ISTR Conference

I can at least say that I've been busy for a while, which is a nice change since I finished classes. I volunteered to work at the Irish Society of Theatre Research Conference this week from thursday to Saturday. I'm really glad I did it. I wish this had been at the end of last semester, not this one, because I got a chance to get to know other students and professors whose faces I knew but never had the opportunity to meet. My adviser and theatre prof Melissa was running the whole thing so I havent had a chance to meet with her about my dissertation. That will start next week now that she's done with the conference. I also got the chance to meet one of my playwrights, Marina Carr. It was just a "hi nice to meet you" but still, cool for me. Other than the time that she was the keynote speaker, she wasnt around the rest of the conference which is a bummer for me because I would have liked to talk to her more. The other students werent as impressed since she is their advanced playwriting prof, so they know her.
It was also nice because, even tho I didnt get to sit in on any of the panels, I got a few extra treats for volunteering. I did pay to become a member of the ISTR, even tho I'm not sure what that really means. I went to the book showcase and bought a book that was presented by my external examiner. See, we have 3 people who will grade our dissertations. Melissa will grade mine, as she is my adviser, and another professor inside Trinity. Then the final say on my grade will be the external examiner, who, in this case, is a prof at University College Dublin. I figure referencing a book that he promoted can't hurt! :)
Since yesterday was the final day of the conference, we had our big banquet dinner at the end. The nicest thing was that since I was a volunteer, I did not have to pay for my dinner! And it was quite lovely. I had goat cheese pastry rolls (sooo good), a steak, and raspberry cheesecake. Good meal! Then afterwards Tara and I met up with her boyfriend and one of his friends and we went to a pub called The Church, since the building was a former church. You could see the huge organ on the 2nd level and it had stained glass windows. And we found a table that was in the old confessional! Haha! The two Irish boys were doing different accents all night long and thought it was really funny when I did my redneck accent. They thought it was pretty hot. I thought it sounded like a dumb uneducated hick! Cultural difference I guess... After that we hit up Eddie Rockets for late night eating and since it was quite late I had to catch a cab home but that was fine.

Today seems like a bleak and dreary day. Ever since that volcano nonsense, Dublin has actually been pretty nice and clear. Blue skies, sun... very odd. Never any notice of ash or dark clouds... But now, after the planes have started running again, now we get the blah weather. Such is Dublin i guess.

Since this will probably be an indoor day for me, I've gone iTunes crazy and rented several movies. I rented a classic: Three Men and a Baby; I rented a movie from the show I used to watch in college: Mystery Science Theater 3000 - its so random and the sarcasm is what I love. I rented Brothers, since I saw the trailers for it when I was home at Christmas and wanted to see it. It's also directed by famed Irish director Jim Sheridan. Then for the scary night, I've got the horror film The Collector waiting for me

Cooking

So I'm enjoying cooking, oddly enough. It's weird right? I've never done the cooking thing. But now that I've tried some things, I'm getting ideas of how to make things, what to make. Couple nights ago I made quesadillas. Last night I made some sorta meaty-chilli thing with veggies... I cut my first green pepper and onion this week. I know most of you are rolling your eyes at that, but the fact is is i've never done it and Ive never cooked with it. And now i'm making meals with fresh sliced veggies! Haha! My first cooking thing here was learning how to cook meat! Now, I can only cook chicken or ground beef - no steaks yet - but throw in some veggies, and maybe some cream, and spices, and you've gotta meal!! Hahaha! I'm enjoying the cooking cuz some of the meals are turning out pretty nicely... I still like to have other people make me food, but while I'm here, this is what I'm stuck with... :)

Sweden Pix

So there are LOTS of pictures, as usual... If you have any questions about any of them, just ask. I've got pix of Stockholm, including the Royal Palace (their royal family is so big over there!). I've got pix from our tour, where Monique, Brigitte and Kevin and I scored the front rows. The wooden houses are some of the oldest left in Sweden. You'll also see how frozen the water was so the boat tour we were on had to turn around. The oldest surviving Viking ship exists as a museum now, so you'll see the ship looking building missing it's sails on the water front. Lots of pictures on the Baltic Sea. You'll see the money - 50, 100 and 500 bills. Our hotel was the Crystal Plaza. We went to the palace and saw the changing of the guards. Monique took a picture of her Swedish meatballs, mine are at the top left corner, and the super creamy and rich mashed potatoes are between our plates. Then the clearer day is from our road trip to Uppsala and the oldest town in Sweden. The mounds you see are actually tombs with chiefs.

