So far...

Wed promised to be a short, easy day. It ended up being much longer than planned. I read as much as I could for my Theatre class on Tuesday night. Then I woke up Wed to finish reading. I got to campus a little after 1pm and went into the Buttery to get tea. I ran into a couple of classmates (and one boyfriend) and talked with them a little before going to class. The boyfriend's name is Shane, just like that computer kid... guess that's a popular name ;-)

We went to class, which was the only class we had that day (that's nice. we dont always only have just one class on weds, so that's what made it look short), and we split into 2 groups, having to pick out scenes from the play that we felt represented different topics we've been discussing. Tara and I actually 'acted' them out to the other group. We read two different scenes, and in the 2nd scene, I was reading Conn, who's lines were written phonetically so instead of saying 'tea' it read 'tay'. So I felt a little stupid reading his lines out loud, but since it's such a small class then everyone was cool.

After that we all went to the library, a tradition that occur everyday after our Wed. class. Then LeeAnn (from Ohio), Tara (from Dublin) and I went back to the buttery for food. We sat in there for a couple of hours before it shut down. It's so weird that the campus food place shuts down around 5. Strange right? But I had myself a bowl of chips (french fries). When it shut down we moved ourselves to The Pav, the only student pub on campus. We had some sodas and talked for a couple more hours. Tara is another girl who has that 'irish' voice that you'd love to hear. And she's got long wild curly hair - not like tight curls, but not as loose as mine. You think you'd see her in The Secret of Roan Inish! But that was a fun time of talking. We got to ask Tara questions about Ireland, how Irish ppl feel about certain things (like the British, the Americans...)

(I called Lisa the other night cuz as I was reading, I saw a glossary of terms and the first term written was 'acushla' which you hear in Tom Comerford's "Ooooh Molly, my Irish Molly, my sweet acushla dear". The word translates into "my pulse".)

The point of that was because as I was talking to Tara, I got to hear my words that I've only heard from the Irish songs, but didnt know what I was hearing. There were words from The Fenians songs, but at this point I cant remember exactly what. The point is, I was learning a lot just from having regular conversations with this girl. Tara actually did the undergrad program at DCU that I was applying for the Masters program at that school. She did multimedia in undergrad, and I had an interview to get my Masters in Multimedia (but I turned down the interview to accept my spot at Trinity). The reason she didnt do her masters at DCU was because she was told that the masters program was basically everything she did in undergrad, just squeezed into 1 year. But she got teased for coming to Trinity. She's from North Dublin (and I've mentioned before about the 'rivalry' b/w North and South Dublin). Her friends call her a "Trinner" and start teasing her that she will have a new "Posh" accent. The south side, again, is known to have a bit more money, and Trinity is the school that receives all these students. It's more difficult to get into, and has an air of poshness or exclusivity. But LeeAnn and I had a blast talking to Tara. I told her whenever I think of her name I think of "Gone with the Wind" when the Irish dad talks about their plantation called "Tara". She thought that was funny and even thought about writing her Cinema essay on how Irish culture was depicted in American film, using Gone with the Wind.

Anyways, after that LeeAnn and I headed to the Choral society. This was 6 hours after we got out of class. I had intended to go home, grab a jacket and get my songbook, but alas, I was without these things. I sung off of LeeAnn's book and I walked fast to keep from getting too cold. I did have an 'episode' when I got to choir, tho. My hands were shaking pretty bad and I could feel how shaky my breath was. This was after we had arrived and been sitting for a few minutes. That was odd. I have meds for my 'shakiness' (it's actually for my increased heart rate which causes the shakiness) but went off them before coming to Ireland. I have lots of meds I had bought before going off it and my Dr. told me to keep them incase I needed it. Unfortunately I didnt have them with me, seeing as I hadnt needed them since I've been here. Oh well, I did my best to stay calm and I got some water at our break time.

Last night was the last fire safety seminar at Hall, meaning that any night now we will have our fire drill. I went to bed at 1am last night, but kept thinking the fire alarm would go off so I didnt actually get to sleep til after 2.

Well, for this Thursday morning, I'm up. I'm going to straighten out my room. I've already downloaded ANTM and will watch it later. I'm going to head into town, go to the bank to move some money around (now that I have money in my Irish bank account), meet LeeAnn for lunch at Bewleys, then head back here to play the movie PS I love You for LeeAnn, and after that we will book our tickets to head for the Wicklow Mountains for Saturday, where they filmed this movie (and several others including The Matchmaker, Braveheart and King Arthur). Besides wanting to see the pretty places in Ireland, we will also see a 5000 year old bog. We see bogs in our plays all the time, and I'd really like to see one (knowing what I'm seeing) to be able to understand what I'm reading. So this really is an educational process! :-)

So I should have another laid back day. In to town, back here again, then back to campus to hit the CU. Good times :-)