy of Hamlet anyway?
Last, but most certainly NOT least, Abigail, my lovely roommate, bought me an amusing piece of vintage “fashion” as a holiday gift. It’s a small, obnoxiously fuschia-esq ‘hat’ that grips the skull. 1960’s, I think, but don’t hold me to that. I’ll post some pictures as soon as I have some, for this is one style that I certainly must bring back, if only for Abigail. Thank you again, Abs!

Harold Godwinson, Viking, Held a Bridge Alone, Slaying 44 Men Before Someone on a Boat Below Could Spear Him, Allowing his Allies to Ready Themselves

Egads! I've taken my first university exam and now I have the second in just a few short hours! CHAOS! At least once that's out of the way most everything else should be fun. (Is it sacrilidge that I referred to taking an exam as being fun??)

M.A.R.R.C.A. (a.k.a. "sword club") held its last meeting for the semester on thursday, and it was a blast. Anyone not attending missed out on one of the best days yet! We had another "Zombie Day" like we did for Hallowween to celebrate the holiday season. One "zombie" is declared and draws from a hat the method that must be used to kill him or her while the humans group together and wonder what the bit of paper has written on it, because none of us have ever seen it before. It's rather tricky! Susan acted as our first zombie since she knew all of the papers(she wrote most of them.) We managed to disarm her and all of the zombies she managed to make(being killed by a zombie turns you into one.) We milled around for a while, failing miserably at figuring out how to kill her, and eventually everything went bad and no humans remained. As the rounds continued, the humans experienced more success, but it was still a blast running about. I was elected to be the first zombie for one round, but my death choice was a rather simple one, so I only managed to kill off Ross before being surrounded by death. Ross is an excellent first choice to kill, by the way, and he managed to turn most everyone into a zombie all on his own. :) Huzzah victory! Some of the papers read thusly, for those curious: you die if...
"you're killed by anyone that is not Ross or Kyle"(amazing when only Ross and another person are alive!)
"you are attacked by two or more people"
"you are wearing black. tough luck, that's the way it is."
and one even just killed you right out. I'm glad I didn't grab that one. :)

I also get to borrow two of the club swords due to the lack of meetings between now and my exam in folklore next week! Yay! They're so well crafted that I can't help but admire them now that I have time to actually look at their craftsmanship more closely. I can't wait to use them for the presentation, especially since I'm planning on teaching David a new technique I worked out with Michele. David is a MARRCA member that is conveniently in my class, which makes it much easier to swing a sword at him in compare to trying to get a non-member to cooperate without being at least a little concerned for his or her life! (Wooden swords can be rather intemedating when someone is swinging one at you with a death-stare, especially when you're not as experienced as the other person is.)

(Due to a continued lack of a digetal camera, I felt compelled to share this German comic by Joscha Sauer with you; it's about Yetis synchronized swimming! =] )

In 1838 a war was fought for French pasteries taken from a restuarant. This was the War of the Cakes.

Egads! I spent forever getting a post typed up to put up here earlier this week, talking all about the sword club meeting and everything, and then my internet browser decided that it was unhappy with me and demanded that I close it and send off and errror report. I burnt with unspeakable rage! But at the same time it was rather amusing, because, had I not spent ten minutes fussing over my title, I would have had it up and safe. O well. :) I think my titles would be best spent instilling random factoids to the world rather than coming up with a prfound title that blows one's mind upon reading the corresponding blog entry. Where's the fun in that? Last entry's factoid was that the Great Cannon of Mehmed was a 42-inch bombard used by the Turks to attack the walls of Constantinople with 1200-pound boulders with a range of about a mile. The draw back? It could only be fired seven times a day.

Onto something more profound! Sword club this week was outstanding despite the ever-threatening cold. Yesterday was great, as we went over some attacks, several of which we already knew, or they were fairly close to ones we already knew. My favourite new move is called the Rising Falcon! It works best when you shout that just before performing it so that everyone is highly confused and higly aware that you're about to use it. ;) Not really. Basically, you start with the sword down and to your side, tip back. You slice up, and then flip the sword around so that the tip arcs up and loops back at the opponent again for a second fast blow; you then flip it back around and cut back to the original stance. Very cool looking, and it is currently my second favourite move from an aestetic point of view. Possibly third if you count the near useless "Archer's Guard," where one holds the sword like an arrow pulled taught in the bow and then throws it, hoping that 1) it goes where it was being aimed, 2) the pommel doesn't flip up and hit instead of the tip, and 3) that it slays the enemy, because otherwise a good pair of running shoes is highly recommended. Hopefully I can get my digetal camera soon so that I can actually SHOW all of you how this looks!

Exam week is looming ever closer, its gullet for crazed, frothy-mouthed, nervous students insatiable!!! Good thing my exam schedule is fairly low-stress after my lovely 8:30 A.M. exam next Saturday. Yea, a Saturday morning exam. The excitement abounds! Surprisingly, I am looking forward to a few of my exams. (Half of them, actually, but the mediocrity of one of the others and the dread of the massive review for the other help to off-set this.) For my folklore class we did independant research on living folklore today, and I ran with my project on sword club after pushing a few other ideas around. So, for my presentation I plan to fight with a fellow classmate that happens to be in the club with broadswords and rondels. It shall be wondrously amusing, weilding the wasters inside of Slocum. Maybe we can have a dramatic fight under the stainedglass, which I don't think recieves half the credit it should for how beautiful it is. If you've no idea of what I'm speaking of, ask me, and I'll point you to it, because it really must not be missed! Perhaps I can get some photos to put up here. Well, that's enough for today, I suppose. My German exam will be a great pleasure, and the rest of the days this semester will fly by, and then I'll be off on break, wondering where the time flew. Hopefully I'll have time to finish some reading and some art that I've been meaning to get to!

Guten Tag!

Greetings all! I suppose an introduction is merited, no matter how brief or elaborate, eh? I'm Courtney, one of the new bloggers here at OWU! I'm majoring in German and something else (perhaps creative writing!), but I have a rather wide and random scope of interests. (Anyone else out there a Chester A. Arthur fan?) I'm a rabid member of M.A.R.R.C.A., which is OWU's outstanding sword club. We practice medieval and renaissance style sword techniques as well as doing some work with rondels, a dagger-like blade that you use just for stabbing. We don’t use real blades though! Really! We have beautiful wooden ones made by our own smithy, the lovely Sam! It’s so much fun, running about, strategizing, and learning to master 8-point! We love it when newcomers stop by, so stop by and say hello sometime on a Tuesday, Thursday, or Friday at five in the park across from the Women’s House and MFL house! Until I get my digital camera I’ll just have to put up some photos I happen to have taken during a practice for my upcoming Myth, Legends, and Folklore project.
Sunday my good friend Shannon hosted a prospective student, but since she’s in choir, she couldn’t show her around until after the choir concert! So we wandered about Deleware, viewing all the important sights, such as the Mean Bean and famed sulfur spring until the concert. I wasn’t really sure what to expect going in, but I was more than pleasantly surprised! If ever you get the chance to see the choir perform live, jump to it! It’s truly hard to explain how enjoyable the entire show was. I only wish the organ had gotten more play time, but then again I’m a dreadfully big fan of that organ. I love hearing it nearly every Tuesday and Thursday during my German class, its powerful, gusty notes drifting up to swirl amongst my notes on der Gruene and von Stoffeln! Wonderful. Truly wonderful.