My fantastic dinner

So, I plan to put up pictures of Sweden, but you know, my days of no classes just seem to get so full...

I started today by heading to the North side of Dublin to have breakfast with Karla before she went home for a few weeks. Then I did a little book shopping at the book store. Sure, I bought one book that contains a play that I'm covering in my dissertation, but then I bought the next book in my True Blood series and picked out a Stephen King mystery. I headed to the store to pick up a few items I didn't get yesterday in my big grocery shopping day. Eventually I headed back to Tesco with Caroline when she needed to grab a few things, and I found myself picking out yet again a few more things, which worked out nicely, because I got the last ingredients for my dinner tonight.

So you know I'm not a cook, never really been, and am happy to let other people do the food makin'. But it doesnt work like that here. Either I eat take away Chinese or make something. So tonight I ventured out to make cheddar chicken tenders. The recipe calls for Cheez Its but that's not something Ireland can offer, so I eventually found some cheese crackers (I wonder why it was so hard since they seem to be so crazy about cheese crisps (chips)!). The crackers, once crunched up with a mayo jar, became my crust. I dipped chicken in dijon mustard and then in the crumbles, and boy did my fingers get messy! Then I put them in the oven and flipped them once and I gotta say, it turned out really good! I feel weird saying that cuz I'm not a 'look at me. look at me' kinda girl, but seriously, I dug the chicken tenders! And i even made home made ranch (from the hidden valley packets of course).... it was slammin! The chicken was juicy, not at all dried out, and it was cooked all the way through. No red in the middle. I was so impressed. Hahaha! :) Just thought you'd like to see what I'm doing over here - apparently it's learning how to cook...

IKEA. ABBA. Meatballs. Nokia...... Things that come from Sweden!

So I have returned from Sweden after being there since last Thursday the 8th. I have to say I really enjoyed myself. I went with my roommate Monique and her classmate Brigitte. We had a great fun time! Like my tour in Italy, this was a multi-lingual trip too! Brigitte is from Paris and you may remember that Monique comes from a French-Canadian quarter so French was used often. I first listened to them converse on the plane. They were sitting behind me and I was sitting with their classmate Kevin who was in Sweden at the same time (I got put with him often, haha, but that was because the other ladies didnt wanna sit with him! haha). I would tease them but they always spoke English when I was in the room!! :-) They were great fun! I'd travel with them again.

We arrived Thursday evening. We found our fantastic hotel, The Crystal Plaza, and wandered around after settling in looking for food. We noticed that, sort of like Dublin, things were closed early, and none of us claimed to have that much money, so we ate our first meal at McDonalds. Those of you who know me know that I dont eat Micky-Ds, but as little money as I had, I thought that it would be necessary to break that 4 year-running rule of no fast food. It's sad, but I forgot how good a cheeseburger there tastes. But not to worry, now that Im back in Dublin and am getting my money sorted out, I wont be hurrying back there soon.

And by the sounds of it, you'd think I had lots of money. I started out with two 500 krona bills. But in Euros that's about two 50 Euro bills. So throughout the trip we all were in shock when we'd hear the bill or total. We ate at one nice restaurant one evening and got all dressed up for it. I think my portion of the bill was 235 krona, which is just under 24 euro, so it's not as scary when you remember to divide! I bought 2 new pairs of jeans, which are desperately needed, and easy to find since I was in the land of TALL people, and the total was over 600 krona. It was a shock but then I remembered it wasnt euros or dollars, so we were ok!

(I have to say, to anyone - like Mom - who knows what I'm talking about, but I got the famous Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes for dinner at our nice night out. The meatballs were fantastic, just amazing! And the mash was great. Not as great as Mom's, but it was soooo smooth. I kept thinking "These mashed potatoes are so creamy. . . . Mary mashed them" and would laugh to myself but couldnt actually say this out loud. )

Definitely dark haired Monique, half Egyptian Brigitte and myself stood out in a fairly blonde culture. The three of us got lots of looks. It was obvious that were not locals. But it was fun. I also enjoyed the tallness of the people. Dublin seems to be keeping all the leprechauns around. Seriously, you should see the amount of tiny people here. And they find each other and form little girl groups. I'm shocked when I realized these barely 5-feet (if that) girls are studying at Trinity. And in addition, it's hard to shop here. But, besides the dark hair, I fit in with Sweden. I really enjoyed being in a tall culture. Sure, I was still taller than lots, but it was quite a change from Ireland. I love Ireland and always will - the people, the culture, the land - but Sweden was a nice change of scenery and great to see people at or around my eye level!! Plus it's so artsy and hip (but not intimidating), full of theatres and museums. A lot like Paris, Brigitte noticed, being a Parisian herself, in the landscape buildings and shops, but without the traffic, people and tourists.

