September 16th, continued...

Sophie, Elle and I continued to walk. I was falling behind and looking at every little thing that caught my attention. This is fairly typical of me when I walk - if I'm not running late somewhere, chances are I'm not moving very quickly because I'm stopping to examine whatever has caught my attention. Anyways, I guess I fell into an unconscious pattern because I started humming and then found myself singing - at which point Elle turned around to ask if I was in fact singing. She seemed rather bemused, but I always sing when I walk - particularly if I'm alone. Walking around campus in Bloomington or to temple at home, I'm almost always found with my iPod on, singing along. Like talking with my hands, it's something I don't really notice when I'm doing it.

Eventually, our little train ended up by the shore. We found a pseudo staircase to take us down to the beach and descended. Sophie waded into the water, since she was wearing her rainboots. I hung back. The ocean and I, well, we're not exactly best buddies. I think it's a combination of being knocked over by waves too many times as a child and unpleasant memories of being covered in sand after a day at the beach. I was perfectly content to just take pictures of Sophie playing in the little waves and Elle looking for seashells. It was a beautiful beach: all rocks, but smooth, not jagged like back home, just shelves of limestone, I think. The water was clear and genuinely blue, the sun was shining, and I don't think any of us could quite believe that we were in Ireland, land of rain and clouds.

After hanging out there for a while, we continued to meander on the coast, drawing ever closer to the illusive windmills. We clambered over rocks and boulders for what felt like forever - though we ALL agreed that we'd rather climb over rocks than have to avoid the rather giant piles of manure we'd dealt with on the paths earlier that day. Once we reached the windmills, we all agreed that we wanted to head back. We'd walked all day and were just wiped out. The problem was, since we were no longer on a path, we didn't have an obvious route to get back to town. The windmills were in a pasture of their own, but we were reluctant to walk through it, since we weren't sure how safe that would be. We just had to keep on walking 'til we found a path.

About 15 minutes later, we saw a man playing with his dog - and the road where he'd parked his car! Surely the road the car had taken would get us back to a place we'd recognize enough to find our way home. We set off. After a while, we heard voices behind us. Sound on the island travels really far - if a dog barked, we had no way of knowing if it was the dog down the street or clear across the island. There was just no noise - too few cars to produce much sound pollution and nothing else that would. Ever the sucker and too curious for my own good, I turned around. Two girls were behind us, waving. Naturally, I couldn't tell who they were, but Elle could. The girls were from our class, but they weren't exactly our favorite people. It would have been rude to keep walking and ignore them, so we stopped and waited for them to catch up with us. As our enlarged group continued to walk, they told us about their experience so far and we told them how much we were enjoying ourselves - how Moira was so sweet and the house was lovely, etc.

Eventually, we came to a fork in the road. A hill stood between us and a clear view of the rest of the island, so we didn't know which way to go. My contribution to the decision making consisted solely of a rather lame allusion along the lines of, two roads diverged, and I took the one less traveled. Unfortunately, as Sophie said, neither looked particularly well-traveled. After all, it's not like there's a lot of traffic there! Sophie wanted to go the smaller pathway and the other girls wanted to go on the paved road. I was feeling pretty well-oriented and thought that the paved road would take us closer to where we wanted to be - and I was tired enough by then to just want to get back and take a little nap before dinner - but I didn't like the idea of Sophie going on the other way alone. Clearly Minnesinger trips had instilled in me the value of traveling with a buddy. She insisted she'd be fine, though, and told me I should go the other way, if I wanted, so I gave her my cell phone to have so that she could call Elle when she got back or if she needed to reach us or anything and then we split up.

We walked for maybe another 20 minutes before coming to the main road, at which point Elle and I left the other two girls to make their way to the house they were staying at while we went back to Moira's. Once back, I made use of the slightly sketchy shower downstairs and promptly pulled on pjs and fell asleep after only reading a few pages of Tarry Flynn.

Dinner that night was roast lamb with boiled potatoes and steamed carrots and soup, plus the ever-present brown bread, butter and jam. Knowing what I knew about the chickens, I couldn't help but think about the sheep we'd seen earlier, but oddly enough, this didn't disturb me as much as I thought it would. The sheep I had seen were outdoors in their pastures, soaking in the sunshine and generally living a pretty good life. It seemed to me that it was a more honorable way to eat meat than simply to buy it at the supermarket, without giving a thought to how it got there or where it came from.

After dinner, we all departed for the pub. Our last night on the island, we were determined to go out and meet locals - but that just didn't happen. Instead, our class showed up in bits and pieces and mixed and mingled with each other, to the consternation of everyone else at the pub who was trying to watch the soccer game on tv. Oh well. I think we all had a good time - we played random drinking games and card games and eventually we all went home and fell asleep. After walking all day, I don't think there was a single one of us who wasn't exhausted.

The next morning, there seemed to be a feeling of some urgency among the seven of us in our house. We had to see everything - we were leaving that afternoon, so we were running out of time. Straightaway after breakfast, we headed over to the knitwear factory, but the shop wasn't closed. Inis Meaín, we had heard, was famous for it's woven products and we all wanted a souvenir. Since it wouldn't open for several hours, we decided to go see the fort. The other four girls had been told at the general store that the only way to get there was to go through the pastures so over the fence we went.

