london update

ok, so, here I am in london. I'm taking a break at an internet cafe because I'm supposed to meet ashley in 20 minutes and don't know what else to do with myself. we've been having a great time - we went to the national gallery and its exhibit on carvaggio, british museum and its exhibit on mummies, tower of london, etc...
we decided to split up this morning because ashley wanted to go to the aquarium and I wanted to see the queen's gallery at buckingham. we're going to meet up shortly, go to the victoria and albert museum, have a traditional english tea (of course), then make our last trip to the british museum. we have to cut it shorter than me might otherwise because we're going to see the producers! we're going back to the hostel first to change into these trashy red tops that we found at a clearance store (they're supposed to be 'dresses', but we're going to wear them with jeans). it would have been great if we could have found fancy dresses (costumes, that is), but they would have been way too expensive.
we never did recover ashley's wallet - her mom called the credit card company who said that her card had been used to buy a train pass and then spent £250 (about $500) at a bar the same night it was taken. we've been getting along fine with a running tab - what we call 'ashley's blood/boba money'. how amazing that they have boba! the tapioca ball drinks which mom thinks are disgusting are so good, and ashley likes it too. other food adventures - turkish food wednesday night: very good; indian food last night: spicy, but good; and we're addicted to sainsbury's freshly baked cookies, especially the raspberry/white chocolate cookies.
time to meet ashley. cheers!

guess where I am....

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.

brief update

this is me being silly and posting when I should be doing other things, but what else is new? we won our match, meaning that we are all-ireland champions for our level! the best part was that I didn't have to play - tricia stayed healthy and on-the-ball (literally as well as figuratively) and then we went to the very nice hotel that they put us up in. we had a nice dinner, then the celebrating really began. we went to this bar where there was supposed to be karaokee, but it didn't start for a long time, and in the meantime the team was doing a very good job of getting very drunk. because the karaokee was taking too long to get going, they started singing, much to the bemusement of the rest of the bar patrons. at some point I went downstairs (the karaokee/dance floor were upstairs) to try to get to a bar, and while I was there I started talking to with a couple older women who are locals, and I ended up staying there for anywhere between 45 minutes and an hour. at some point courtney and matt had wandered downstairs are were very confused as to whether or not I actually knew these people. I always enjoy making friends wherever I happen to be, and maura and frances were very nice. later, after pulling vanessa out of the way of traffic, we returned to the hotel. some of the girls went into the hotel bar, but I ended up going to the kfc, which was so good that I had it again for lunch today. even courtney agreed it was good, and she's very picky about her fried chicken, being from the south and all.
we woke up today (myself a bit more slowly than the others) and walked into city centre, where we went to one of the nicest malls that I've seen yet on the island and I had my second helping of kfc. the kids also got bus tickets for dublin, then we walked back to the hotel along the river, which was very nice. then I had to bid matt may, courtney and allison good-bye. sniff. but I'll be seeing them again before the end of the week, so it wasn't as hard as it could have been.
we watched the first team play for the o'connor cup (the highest level) around 4, then set off back to galway. I got home around....11.45, to find that I was incredibly hungry, hadn't started to pack for wales (which I was to be leaving for in a bit over 6 hours), and had no ticket to get back to ireland from scotland (where I'll be going after wales). so I cooked up a pizza, cracked open a can of coke, and set off on the madness that is my life. if there really is no rest for the wicked, I must be lucifer.
time to wrap this up and finish packing.

