London! you may be wondering, why is it that the only time kate finds to post is when she's somewhere exciting like london, where she should be out doing fun things? well, that's what I would be asking, anyway. but the answer is slightly complicated, and also doesn't really explain why I'm in london to begin with.
For exams this semester I have three essays and three tests. two of the essays were due at the beginning of may, and I finished those well ahead of time. then I had a latin exam (ouch), which I finished and then headed to dublin to...meet my parents! we had a lovely time in dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty, and I first set my eyes on sweet molly malone's statue, which depicts a rather buxom young lady in a low fronted dress, selling mussels and cuckles, alive, alive oh. (that was a song, by the way, I'm not that ramblingly insane. yet. we went to several museums, and on that friday we met with daibhi and others from my history of the irish script class to do a special tour of dublin's historical whatnot. the highlight of the trip was the beginning, when we went to the royal irish academy, which is technically the owner of most of the more impressive pieces in the national museum, but which is a more scholarly site, not usually open to the public. we went in to the library, a lovely two story room with simple blue glass chandeliers and seats set up for a lecture. there were only 10 of us, but the library staff seems to have been very short that day, so we couldn't actually go into the library in the basement, where the old manuscripts are kept. the man who was working was extremely apologetic, and he offered to bring up the manuscripts that we were interested in, which was amazing. he brought up the cathach, one of the oldest mauscripts from ireland, and held it right there in front of us, turning the pages and showing us what could be the handwriting of st. columcille himself. then we looked at the stowe missal, a tiny handbook from around the 8th century which would have been carried by a priest or monk and had instructions for saying the mass in it, among other things. actually seeing them up close was amazing, and something that most people would never get to see. after that we went to the national gallery for lunch, the national museum, where we saw the tara broach and the reliquary for the cathach, and finished up at trinity college, where we got to see the book of kells for free. there's an excellent display explaining the most important features of the book, production, and soon. I had seen this already, so I spent my time circling the case in which the book (which has been divided into four seperate volumes, one for each of the gospels) and the book of durrow are displayed. it was a great day, and we finished up in a pub where daibhi bought us two rounds of drinks and we sat around and had a nice talk before he and eugene (one of the mature students from my class) had to go back on the train. afterwards my parents and I went to dinner with frida, my german friend from daibhi's classes.
the next day I sent mom and dad off to the guinness factory - which everyone who goes to dublin has to see - while I wandered through the dublin bookshops. we visited dublin's two cathedrals (what a special town dublin is, that it has two cathedrals), and earlier in the visit we had seen 'I, Keano', a play/musical by one of the writers for father ted, which was all about irish soccer, and even though we didn't understand all of the references that it made, it was still extremely funny. it was a great visit, and I finally broke it to mom and dad that I want to do the two year masters program at nui galway, which they took far better than I really had any reason to hope for. it was sad saying good bye (before I went back to bad - it was disgustingly early when they had to leave for the airport), but reassuring because I was going to be seeing them in less than a month.
I got back to galway, wrote my last paper (which got me out of taking the exam on tudor history!) and prepared for london, a trip which ashley and I had planned before I left for dublin. we took a ryan air flight from dublin to london, which altogether cost about a third of what we have to pay for our hostel. we found a nice, relatively cheap hostel right by london bridge, but london was bound to be expensive one way or another. we've contented ourselves thus far with doing many free things - especially visiting the british museum (we're planning daily pilgrimages to the rosetta stone) - and bought london passes for three days, which get us into basically every major attraction in the city.
then, disaster struck. ashley lost her wallet, which had her tube pass for the week, her london pass, hostel key, money, credit cards, etc. etc. in it. the good news is that her passport wasn't in it, but it still sucks. she's dealt with it much better than I probably would, and after we're done in the internet cafe we're going back to the places we were yesterday to see if it's surfaced. she also has her last paper due back in galway, and she's been working in that early in the mornings, and today she's doing one last push to get it done, thus our time at the internet cafe. I don't feel fidgety to get out there, partly because I've already been to london, but also because if we're in here using the internet, we're not out there spending lots of money. it is an expensive place, though ireland is almost as expensive, if not more so.
for those who are curious, I'm heading home on the 31st of may - using my visa to the very last. I wouldn't normally be in a hurry to get back, but my driver's license expires on the 3rd of june, and if I don't renew it by that date, I think I have to take all the tests over again, and since I haven't had many chances to drive in the past ten/eleven months, I'm not sure how well that would go.
I'm running out of time now, and ashley is wrapping up, so I'm going to go, but like macarthur, I shall return.