When we got to the fort, we encountered a small problem. We couldn't see anyway in, besides the rather scary looking almost-staircase. We tried walking around the fort, but we couldn't get all the way around before the path dropped off. Up the staircase appeared to be the only way in from where we were. We went up carefully one by one. At the top of the stairs, we had to climb a small wall to get to the top of the fort. It wasn't exactly safe (not exactly dangerous either, don't worry, anyone), but we didn't have any problems and we did manage to get in the fort, which was all that really mattered to us at the time. Once inside, we could see the actual entrance on the opposite side of the fort. We just sat around in the sun (the weather was beautiful that day) and explored the fort (which looked more like an amphitheater than anything else). When we decided to head back, we went out the real exit in the company of an older Irish gentleman who had arrived at the fort some time after us. He too was visiting Inis Meaín for the first time. We wandered back to Moira's.

At that point, the 7 of us split back up again, This time, Sophie stayed at the house to hang out, Elle, Margaret and I went back to the factory, and the other three girls wandered off. We got there a few minutes too early, but shortly afterwards, a woman arrived and opened the shop. Everything there was beautiful, but very expensive (if you want to look for yourselves, this is their website: http://www.inismeain.ie/en/knitting/products.html ). Everything was soft and warm. The fabric colors were all rich and earthy. We wandered around, finally noticing three boxes on the floor. The boxes contained the mistakes: articles of clothing that were in some way defective. I have enough shoppers in my family to know what that means - discounts. Sure enough, I found two hats that were perfectly fine for my purposes, one of which I bought (green) and the other, Margaret bought (grey). A bargain to be proud of: €5 instead of €25!

We got back in time for lunch. Egg salad, jam and butter, brown bread and white bread, leftover chicken... I don't even remember all that was on the lunch table that day! Our last chocolate tea cake was carefully cut into seven pieces and eaten. We lingered over our last cup of tea. No one really wanted to leave - although i'm sure I wasn't alone in feeling that if we had stayed much longer, I would have gone stir crazy from lack of activities. We packed up our stuff and walked back to the pier, caught the ferry and got back on the bus. After dropping off some of the class, who had decided to spend the weekend in Galway, the bus continued, stopping only for a brief dinner in Dublin before finally dropping us off back in Cork late that night. I was tired, but glad to be home.

September 16th - ???

Elle, my roommate in Dublin, and I were once again sharing a room. She already knew I was NOT a morning person - not really an awake person in general! - so when I woke up and sat without moving for a good 5 minutes afterwards, she just ignored me. Once dressed, we went downstairs to breakfast. Again brown bread with butter and jam, tea and water were on the table. Moira was bringing out one plate at a time, filled with each of our specifications: 1 egg, 2 sausages or 2 eggs, no sausages (mine), 2 eggs, 2 sausages, etc. Unfortunately, my plate was forgotten, which ended up working out, because one of the girls said she didn't want her eggs since, in addition to the bread, eggs and sausages, Moira had also prepared a full plate of bacon, which, like everything else, she fully expected us to finish. We all were drinking a ton of tea, which meant that before leaving to go explore, turns had to be take at the bathroom the 6 girls staying upstairs shared.

For those of you who haven't experienced the wonders of Irish plumbing, allow me to fill you in. Flushing a toilet is no easy matter - many of the handles/buttons/whatever are stiff and difficult to depress. Furthermore, some toilets, like the one at Moira's, won't flush until the tank has refilled itself from the last flushing. Like the other eccentricities about Moira's home (I will say that both Elle and I were glad that we had ended up in the only room without either a picture of the Virgin Mary or Jesus looking down at us, since we're both Jewish. Sophie ended up in a room with a holographic Jesus and it definitely creeped her and us out when we went to see it.), we quickly accepted this and moved on.

At breakfast, everyone had expressed a desire to walk around the whole island, a task which Mary had said would take 2.5 hours. Knowing Mary, we asked her daughter, who was on the trip with us, who said it would more likely take 4+ hours. (In case I haven't mentioned this yet, Mary is what Jacob would call a "beast." She works out twice a day every day. Barely a week before we left she'd been out on a bike ride of "about 20km" when she was hit by a car and fractured 3 ribs. Needless to say, she was not allowed to carry her backpack, but she insisted on walking with us to Moira's house so we wouldn't get lost. Remember, uphill, 30 minutes, 3 fractured ribs.) The 7 girls split up into two groups. I went with Sophie and Elle. We didn't have time to circumnavigate the island before lunch, so we just picked a direction and started walking.

First, we went to the chapel, which was right across the road from Moira's. It was very small, but charming: whitewashed walls with stained glass windows and wooden pews. In the courtyard outside was a little outbuilding with a thatched roof. We had learned from Mary that all the buildings on island used to be thatched but that it had no longer been feasible or worthwhile to have to re-thatch all the roofs every 5-6 years so they had switched to slate.

From the chapel, we continued on the road, which eventually led us up the hill to the "top" of the island. We saw cows and sheep and even a horse who tried to eat my jacket, but more than anything else, we saw lots and lots of stone walls. Inis Meaín in completely covered in these walls, which give the illusion of the island being a giant patchwork quilt. The walls were built by famine relief projects, much in the same way that schools in LA were build during the Great Depression. we picked a path to follow, which eventually led us (after slipping through some gaps in the walls) to where we could see the three windmills. Wandering around, we found a mini-Stonehenge, amazing views and lots of black and white dogs. The only dog we saw while we were there that wasn't black and white, in fact, was Moira's little beagle-mix, who was white and brown. On our way back to the house, one of the dogs we passed decided to adopt us. Although I didn't see it, Sophie said that the owner popped their head out, saw us and the dog, and went back in their house.