right, so

as I noted yesterday, I haven't exactly posted recently. my last substantial post was from before berlin, so more than two weeks ago. so, here's a brief summary of the last two weeks. (brief for me, that is.)
on tuesday I woke up early as planned and went to dublin, only to find that the person I was supposed to be meeting wasn't in the city. so I got a couple hours to wander around dublin, find a t-shirt for emma, since she was being nice enough to put me up (and put up with me). I got to berlin late-ish, and was happy enough to go to bed once we got into the city from the airport. though emma is normally quite the party child, she was in the midst of finals for winter semester (so weird) so she was a bit sleep deprived herself and had papers to work on.
wednesday was spent wandering around berlin, which is a very cool city, though rather cold and snowy this time of year. I finally got to see the brandenburger tor, after being dreadfully disappointed at not seeing it when I was in berlin almost four years ago. the day involved many stops for coffee, because emma is as addicted to caffeine as I am, if not moreso. this led to a very entertaining episode later in the day when emma and I were joined by her friend ace (don't ask, I don't remember where the name came from). we were going through stationary stores, because I really like german pens, and the selection here in ireland is kind of thin. so I find the name of a stationary store in a guide book that emma had, and we go in, after one of our many stops for coffee. emma and ace each have a cup of coffee, with a lid on and everything, and they're just kind of trailing around after me in this fairly swanky store, and this sales lady comes up and says, "excuse me, but you can't drink that in here. people don't do that in germany." emma and ace were like, oh, ok... so they stop drinking it and are heading out when they stop to look at some highlighters. the same sales lady comes up and says "I think it's time for you to go now," and puts her hand on the highlighters and glowers at them. ace got really mad, and after trying to explain to the lady in german that she had been there long enough to know what was what, but getting mixed up because she was so mad, she finally just called her a not very nice name in german and stormed out. we began to speculate about what the best way to react to this would have been, whether by each of us starting to speak in a different language or to spill their coffees all over the saleswoman, and I think that emma's idea was best. she decided that ace should have looked the, well, rather unpleasant, lady in the eye and say "it's because I'm jewish, isn't it?" fortunately we had stormed out before anyone could do something rash... then we went to 'sideways' auf deutsch, which seemed very funny from the 2/3 which I understood.
the next day emma and I went to museum island, first to the old museum, then emma went off for a test and I went to the old national gallery and the pergammon museum. I had a nice moment where I was sitting at the top of the fabulous pergammon alter, working on my virgil translation for the next day, which seemed very appropriate. after emma returned and we had found ice cream to erase the memory of her less than fantastic exam. then we wandered the city looking for a stationary store, since she and ace had ruined my previous attempt to purchase a pen, and we spent at least an hour and a half looking. we were ultimately unsuccessful, so I continue in my search for a nice pen. then it was off to the airport, where I took advantage of duty free. (liquor is far more expensive here, and with rag week coming I knew that anna was broke...) I got back to dublin late, then had another adventure in transportation getting home, but I made it to latin at 10am the next morning, which I consider a major accomplishment.
then followed a fairly quiet weekend, which was nice, as was catching up with sleep a bit. on sunday night I went out with anna and two of her friends, maria and maeve, who did their part in depleting the liquor which I had brought back. as long as I didn't have to drink much, I was happy enough. I made it to german the next day, though the whole week saw rather under-attended classes, since it was rag week. I've tried to come up with a way to explain rag week, and the best that I can do is this: imagine rush week at any major us university...now imagine everyone on campus participating...now imagine it all being for charity, rather than for joining a fraternity or sorority...it's basically a week of drunkenness. classes were, as I said, rather under-attended.
I missed classes on tuesday to go to the gaelic football team's match up in cavan (one of the 'border' counties), which we won (woo hoo!) with the result that tomorrow we'll be playing dit (dublin institute of technology, I think), and if we win that we'll be going to a big national thingy... it's been fun one way or another. and I'm getting a sweatshirt, shorts and socks, and it will be cool to have a nuig gaelic football shirt, rather than the standard nui galway sweatshirt that everyone has.
on wednesday I got my hair cut, which was a much more positive experience than I had really hoped for. I'm always very reluctant to get my hair cut anywhere besides pat's salon in illinois, but my hair was getting fairly long, and it needed to be trimmed one way or another - split ends and all that. I decided to go back to short hair because...well, I felt like it. I brought ashley with for moral support (and to make sure that I didn't end up with a mullet, as had happened to emma in germany), and we went to a salon that her roommate had gone to and liked, and I even got the same hairdresser. despite my relative lack of hair - it's so thin, really - it took about an hour and a half, and I really think it turned out well. it's different from the haircuts I've had up until now and...well...I'll post a picture on my flickr site.
friday night I went out with ashley and felicia, and in order to pass the time (none of us are heavy drinkers, so things can be a bit slow at times) I came up with the idea of playing 'drunken galway bingo'. we each made up two of our own cards, with twenty-four different things that a person might see while out in galway. unfortunately, most of these things were outdoorsy, so none of us actually got bingo (the winner would have a drink bought for them, I guess). but it was fun, and people probably thought we were insane because we would randomly start laughing hysterically and pulling pieces of paper out of our pocket and scrambling for pens. also, I am apparently a magnet for strangers to talk to. I think it's because I tend to sit while others go off in search of toilets or drinks or something, and just stare off into space. as such, I am often approached by (mostly) drunk guys looking to chat me up. ashley and felicia think this is amazing, since in the two nights we went out (we were out sunday as well) they met more people than they had in all their time here thus far. and I always considered myself anti-social.
on sunday we went to the comedy club in town to see ardal o hanlon, who played dougal in 'father ted' and is george in 'my hero,' a pretty funny bbc show. he was hilarious, and his opening acts weren't too bad either. afterwards I went into the bar to ask if I could take the big poster of ardal that was in the window, and while I was waiting for an answer this guy at the bar started talking to me. he turned out to be from los angeles, went to school in long beach, and was spending his last semester in germany. so we ended up hanging out with him and his friend (also from long beach, and a bit of a california-style stoner) and some random german guy they had met.
yesterday I went to my classes (all two of them!), had a late football practice (won't it just get warm already?), then stayed up late working on a paper for my history 244 class (oy vey). I woke up early today (for me, that is) and after attending the aforementioned history class, finished the paper and tried to turn it in (silly secretary who's never there), then went to latin (which is far more entertaining than one would imagine), then tried to pick up the laundry which I had dropped off on friday, only to find that my laundry has been 'misshelved'. like it's a bleeding library book or something.
so, what else has been going on... oh yeah, coke has this music promotion going on, where each bottle/can of coke has a code for a free song from this 'cokemusic' site. the selection isn't great, but I'm able to get music that I wouldn't pay for otherwise, and since I'm not into the whole pirating thing, it works out well. I've gotten some pretty bad stuff, but I console myself with the fact that it was free. this has also turned me into a bit of a scavenger, because now I pick up abandoned coke cans and bottles to relieve them of their free music. that's my latest hobby.
ok, so I lied, this isn't a short post. but I doubt there's anyone out there complaining. if you are, keep it to yourself, I don't want to hear it.

