I fell off a horse

Yup.  On Wednesday during horsemanship.  The first time I've fallen off a horse since horse camp when I was about 10.  It was pretty scary.

I was cantering--that's what we're learning this semester, in Horsemanship II--on Dream, a big mare.  She's not that big, but she's bigger than Brooks, the horse I'd been riding.  Just a few weeks ago they switched several of us to different horses, so I'd only ridden Dream once before.  She's a lot faster than Brooks, and I'm just not used to her.  But I was cantering, and it was going well, until I was supposed to slow down.  I tried, but Dream wasn't ready to stop yet.  Megan, one of the TAs, was there to help everyone stop, and she reached for Dream to slow her down.  But that freaked Dream out, and she twisted away to the right--while I kept going to the left.

All I was aware of during this was that I had lost control of Dream.  As she rounded the corner, I felt myself shifting and realized I was going to fall off.  And then I saw where I was going to fall.  We were right next to the wooden mounting ramp that runs along one side of the arena, and as I was sliding off I knew I was going to hit the edge, and that it was going to hurt.

I hit the ramp just like I knew I would and then flipped over somehow--people said I bounced off--and then I was lying on my back.  The floor of the arena is covered with little bits of rubber, so hitting the ground was really soft.  But my legs had smacked right into the ramp, and I just lay there, not moving, because they hurt so much.  Adam told me later he was afraid I was unconscious because I didn't move for so long.

Andrea, our teacher, and the TAs came over and asked where it hurt, if my head was okay, stuff like that.  I could talk to them fine; I was completely okay except for my legs.  They mentioned ambulances, and I immediately said I didn't think it was that bad.  Andrea and Cindy, one of the TAs, helped me stand up, and I thought they were going to help me walk into the classroom, but then Andrea just picked me up and carried me out of the arena.  I was pretty impressed.

I finally got to see my legs once I was in the classroom sitting down, and they weren't pretty.  There was a huge scrape on the left one and a big bruise on the right.  Andrea got me ice and had someone come make sure that there were no worse injuries, and there weren't.  I tried to walk and I could, although it hurt.  Then for the rest of the class I just sat with my ice.  I had been kind of shaky already just from the shock of it, and having the ice on my legs didn't help.  But I did get calmed down and more relaxed.

I walked a little slower than usual the rest of that day, and the next day I was somewhat sore and it still hurt to walk, but I've been doing everything I normally do, like my cleaning jobs.  I did skip going to the gym yesterday; I didn't think running or biking was a good idea.  Although, today I went to a scavenger hunt floor event where we raced other teams, and we had to run a lot for that . . . so hopefully I won't be too sore tomorrow!

So yeah, it was scary, and not fun, and I'm going to be bruised for a while, but it hasn't made me scared to ride or anything.  Next week is the last time we're riding, so it's my last chance to get that canter right!

I haven't been posting . . .

Sorry. Not much is really going on here yet. It's been great to see friends again, and I'm enjoying the academic aspect for the most part. Here's part of an e-mail I wrote to my mom:

Right now in Literary Non-Fiction we're doing a group project where we read an article the prof. gave us and then had to look up and compile background info on the author, information on the other authors he mentioned, and stuff about the historical events he mentioned. I found I really don't like working with other people on something like that; it's way easier when it's completely up to me what I do and how. Although, Adam and I are going to work together on a presentation for the fantasy class, but I'll like that better because it's just one other person who I know, and it will be less stressful presenting in front of the class with Adam up there as well.

I stayed up late a few times this week, but last night I was asleep by 11:30. This weekend Jaela and Alexa went to Alexa's house, so I had the room to myself, which was nice. On Friday I watched a movie with some other London girls, and a few of us stayed up till 1 talking about London and telling travel-afterward stories. On Saturday my floor went to Letchworth; it wasn't a very nice day, so we didn't really do much, just had a picnic and talked. That evening Adam and Eri and I hung out in my room until Adam got kicked out, then we went to the basement of the campus center and hung out there. Adam and I haven't been playing chess as much, just once a day recently or less. I'm up by 6 now.

School is going well; homework remains easy, and I'm getting it all done in plenty of time. Tomorrow I'm not going to have much at all to do, since I did most of Wednesday's reading today.

I didn't say this to mom because I forgot, but last week we had our first rock climbing class where we actually got to climb, and that was all we did; the guy filling in for the usual teacher (who's away, in Alaska!) basically said, "Go boulder," so we did. It was a really fun class. That's definitely going to be the easiest.

I like Conservation Bio as well. It's not a typical bio class at all, which I'm really happy about; we've been learning about people like Carl Linnaeus and John Muir, and our lab last Thursday was to go out and count as many different species as we could. There are so many different plants around Houghton! We had to write a short paper about it, and today in class the prof. read parts of some people's, including mine and Dan's. That was fun.

So I'm really enjoying being back at Houghton. There are some things I don't like, but I'm not going to start complaining now. I'll probably continue to post sporadically as the mood strikes, or as interesting things happen. I guess that's it for now.

P.S. You can see pictures of my new room on my facebook; there's a link on the left.