The dog, which we named Dog in a stroke of creativity, refused to stay at his house. We all tried to convince him. We tried to lead him back home more than once, but to no avail. Like it or not, Dog was coming with us. Now, the very idea that a dog could follow us home is nearly foreign. Dogs aren't allowed off-leash without their owners and even with their owners are almost always kept on leash out of fear of lawsuits or who-knows-what. This is NOT the case in Ireland. Almost every dog I've seen has been off-leash and on Inis Meain particularly, it's not like the dogs could wander too far from home - there simply wasn't enough space! Anyways, so now Dog was following us home, but Dog was a fairly doggy dog and so when we passed another house with a black and white dog, Dog tried to go over and make friends. The other dog clearly wasn't as friendly as Dog, who got seriously growled at for his attempt at friendliness. After that incident, the three of us definitely made an effort to keep Dog from irritating any of the other neighborhood canines.

With Dog following us, we continued on towards the house, but now we had a problem. What were we to do with Dog when we got to Moira's? She already had a dog of her own and none of us could really describe where Dog lived, because even though Sophie had seen someone, we had no real way of knowing if that was Dog's house or if he'd been out wandering the island before we came across him. Luckily, just as we arrived at Moira's, a car pulled up. The driver, a woman, leaned out and said something along the lines of, so there he is! She then drove the car away, as the three of us looked at each other confused. Since she hadn't seemed worried and hadn't even opened the car door to let Dog in, we left Dog outside the front gate, assuming he could find his own way home and that his owner at least knew approximately where he'd be if he didn't turn up. We went inside and washed up, then headed to the table to meet up with the other group.

After only two meals, we each had "our" seat no longer questioned the mismatched silverware, mugs, and dishes. We knew that the napkins were either on top of the cabinet behind my chair or in the first drawer and that I had somehow gotten myself elected tea-pourer and cake-cutter (thanks to my early training carefully dividing dessert between Jacob and me). Lunch consisted of brown bread and white bread, jam and butter, leftover chicken, smoked salmon (!!! - I love Ireland!), and cream cheese, plus tea and another of the chocolate tea cakes (We had had one at dinner the night before, hence the cake-cutting job. Mom, you should be proud. :P ). Again, we all ate as much as we could and still could not satisfy our host, who could not believe that we STILL hadn't finished the chickens. Immediately prior to lunch, I had seen that right across the way was a large chicken coop, which probably had housed the chickens we were eating.

After lunch came the inevitable line at the bathroom and then Sophie, Elle and I ventured out again. Our first stop was at the general store on the island. My camera had died that morning and I needed batteries, everyone wanted postcards - and we all wanted junk food. Why this sudden urge for a candy bar, I have no idea, probably because it wasn't immediately available. Regardless, we were all craving our own particular weaknesses - soda, chocolate, chips, whatever.

From there, we continued to wander in that direction. We quickly came to a gate that looked like the connecting passages behind it led to one of the forts on the island. We wanted to go investigate, but weren't keen to get in trouble for trespassing on someone's pastures, so we continued on our way. The road we were on eventually devolved into a path between two walls. Like all the roads there, it wound its way around, so we were all taken aback when we rounded a corner to find ourselves suddenly confronted by half a dozen goats staring straight at us. We burst out laughing. It was so completely unexpected and strange that we simply couldn't help ourselves.

Once we had recovered, we continued on our way. I fell further back, mainly because I'd get distracted by this flower or that blackberry bush or decide I had to take a picture of the goats one more time, etc. I can be... easily distracted, to say the least. In fact, I've been so distracted that it's past my bedtime, so I will write more tomorrow! Goodnight!

Another Big Update!! September 5th - September 15th

Once again, I have fallen grievously behind, which I truly apologize for. This appears to happen regularly - but it's only because there's so much going on here that I can't remember to keep up with this! On with the update!

Disclaimer: If I'm a few days off on some of this, please forgive me. My note-taking has been behind too, so I'm going off my memory.

Nothing so exciting happened until the following Monday, Sept. 7th. That week, my class was going to be doing two mini-units. The first was to be on Irish mythology, so I was REALLY excited. I love mythology so I couldn't wait for class. I was also going to be attempting a different strategy with my Provigil, to try to stay awake more regularly. Instead of taking half a tablet first thing in the morning and the other half later, I was going to take the full tablet in the morning and see how that worked.

Monday morning, we got to class to find that the woman who was supposed to be teaching us about mythology had sent a replacement, Brent Miles to teach us instead. The lecture was fascinating. (This is going to be really nerdy, so be warned. Feel free to skip ahead past the details of the lecture.) First, he talked about the evolution of the Irish language, which was consistently evolving significantly ahead of English. Where Middle Irish wasn't spoken after 1200, Middle English continued until several centuries later. Irish remained the dominant language until the time of the famine, at which point Ireland became English-speaking due, in part, to the mass immigrations to Britain and America.

Next, we learned that Ireland was never conquered by Rome, unlike the Continental Celts, who were swallowed up by the Roman Empire. The Celts were traditionally warriors, known for their mobility and aristocracy. Their Celtic Empire was a major military power and the Continental Celts sacked Rome and Delphi at various times, but Rome eventually overpowered them. Apparently no one knows how they got to Ireland, but there is little evidence of an invasion, although there were people living in Ireland prior to the Celts. Celtic society was made up of 3 classes: Druids, warriors with horses and peasants/slaves. The romanticized view today of Celts as fierce warriors comes from Rome, who liked to paint their conquered opponents as brave and tough, to make themselves look that much more impressive for defeating them. In Ireland, the Celts had no such romantic view of themselves which produced a cultural consistency in how they viewed themselves.