ok, the desk has returned to it's normal state of chaos

it was only a matter of time, really. the scary part is that I really can find whatever I might happen to be looking for. most of the time.
so, I had a football match today out in castlebar, which is in county mayo. I wasn't going to go because I'm a bit congested and supposedly had class at the time when we were meeting at the quad, but as it turned out it's a good thing I showed up because tricia, our regular goalie, had an asthma attack last night and wasn't able to make it. so kate made her debut as starting goalie, against a team that only had 12 people (there's normally 15) and weren't so great anyways. but we beat them about 4-15 to 1-3 (that means that we had 4 goals, each worth 3 points, and 15 points from kicking it through the uprights; they only had 1 goal and 3 points). so, basically, we slaughtered them. and I think that a lot of the points they did get were from people from our team who were playing for them. they only scored one goal on me, and that was kind of the result of a break down in the defense which left number 8 wiiiide open right in front of me. besides that I did have a couple saves (yey!) and some good kick outs, some of which were into the wind. the weather was, in fact, the highlight of the match. if it hit 40 degrees, I would be astounded. and there was constant rain. and a pretty strong wind, which was right into my face for the whole first half. I thought that I was going to get frostbite. but I survived, we won, and I rode the whole way home with my feet on the little heater in the bus.
I got back to school where supreme court justice antonin scalia was speaking, and I undoubtedly should have gone, but ireland was playing portugal and I was hungry and there was already a huge queue about 45 minutes before the thing was even supposed to start... so I went home, to find that there is NOTHING on tv, at least not until 11, when there's going to be a new (for here) episode of desperate housewives. so, rather than rotting my brain out in front of the telly, I'm rotting my brain out in front of the computer! not really, I'm actually trying to write part of my paper on welsh castles, which isn't due until mid-april (!!!!). and, of course, updating my blog so that all those who follow the 'thoughts of a wandering kate' (and if you had seen castlebar, boy would you believe the wandering bit) might be mildly entertained. that's all I got. back to welsh castles.

cleaning my room!

(as my mother has a heart attack...) I figure that I've been saying for ages that as soon as I get a bit of spare time, I'm going to clean my room. and for the first time in a long while, I have some spare time. not that I'm making much progress. I have a tendency to fixate on little projects, ignoring the massive piles of paper which just keep accumulating. for example, when I began this process earlier today, I was going through pill bottles, trying to decide what to do with them. those of you out there who take medicine regularly will know what a pain they are, and I always try to come up with something good to do with them. I'm was stuck for a while (and as a result, stopped picking up, of course), then I realized that they would be perfect for holding money from the various countries I've been to. that way, if I decide, hey I want to go to hungary today, I can just grab the bottle, and I'll have all the forints that are left over from my trip last semester. I'm a big dweeb. it'll probably come in most handy if I need pounds for a visit to the off-shore island, or the north (which I plan on visiting this coming weekend). once I had accomplished this, I was able to move onto more productive things, like collecting all the bits and scraps of paper which are around my room into a box (me, throw things away? fat chance). in my own defense, they are what I use for bookmarks, so having them all together is convenient. and I can almost see my desk now!
classes have been going well. especially now that I can go to daibhi's class without feeling guilty about not having the paper done. it took me way too long, I know, but it's done now.
I like my castles class, although it's already half over, which is kind of crazy. I have it six times a week (twice on tuesdays), but once it's over I'll only have four classes from tuesday to thursday. this is consoling, since I was rather upset at having four classes on friday (3 when castles are over), so there's really no way to take a long weekend. but, if I wanted to, I could take off monday evening and come back thursday afternoon, without missing too much. this may be the best way for me to go to edinburgh and berlin, and also the cheapest way.
my irish literature course reminds me constantly of why I'm a history major, and not an english major. the class consists of yeats' later poetry and joyce's ulysses. there are some out there who would call me a masochist upon hearing this, and I have to say that I agree. what was I thinking. sigh. oh well. I was going to have to get around to reading ulysses some day. why not in ireland.
my german class has been pretty laid back, but I have also missed half the classes, because the tuesday class overlaps with castles. I know it's not good, but there's only two more of this conflicts, then I'll be there full time. we're reading goethe's die leiden des jungen werthers, the sorrows of young werther. very tragic, very boring. I was upset that they cancelled their high middle german course. I'll just have to take it when I get back to sc.
and, the class you've all been waiting for: latin! virgil's aeneid...in latin... there are three people in the class. as with last semester, I'm the one with the least latin in the bunch. our teacher is this very enthusiastic american guy, who seems like he's going to be a bit more engaging than the last one. unfortunately, virgil will be painful one way or another. I realized this when the teacher gave us stacks of paper, which probably felled a small forest. and I was foolish enough to mention that I know some german, so he's giving me stuff auf deutsch as well. just imagine, latin verse instructions in german. this could hurt. a lot.
and now I'm going to go eat an apple with some peanut butter and read the rest of my yeats for tomorrow. slan!