When we arrived it was foggy and pretty chilly. On Friday we took a bus and boat tour around Stockholm which was a great idea, because then we had a better idea of what we wanted to see the rest of the time we were there. But Friday and Saturday brought light rain, and were cloudy, foggy and 30s temps. Sunday brightened up. It was still chilly - in the low 40s at the high - but the sun finally came out. That day we rented a car from Hertz and drove up the coast, went to a Viking town, then visited Sweden's oldest town, then back to Stockholm. And today was lovely! It was sunny again and in the 50's (As I stop and read this sentence, I realize that it sounds crazy to be excited about having 50 degree weather. But you hafta understand, Ireland has not been hitting that high and Sweden was not nearly that high. So when I see the temp starting with a "5", that's amazing. Plus you know it's great for the locals when you see them in shorts and tank tops - sure i'm still in a jacket, but i can lose the scarf and gloves! And PSS - Lisa, I wore your scarf again. Its the warmest thing I have and could not have been more appropriate or needed!!) ! Today was our shopping day, so of course it was a good day.

Pictures to come. But I've gotta say, I really enjoyed Sweden so much. We had thought about taking a train trip to Oslo or Copenhagen because Monique had thought shed read about the 1.5 hr train trips from Stockholm, and we got excited about trying that one day, but it turned out they are both 6 hour train rides, so we decided against it! haha... oh well, another trip. I'd love to visit Sweden in the summer. Currently they are still trying to move out of winter.

In Northern Sweden they hit a point in the summer when the sun never sets (the famous midnight sun). In October the sun rises at 8am and sets at 3pm! Can you imagine? Then in winter, the sun doesnt rise at all. Crazy huh? But I can tell how beautiful this place is when it's warm and the plants are living. They have 24 thousand islands that apparently are so great to see, but given how cold it was, and how much colder it got when we were near water, we decided against going out there. It was a bit like Venice, in that Stockholm was made up of several islands (but in this case they use cars instead of gondolas to get around) and we were constantly at the Baltic Sea, which was cool to me, just because it's different than the Atlantic Ocean...

Anyways, blabbing too much as usual. When I get my many pictures sorted I'll pick out a few and put them up here.

You are the dancing queen...

So today I finished my last day of classes. It's been a long day but nice to be done. The theatre class was the best because we got to go over dissertation issues: how to write it, what they're expecting... you know all that stuff. It was definitely overwhelming. There's so much we have to write and read and we are expected to come up with brand new ideas that have never been introduced in the field... that's pretty big!!

Since i've come home, I've taken out the recycling and trash and vacuumed my room and the common room, as we have house cleaning coming to 'check up' on us once again... Will these people leave us alone and let us be adults?? Apparently not...

During this I did my laundry and now I need to clean my bathroom and pack for Sweden. I'm excited about this trip. I dont know what to expect, but this is the first trip I've taken where I dont have to wake up at 2:45am since we are taking an afternoon flight. That's so nice!! Sure, we dont get as much of the day when we are in Sweden, but we can enjoy it more the first day because we wont be dead tired!! I've got about as much money as I can take out of my account without going completely broke and I'm hoping that it will last me... I got my loan check from the school this week but the bank is taking its time putting the check in the system... bummer.

So anyways, I probably wont have a new post up til next Monday or Tuesday, since I come back to Dublin on Monday. I need to go put my clean clothes up or they'll be wrinkled so I hope you guys have a good week...

Happy Easter

He is Risen! He is Risen indeed!!

So today I had a fantastic lamb roast with Maria, Paul and Hugoline. Paul made lamb with potatoes, onions, carrots and mushrooms. It was a great Easter dinner. There are no stores or restaurants opened in Dublin on Easter so it was best that we had food!

I spent the morning reading the Gospels accounts on Christ's resurrection. What hope we have in the Lamb of God!

Afterwards I stuffed myself silly.

Then after eating and cleaning up, I spent the rest of the afternoon and night in my room writing my paper. I was getting stuck but eventually made it past 3,000 words. I've stopped for tonight, made myself some leftovers for dinner, and will start editing and polishing my paper tomorrow... At least the stress has passed.