After covering some basic background information on different types of Irish sagas (there are 20 different story lines), we learned about the structure of the sagas. There are 4 major saga cycles, told in named manuscripts (like The Book of the Dun Cow) dating back as early as the 12th century. Lots of them depict stories related to cattle because cows were the main form of currency and conveyed power and honor.

We learned about individual stories, which was lots of fun, but I was particularly interested by the concepts illustrated by the story. I had never heard about the idea of the heroic biography, which basically says that all heroes have certain things happen to them which defines them as heroes. These include things like

• The mother being a virgin and the father being a god/animal/god disguised as an animal/related to the mother.
• A miraculous birth/childhood.
• Leaving home
• Defeating a monster
  
• Going to the underworld/realm of the dead
• Miraculous death

Lots of Classical heroes and biblical heroes follow this pattern, which makes it really interesting. This prompted me to go off on a weird mental tangent about other "universal" stories like Cinderella, which occurs in many cultures around the world, etc.

Anyways, class that day was great. Lots of fun stories and I came up with a ridiculous theory about the Hulk being a direct descendent of the mythology of Cú Chulainn by way of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (Involving the Ossian cycle, James Macpherson and Robert Louis Stevenson. Suffice to say that it's slightly more believable than my grand theory about Hamlet being an allegory for the Tudors.) Apparently, this is a brand-new idea that had never been brought to Brent Miles' attention before. At least I'm creative, if totally in outer space.

The next day of class was also awesome. Exciting topics that day included:

• The changing populations of Ireland: who inhabited it, what they contributed to society, and who conquered them. To the Irish, they were the descendents of the Sons of Míl Easpáine. They did not consider themselves Celts - this is a modern idea that dates to the 18th century.
  
• The love triangle-plot has a rich history in Ireland and might have inspired the more famous incarnations including King Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot and King Mark-Isolde-Tristan.
• Women in Irish myths were frequently allegories for Ireland itself and not characters in their own right.
  

I was in my own little dorky heaven. The rest of the week was a mini unit on Ireland in films. We discussed the evolution of Irish cinema out of a dissatisfaction with the portrayal of Ireland in both American and British cinema. American depictions tended towards the romantic and nostalgic while British depictions tended to come with a considerable political bias, given the political situation at the time. Each day we watched a different film after being shown clips from other films. The first day we watched a mobster movie called I Went Down which was very funny, because it played with the idea that some of the traditional motifs of the typical American mobster film just wouldn't be convincing in Ireland. Think about it - could Die Hard have taken place in Dublin instead of Century City? Not really. The next day, we watched a romantic comedy called When Brendan Met Trudy which was filled with allusions to other films of all genres. I'm actually in the process now of writing a paper about both of these and how genre is at work and subverted in the two. Anyways, I highly recommend both if you can get a hold of them. Friday, we watched a not-at-all enjoyable film called Adam and Paul. It's one of those movies that are really hard to watch, but that's why you're supposed to watch them. It's a rather pessimistically existentialist look at two addicts during the recession and technically it's a really interesting film. The attention to detail is amazing - but definitely not a pick-me-up kind of movie.

When class ended Friday, I was in shock and near tears. Not because of the movie, but because I had managed something extraordinary: I had stayed awake in class all week. I still don't remember the last time that happened. It was a breakthrough - I e-mailed my doctor and called both my parents, I was so excited.

That night, 3 of my flatmates and I went out. The first place we went was a really metropolitan bar called the Newport. The lower level was pretty standard but upstairs 3 birthday parties were being held. It was a really cool space and the projected graphics on the ceiling were really cool. From there, we went to a bar called Clancy's where I had lunch after Blarney. They have live music there at night and that night a rather bad band was covering some really good music - singing poorly and off-rhythm. We all thought it was karaoke when we first got there, in fact, before learning that no, this was actually a hired act - and in a town with GOOD music, I have no idea how those guys got the gig, but that's another story.

That weekend was fairly uneventful. Sophie, Bridget and I watched Sweet Home Alabama Saturday night (No one hit me, but I definitely got laughed at for my... involvement in the film.) and I went grocery shopping at some point, but it was generally low-key.

In class on Monday, Mary went over details of our trip to Inis Meaín. I was assigned to the house in town, along with 6 other girls. The rest of the class was divided into the house on the hill and the house by the beach. Our house had the luxury of being near the one and only pub on the island, we were told.

That night, our class went to see a play called Stones in His Pocket. It was entirely acted by two men, each of whom played at least 4 roles. The play was about the effect of a film production on the inhabitants and passers-through (including the film crew) of a small Irish town. The two main characters were a local guy whose cousin commits suicide over the course of the film's production and a guy who just closed his video rental store in the town he's from and is now traveling around aimlessly. It was really impressive the way they crafted each character's physicality and voice - each were totally separate entities. The set was really simple and the costumes were basic with minor changes depending on which character the actors were portraying at any given moment.

The next day, I woke up and packed my backpack for Inis Meaín. I didn't want to bring too much because we were just going to be walking around the island all day and there was nothing to dress up for. Sophie and I walked over to the bus, where we found people who didn't pack quite as lightly (much to their regret later, as you'll see!). Our road trip started with a stop at Coole Park, home of Lady Gregory, a major patron of the arts. She played hostess for people like George Bernard Shaw and the Yeats brothers. We walked around the grounds and saw the autograph tree, which everyone who came to visit signed. We were supposed to have lunch there but unbeknown to Mary, the snack shop was closed.