windy

and when I say windy, do I ever mean it. I've seen some windy days growing up in the suburbs of chicago: the wind comes across the great plains and just beats down on you. but today was incredible. there were gale force winds, supposedly up to 100 miles per hour. trees are down, semis have been tipped over, man, that wind comes right off the atlantic and it's not as cold and piercing as chicago winds, but it's still pretty impressive. some of you may remember the connacht (western ireland) witticism which I often quote: "if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes." today, that was down to three minutes, at most. our sitting room window faces west, and when I had to run across the parking lot to the laundry room I would look out the window and know that I would be able to make it there and back and stay dry. the disadvantage of the window is that it's not very well insulated, so we get our own little gales in the apartment.
today was the second day of classes. I'm not sure what's going on in my life. yesterday I went to german, irish lit, and archaeology. the german class is on goethe, which should be interesting. the irish lit class has us reading ulysses, by james joyce, and some of yeats's poetry. (for some reason I have a hard time remembering whether it's yeats or keats that I'm thinking of. I'm not sure what the difference is.) I had intended to go to the archaeology class about the development of the church in medieval ireland. (note the "intended".) it was to be held in room qa003, and for the life of me, I still have no idea where that is. I asked the porter in the main building and got a very irish, very unclear answer which sent me to a nearby lecture theatre. after a last minute (and unsuccessful) search for a map which may have helped me, I decided to go to the theatre he had pointed me to. when I walked in there was a slide of a ruin projected onto the front wall, so I figured that I had to be close. it ended up being the development of the irish castle, and while I wasn't going to stay in the course, I may as well listen to what the man had to say. to cut a medium lengthed story short, I decided that it was fate that had brought me to the castles, so with the castles I would stay.
today I had two sections of archaeology (it's six days a week for four weeks) and an hour of british history, basically the tudor period. I was kind of stretching to fill my schedule, thus british history and irish literature (saints protect me from james joyce).
so I have yet to go to irish history or latin, though god knows what the story is with latin. I'm going to visit the classics department tomorrow. irish history doesn't start until thursday, and while I'm excited to be taking another class with daibhi, I'm also a bit pensive because I have yet to finish the essay for his seminar for last semester (it was only due monday, though in some circles there was speculation that it wasn't due until friday). after a series of more or less successful trips to the library, I've set to work, and although I've only got 10% of the required number of words so far (so far! mom!) I have the essay planned out so that I know that I can make it long enough. it's not as wonderful a subject as the other paper I gave him, the one on types of sins. this paper is about purgatory and hell and the effect that these ideas had on early medieval irish monks of iona and the columban familia... any paper that cites a book called "the birth of pergatory" can't be too bad, right? my greatest victory as far as research goes was when I bullied the information desk people into retrieving a book from the basement, which actually ended up being a doctoral thesis which came in two volumes. the title of this stunner? "the eschatological doctrines of the early irish church". pretty exciting, no?
the deluge of rain has begun again. shortly after I got on the bus to come home this afternoon it started to hail, and it wasn't very big, but it would not have been nice to be out in it, as ashley was.
other news for the day: elisa came by to visit! yey! we decided that we're going to have to go on an excursion somewhere together in ireland. that should be nice. I was also trying to convice her to take latin with me, but she says that she would rather take greek. ancient greek, that is. nerd.
now I'm very excited about going to bed because I washed my sheets for the first time in...well, we're not going to talk about how long it's been. because they're clean now! huzzah! as are my towels! good times.