I have no money this week until my loans come into my account, which could be the end of this week or next week... Oh well... will be unfortunate to go to Sweden with no money, but you gotta do what you gotta do...

Stalling....

So I've gotten about 500 words written for my cinema essay. My plan is to complete 500 - 1,000 more words tonight. But I took a break when Maria and Paul came back from Tesco to bring me the sugar infused Cadbury creme eggs I asked for. They went shopping for our big Easter 'dinner' that we will have tomorrow. Maria found an apple and blueberry mixed crumble and Hugoline was so interested in trying it fresh, that we all had a piece. Then I had a Cadbury egg to wash that down... and now i'm a little jittery and hyper. It's already after 7:30pm but I've told myself I cant stop for real dinner until I settle down and write a chunk of this paper!

But I did wanna throw out some 'thank you's' to some of you. As you know, my birthday bringing me into my late 20's occurred last week.

GiGi, I have been using that Brita filter ever since my parents showed it to me and it's been great! Buying water is so expensive and drinking the water from the tap is a little scary cuz it's definitely a little murky when you look thru the glass (and scary!). Plus, I think i've actually been drinking about the amount of water you're supposed to drink in a day, which i never did before when I was drinking by the bottle. So that's excellent. And the dog is cute!

Also to Aunt Barb, Love the scarves. Unfortunately the weather has dropped quite a bit and they day my parents left to go home we had snow and slush!! So I'm definitely still using the thicker scarf that Lisa knit me at Christmas, but as soon as Ireland learns what Spring is, I'll be using the new scarves!

And to my parents, besides everything else, thanks for all the junk (and cash). I'm sure this is the wrong time to be scarfing down Little Debbie's and Cheetos since I'm currently not moving too much while I do my research and writing. That's unfortunate (tho at least I'm only drinking water and not any soda or juice!) I've finished one bag of Hot Fries and the puffy cheetos. I need more (and I'm still kicking myself for not asking you to bring my wonderful salsa! So sad!!)

I had a phone scare this weekend. A couple of nights ago I was changing and my phone was in my pocket and, in my oh so suave way, i swung my jeans so that my phone flew out and landed in the toilet! My goodness there have never had so many cell phone watery deaths in history than phones in my possession! Unfortunately for me, I did not have my mom near by so that I could scream at her to get it for me... I had to do the dirty deed myself (although the toilet was clear...), Still it's gross! After laying everything out to dry for a day and a half, I am happy to announce that my phone has made a full recovery.

After stalling, now I believe that it is time to go back to Word. Time to make some magic happen (or just make something up....)

Cinema essay

So I've gotten a late start to my essay work. I meant to start working on my cinema essay yesterday but got distracted. . . So today I've hunkered down and started reading. This is the same as the others, 3,000 words, but since I dont feel like I have as many notes from the class, it'll be a bit harder for me to write something. I'm writing my essay on representation of women in the films of Neil Jordan and I've chosen 'The Butcher Boy', 'The Miracle', and 'The Crying Game' to write on. So far I've read an article pertaining to each film. Im taking a quick break so I can make some toast from this rockin bread I got out at Howth on Sunday, the seaside town north of Dublin that my parents and I went out to. Then back to reading my last 3 articles on these films and one book... I'd like to start writing tomorrow and write thru the weekend. The essay is due on Tuesday at noon, so right now I think i'm doing ok...

Bday Weekend Day 3 - Back in London

So for the last day of my little birthday trip with the folks, we were back in London. This was another packed day that we just kept going. First we took the tube over to Harrods. We didnt go through it but it was huge. It was good that we didnt go around it cuz we wouldnt have had time to do all of our things. We next went to Buckingham Palace and arrived at the changing of the guards. That was pretty fun. Then we headed over to the London Tower Bridge. We passed by the London tower and went thru the Tower Bridge Exhibition. That was cool. We walked up all the stairs to get to the top then walked across to get another great view of the city. Then we walked down the street to the London Dungeon. If we hadnt skipped looking around in Harrods we wouldnt have gotten to go thru the dungeon. It was fun. You could think of it like Scarowinds. They had actors dressed up as scary people. They were sawing dead people open and telling scary stories and there was a ride that had a hill that went down backwards. It was cool. We enjoyed ourselves. Then we caught our last Tube to the train station which took us to the airport. It was good. We had a really fun time and got to see 2 of the most famous cities in the world. That was rockin!

Thanks mom and dad for coming out here. That was amazing for my birthday. No one else loves me! haha