Instead, we stopped for lunch in Galway before heading to the docks to catch the ferry. We'd been told that in past years, the trip over to the island had been VERY rough, so we should definitely take some anti-motion sickness meds, but when we got there, the water was almost entirely still. The trip over was made easily. On the island, we learned that while 2 of houses were being picked up, our house had to walk from the dock to our host's house. We were hungry and tired from a long journey and now we had to walk uphill with our stuff. Needless to say, we were less than enthused.

Half an hour, we got to the house where we quickly were placed in rooms and sat down to dinner. Moira, our host, was a lovely lady who has appeared 3 times in National Geographic. She's that lady, you know? - the perfect stereotype of an Irish grandma. I honestly don't think we ever finished the food at any of the meals she had for us while we stayed with her. Our first night, we had brown bread with butter and jam, 2 roasted chickens (for 7 girls, but still) and chips (homemade fries). It felt like a feast.

After dinner, some of us went to the pub (where we learned that just because there's only one pub on the island and the island is in many ways a relic of a time long past, drinks were no cheaper than in Cork) for a little while, but we were all wiped out and went to sleep.

Rushing Ahead - From August 21st to September 4th, 2009

I'm sure by now, everyone has cottoned on to the fact that this blog is frighteningly far behind. In this entry, I'm going to try to quickly cover everything that's happened up to this past Friday night. It's a marathon-blog post, so consider yourselves warned!

The day after we got to Cork was the official UCC Early Start Orientation. I had seen the agenda, which seemed to indicate that we'd be done by 4. It didn't sound too bad. All of the IFSA-Butler girls planned to walk together, stopping first at the nearby smoothie place to grab breakfast, before continuing on to campus. Mary, one of the girls, invited her 3 flatmates to walk with us, so Java and Juice was nearly overflowing between the 11 of us, plus the other customers, who were uniformly told to pay later, since the two women working just didn't have time to deal with their payments. Clearly, they enjoyed a pretty regular clientele. By the time all of us had gotten our smoothies, coffees, scones, and whatever else people got, we were beginning to worry about having enough time to get on campus. Luckily, Mary and Bridget led us fairly efficiently to campus where we quickly found the auditorium in which we were supposed to be.

What followed was a series of introductions from each of the Early Start programs. Since we were all registered for different programs, we paid pretty close attention. I know many of us were totally frustrated - only getting to take one option seemed utterly unfair, when the Music program or the Archaeology program sounded SO cool! The Literatures in Ireland instructor seemed very nice, so at least I didn't regret signing up for the program I had chosen. I was disappointed, however, that we weren't reading the "big" Irish authors. In the overview of the course, Mary Breen hadn't mentioned George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Yeats, Samuel Beckett... in fact, she hadn't mentioned anyone or any book I'd heard of. What was the point of studying in Ireland if I wasn't going to get to study the important people?! (It took me a little while, but eventually I realized that the point of going to Ireland was studying the parts of Ireland I couldn't study back home. I know for a fact that IU offers a class on Joyce. This duh moment made me feel much better and since the class has been going on for 2.5 weeks, I can tell you that I am now thrilled we're not reading the obvious choices, because I'm being exposed to new, unknown - to me, at least - stuff that I would never get to study at home. Yay for study abroad!!)

Aside from the Early Start overviews, we learned about other pertinent classes that we would be able to take during the regular semester. The French department offered two classes - one on French films for non-French speakers and one French speaking class for absolute beginners only - which, we were told, was the easiest class in the world to pass, so we should all take it if we've never taken French before. Never before had I heard a French class described as "the easiest" anything, but since I wasn't eligible, I tried not to be too jealous of the lucky people who would get to learn French in such a stress-free way, so unlike my own painstaking and painful experience! The Irish department told us about Irish Civilization classes that might interest us. There was one in particular on Irish Mythology that sounded amazing, which I'm going to try to take. Mary Breen, my Early Start instructor, had mentioned that we would be doing a short unit on Irish mythology (more on that later!!) as part of the class, so I would get a preview before having to schedule for the semester. We were told about an Intro to Irish class that also sounded wonderful, but I worried (and still am worried) that if I couldn't get to the point where I was reliably staying awake in class, it would be a complete repeat of my Hebrew class last fall - a near-waste of time for me, the class and the instructor. (Please, keep your fingers crossed - I have a week and a half to get my strategy for staying awake totally worked out before the semester starts and I really want to take Irish!) Someone from the library came and spoke to us, as did someone from the Geography department, but neither were particularly interesting for me, so I was relieved when we were released for our lunch break. A big group of us went to lunch together, but we were a little late getting back, so we didn't all get seats together when we got back for the afternoon portion.

In the afternoon, we heard about the clubs and societies offered at UCC (I want to do Fencing Club, Canoe Club, Choral Society and Medieval/Rennaissance Society - but I'm remaining open-minded!), student health and counselling (in particular the measures UCC was taking to deal with the threat of swine flu), registration with the Gardai (the Irish police force/immigration), working in Ireland, and some other less interesting issues. Following that catch-all section, one of the VPs of the Students Union spoke to us about the Student Union, we heard from club and society organizers, the Chaplaincy, and the IT people. We were supposed to get a talk from a Garda officer, but he didn't show up. Apparently, he has NEVER actually spoken, but he's supposed to every year. Oh well.

