back in galway

after a major adventure in public (and private) transportation, I have returned to a very windy, very wet galway.
after a great day on the 4th, watching the trojans beat the bejesus out of oklahoma, I realised that, hey, it's time to go back to ireland! thus ensued a wednesday morning of crazy packing and worriedly watching as the snow began to come down. there had been forecasts of doom all week, so I was vaguely concerned about flights being delayed or cancelled. whatever, I finished packing, said good-bye to the house, and headed to o'hare with mom and dad. I have never seen o'hare so empty in the middle of the day. I checked in, and mom, dad, and I proceeded through security (though I won't say how they did it - that's their secret, not mine), where I left my ticket. I realized that I was ticketless as we were underground, passing from the b to the c concourse. this was just the beginning of a very long travelling period. after waiting in the red carpet room for a while we went to the gate (I had by this time recovered my ticket). things had looked pretty solidly booked, but because of the weather there had been a lot of people who missed connections, so I got on pretty easily. it was a long flight, once we finally left - they apparently had to bring out three cherry-pickers to de-ice the plane. I got to london at 6.30 in the morning, and I swear to god it was busier there than I had ever seen it. I retrieved my bags and made the long trek to terminal three, where I bought a ticket for an aer lingus flight to dublin. I got to dublin, where I decided that I would rather take the train to galway than the bus, unfortunately there was only 25 minutes until the next train left, so I was going to have to wait until 2.25. (it was about 11am at the time.) I took the five euro bus to the train station (the bus fare made up for the train fare, which was a bit more expensive than the bus to galway would have been). I ate at supermacs and sat around, reading and thinking about the paper I have to write for my medieval ireland seminar of last semester. I got on the train and dozed for the three hours or so that it took to get to galway. I suppose that it wasn't that much shorter than the bus, but there was a lot more room, and it was just more comfortable in general. I got to galway and got a taxi, and bam, I was back at dunaras. pretty easy, no? two planes, a bus, a train and a taxi later...
I was looking forward to a good long sleep, so I was out like a light by 10pm, only to wake up this morning at 6.30, when my new roommates were awaking, showering and blow-drying and doing god knows what. apparently, there had been some confusion over the clocks. they were supposed to go to orientation today, but they got confused about the time and left several hours earlier than they needed to, not realizing that there was a problem until they were halfway to the university. sigh.
the water heater is just as obnoxious as always, and after turning it off and trying to go back to sleep for over an hour, I gave up and started working on my paper. I decided that my last paper, about different kinds of sin hadn't been morbid/macabre enough, so I'm writing this latest paper on hell and purgatory. the library wasn't going to open for a while, so I went through the books that gave me the idea and looked up their references in the library catalogue online. a bit later I went out to the college, got thoroughly drenched on the walk there, then spent a while wandering around trying to find timetables for the coming semester. ha. I went to the library where I was semi-successful in my attempts to find books, then I went off to find daibhi to talk to him about the paper. after wandering into town and checking on the various bookstores I went to the bus station and bought a month-long pass, because apparently january is a rainy month. (unlike all the others, thus far?) I returned to the apartment and napped for a while, then got up and watched a bit of t.v. with the new roommates (becca and lauren/lindsay?). a couple of their friends came over later and I suggested we order chinese food, since I haven't had an opportunity to do any food shopping. so they had their fist adventure in irish-chinese cuisine, and now I'm sitting in my room, contemplating sleep and the beginning of classes on monday. oy vey.