Then we learned that instead of having the rest of the day free, the Student Union had planned all kinds of activities for late into the evening. First, a tour of the campus. Now, it's important for me to say that I adore IU. I think it's an utterly gorgeous campus, I love the people there, and I have loved most of my classes. Knowing this (and knowing that many of you have either visited or seen pictures of IU), when I say that UCC is even more charming, know that I am not in any way maligning my university, which I do love. It's just that UCC is unnaturally beautiful and manages to combine the park-y feeling of IU with the utterly ordered garden-y + castle-y feeling of Oxford or Trinity. The buildings range from the original Quadrangle building (The Quadrangle has only 3 sides because they ran out of money before they could build the 4th. Also, only graduates of the university are allowed to walk through the Quadrangle, because if you haven't graduated yet, you'll curse/jinx yourself and either fail all your classes or not graduate. The same is true of the school crest which is located at the entrance of the Quadrangle building - which has a real name, I just don't remember it.) which dates from 1840s to buildings only a few years old. For a virtual tour of campus see here: http://www.ucc.ie/en/AboutUCCandCork/VirtualCampusTour/. The President's Garden is beautiful, bridges on campus cross over the Lee (which is just more impressive than the Jordan, sorry) and, like at IU, there are trees everywhere. Needless to say, the tour was greatly appreciated, although we really stuck to the center of campus, which I had already seen.

After the tour, we schmoozed and had cookies, tea and coffee in the Student Union building, which is really nice and supposedly always has tea in it, but I haven't been back to check and see. At that point, the party was beginning to split up. Some of the girls in our little group decided to go home and relax while the rest of us continued on to the next event - a free showing (with free Coke and popcorn) of I Love You, Beth Cooper, which I had actually read the summer before but had heard made a rather bad movie. I went in with low expectations, as did everyone else, and we were all pleasantly surprised to find it rather amusing. I thought it made a better film than book. From there, we went to a bar for karaoke, pool and bowling. Bowling filled up super-quick and I can't play pool to save my life, but I was with a group of girls who sing, so we all made our way to the karaoke pods and proceeded to sing all kinds of music of the singalong variety ("Summer Lovin'" from Grease, "Build Me Up Buttercup," and the Spice Girls all made our playlist as did "Livin' On A Prayer," the Backstreet Boys, and a bunch of other songs. It was very much a nostalgic thing for us - lots of 90s music, which I realize barely counts as nostalgia, but it's the music of our childhoods and we had fun.). We left after awhile, totally wiped out, although the evening continued with a trip to a nightclub, and actually managed to make it home without getting lost. Major accomplishment.

That weekend was fairly low-key. Saturday was a massive grocery shopping day involving a trip to the English Market (like the Farmer's Market back home or the Covered Market in Oxford) and two trips to Tesco's (the Irish equivalent of Pavilion's, Ralph's, or Kroger's) because we simply couldn't fit everything in our backpacks or carry it all. (Incidentally, Ireland charges for plastic bags in order to discourage their usage, so almost everyone carries around tote bags, heavy-duty plastic bags, or the little roller carts for their groceries. Very eco-friendly.)

Finally having food of our own to prepare, we began a tradition that has continued: communal dinners. Everyone who decides to go brings their dinner (or tea, or snack, or just themselves if they've already eaten or whatever) to Sophie's flat (which is still empty of roommates today) and we all have dinner together and then sit around and chat. These dinners frequently last from 6 'til 9 or 10, at which point someone says they have homework or whatever and the party breaks up. It's really nice - and I lucked out because Sophie lives down the hall from me, making it a much shorter trip for me and my dishes than the girls on the 5th floor.

Sunday was an absolutely lazy day. I sat around and read pretty much the whole day - I think it rained, but I'm not sure. Sounds like a safe bet though, because it rains almost every day at least part of the time. That night, we again gathered for dinner and ended up watching a made-for-tv movie on Coco Chanel, during which I fell asleep. When I woke up, my throat was totally sore, but I figured I had just fallen asleep with my mouth open or something. The fact that I had only been asleep for a little while (maybe 15 minutes?), made it somewhat strange, but I was exhausted and didn't really question my explanation. We left Sophie's and I went to sleep, knowing that we were leaving Copley Court early the next morning for our first day of school!

I woke up with my throat still very sore, which I again dismissed and met a bunch of people for the walk to campus. Because classes were meeting at different times, we were leaving particularly early so that Bridget, whose class met the earliest, would get there on time. Once on campus, I had half an hour to kill so I went to the International Students Office with a couple of other people to try to get my student number, which I hadn't printed out. Problem solved, I went to class, which consisted of the ever-boring, ever-present Syllabus Day. Mary Breen went over every page of our 11-page course outline and I honestly don't remember now if I stayed awake or not. I have a feeling I nodded off at some point. The big news of Syllabus Day was the fact that we'd get a half-hour break each day in the middle of class (which was supposed to go from 9:30-12:30 but in fact ended at noon almost every day), which I knew would help me stay awake. We talked about the field trips we would be taking, including the one that would be happening immediately after class that day: a historical tour of Cork (which was billed as a literary tour of Cork, but wasn't) and lunch at a local restaurant. Yay for free lunch - we were all getting sick of how expensive food in Ireland was. The tour was really interesting. Among the highlights:

• St. Finbarr's - The site of the original monastery in Cork, frequently pillaged by Vikings, who would travel down the river. The monastery and Finbarr redates Christianity - and I still don't really understand why St. Finbarr became a saint, because he wasn't a Christian monk, but apparently that's pretty common. Now, it's a dramatic Gothic cathedral.
  
• The ruins of the old English fort, now a Gardai station. After the English left, the Irish moved into the old English buildings. Our tour guide blamed this appropriation for Ireland's lagging behind in development for so long.
• The Beamish brewery, where we learned that Beamish and Murphy's were to merge. A stone placed at the entrance of the brewery used to hold the heads of criminals after they'd been cut off.
• Evidence that Cork was once a series of islands located between the North and South channels of the River Lee - our tour guide called Cork the Venice of Ireland, but many of the channels were covered over, leaving the windy streets of Cork as the only indication of Cork's former self.

We also saw where the French Huguenot Quarter used to be (right near Tesco's) and now home to the Rory Gallagher (a MAJOR legend in Cork) Plaza. (Rory Gallagher, in case you were wondering, was a guitarist from Cork who played with the Rolling Stones among others and has a cult following in Ireland.) Our tour ended in front of the Opera House, where Mary Breen finally met up with us (This was the first time she said she'd catch up with our group, only to show up much later in time for lunch, but not the last.). I was feeling pretty tired by then and really thirsty, so I was glad for lunch. The tea I drank didn't seem to help my sore throat and I wasn't very hungry since I'd gotten a headache, so I went home and took a nap. It didn't seem to help much either and I only had tea and a banana for dinner along with some ibuprofen for my headache (which I probably shouldn't have taken because ibuprofen and I don't get along). Can you guess where this is going?

I went to bed early and woke up feeling utterly horrible and unable to go to school. I stayed home and slept. The next day, I felt worse - and that was without the ibuprofen messing me up! In all, I missed class Tuesday-Friday. The student health center didn't do walk-ins and had no available appointments until the following Monday, when I called them on Tuesday and I had NO intention of still being sick on Monday. At that point, I was a little concerned - was it possible that I had managed to get swine flu? It sounded absurd. I didn't know anyone who was sick and I didn't seem to fit the symptoms - although I had plenty of symptoms of my own! I felt so weak I could barely leave my room, my throat was insanely sore, my head hurt and I was vacillating between freezing and overheated. All I did was read, drink 7-Up and tea, and sleep - lots and lots of sleep, since I was both tired from being sick and because I wasn't taking my anti-sleep meds. I think my new friends thought I was dying - and I, beyond melodramatic in my misery, was sure of it. (They were absolutely wonderful - brought me 7-Up, Tylenol, a card, and told me if I needed anything I should just ask - and at that point, I had known them barely a week, since I had spent half the time stuck in my room!)

I called Suzy, IFSA-Butler's contact in Cork, who told us that if we had medical questions we should feel free to call since her husband was a doctor and could probably tell us what to do. Unfortunately, her husband said that I should stay put and wait it out, since it didn't sound like swine flu, but I clearly wasn't well enough to go to class. By Thursday, when I was still sick as ever, both Suzy and her husband told me to go to the after-hours clinic. At that point, I was beginning to seriously consider the fact that I might have swine flu (and all the kosher puns that could be gleaned from the possibility), although when the taxi picked me up to take me, I assured the driver that I didn't have swine flu, since I was a little afraid he wouldn't take me if he thought I had it.

The SouthDoc clinic was a 10-minute ride away and I got there 20 minutes early for my appointment. I sat in the chair nervously twiddling my thumbs (Yes, I actually do literally twiddle my thumbs sometimes.) with nothing to do but try not to scare the other people in the waiting room. I had forgotten to bring a book, that's how sick I was.

Finally it was my turn. The doctor I saw was very nice - and imagine my relief upon learning that I didn't have any kind of flu, let alone swine flu! I had acute (or severe, I forget which word he used - I was pretty out of it) tonsilitis, easily treated with antibiotics. I'm still utterly befuddled by the fact that I had to go to Ireland to GET tonisilitis, but it could have been much worse. By Friday morning, having only taken one dose, I already felt better. By Saturday, I was going stir-crazy, having barely spent any time outside my room since coming home Monday and now feeling well enough to be out and about.

Finally, it was Sunday. I'd been on the antibiotics for long enough that I was "no longer contagious" and I was free to be around people. My friends had planned on going to Blarney and I decided to go with them, telling myself that if I got tired, I would sit while they wandered around. We met up that morning and took the bus to Blarney. The truth is that I hadn't really wanted to go to Blarney, but by then I would have gone to the South Pole if it meant I didn't have to stay in my room by myself. Blarney Castle is right in town, and utterly beautiful. I cannot begin to explain how green everything was and the castle was much more intact than I had expected. We walked all through it and then it was time to kiss the Blarney Stone. I knew it was traditional, but I really didn't have any interest in doing it - but suddenly I was there, and totally inspired.

If you haven't been to Blarney Castle, let me explain how one goes about kissing the Blarney Stone. There are two men who stand there, one of whom takes your picture (which is available for purchase along with a certificate for 10 euros at the gift shop) and one who holds your legs as you lie down on your back and dangle off the wall to kiss this stone. I could barely reach it - and if there hadn't been someone holding on to me, there's no way I could have done it because you're truly hanging off the very top of the castle and I had to lean back and over so far that I think I would have fallen. It's intense stuff - and before you get to go, you're waiting in line and looking at the people ahead of you, realizing that you're going to be kissing the same thing they all just kissed and am I really sure I want to do that? (Ironically, it didn't even occur to me that any of them could have been sick - although now that I'm no longer caught up in the moment I definitely wonder how many people develop colds or whatever after visiting Blarney.) Afterwards, we wandered around the various walks and visited the witch's rock, the fairy circle, Blarney House and walked around the lake. The area near the witch's rock was like a magical glen - I would LOVE to stage a performance of Midsummer Night's Dream there because it's just the perfect spot. Lots of little nooks and bridges and almost twilight-like because the trees overhead blocked out the sun so well. I was fading fast, but since I had no plans to return to Blarney, I didn't want to miss anything - plus it was raining on and off, so there really wasn't anywhere for me to sit. We headed back around 2-3 and decided to have a late lunch, since we hadn't really had breakfast and were starving. The rest of the afternoon was spent catching up on schoolwork, since I had missed practically the entire first week of class.

Monday morning, I was ready to go to class. I had missed two field trips while sick (one to a play about J.M. Synge and one to Barryscourt Castle (of Barry's Tea, THE brand of tea in Ireland) and Fota House) and 3 days of lecture. Naturally, for all my excitement, I fell asleep in class, so I had to talk to Mary Breen about not just missing class (which she understood completely and was entirely sympathetic and easygoing) but about my sleep disorder, a talk I had really hoped I wouldn't have to have anymore. Again, she was very understanding, which I appreciated so much, since I had already been worried about missing so much class.

Tuesday-Thursday were rather uneventful. I stayed awake two of the days and fell asleep the other one. One of the days we watched a movie adaptation of one of the books we were studying, The Last September. The movie's really interesting, particularly in light of the book, so if you're interested, I recommend checking it out. Maggie Smith is a total snob in it, but the movie does some really interesting things with reflected images and point of view and the use of music is really thoughtful as well. There are lots of changes from the book, which took us all aback because the changes were pretty significant, but the movie will still give you a pretty good impression of Anglo-Irish society during the "troubles" at the beginning of the 20th century.

Friday we had a field trip to the ruins of Bowen's Court, the family home of Elizabeth Bowen, the author of The Last September. There's really nothing to see there, which was really startling, even though we had been warned. In fact, even though we were at Bowen's home, what we saw there was much more reminiscent of the messages of the other book we had read so far Tarry Flynn, by Patrick Kavanagh (which talks about how Tarry finds beauty in the mundane rather than the extraordinary). It was just fields - muddy, with the hay mown, leaving just 5-inch long pieces sticking up to push into our shoes, socks and pants. There was little evidence that there had once been a grand country manor on the property. We didn't really have anything to do there, just the view to take in, pictures to take and the graveyard where Bowen and her understanding husband were buried next to each other to see.

After lunch, which we had over an hour after we were supposed to, we took the bus back to Cork and hung out for a while. Several classes were on trips that either got back that day or left that day and would continue over the weekend, so there were only three of us who went to the pub that night. (I had a pint of cider - still can't drink beer, but I've got 3.5 months to either learn or not.) We were there for a couple hours and then decided to head back home. Along the way, we all got hungry, since I hadn't eaten much for dinner and Sophie and Kathryn had had early dinners, so we stopped on the way home at our favorite restaurant (the cheapest and most convenient place in town, bar none) Valentino's to pick up a late meal. We brought our burgers back to Sophie's flat and ate and spent another couple hours just yakking before finally going back to our rooms. It was so normal - no different than making a late-night run to Steak 'n' Shake at school or whatever - so it was that night that I really felt like I lived here, although I don't think I realized it at the time.

Almost caught up now! Hope you made it all the way through - I'll try not to fall so far behind in the future.

Train to Cork - 1st Day in Cork!

Finally the day had arrived. We were going to our new homes - but first we had to sort out the cell phone situation and take the train to get there. The cell phones were fairly easy - Tim and Geoff had gone and purchased the phones and loaded them up for us, so all we had to do was reimburse them. I am the proud owner of a little red and black Samsung phone. Then we had to get us and our stuff to the train station.

Easier said than done - between us 8 girls and all our luggage (I was among the "light packers" and I had a large suitcase and my backpack), Geoff, Suzy and Suzy's dog, a car and 3 taxis were required to caravan us to the station and once we got on the train, we had to get our luggage into the overhead compartments. A challenge for anyone with the amount of luggage we all had, but there was another difficulty in my case. I am, in case you hadn't noticed, on the shorter side. With someone helping me, I could easily lift the suitcase, but not quite as high as it needed to go - with the result, that I nearly took the head off these two very polite gentleman who were unfortunate enough to be sitting under the shelf I was trying to fill with my bag. Horribly embarrassed, I apologized over and over again and offered to buy them whatever they wanted off the snack cart, but they waved me off, thanking me for offering - and laughing at me a little too, I think.

I was completely mortified - I hid my head in my book (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) for I don't even know how long. People got on the train and off the train. Some of the girls fell asleep, others talked quietly or listened to their iPods. At a certain point, the older man (the one whose finger was injured in the tumbling suitcase mess) was left by his younger companion and we began talking. He was absolutely lovely. We chatted about his travels in the US, the wedding he would be attending soon, his book and then - !!! - I got my first Gaelic lesson.

My Gaelige dictionary so far:

Go rabh maith agat - Thank you
Le do thoil - please
Slán - Goodbye
Sláinte - Cheers
and
(phonetically) eoi - goodnight

And yes I remember how to say them. So exciting! Karen, the representative from UCC who came and spoke to us told us about an Intro to Gaelic class that's offered and I really want to take it - but I can't if my sleep meds aren't keeping me awake in class. I'm so glad I have this month to attend class and see how I do before the semester actually starts - it will make picking the classes I take over the semester much easier if I know I can (or can't) stay awake. I don't want a repeat of what happened when I tried to take Hebrew last fall.

Once the train arrived in Cork, our group waited 'til everyone in our car had exited before we tried to move our luggage. We had learned our lesson! After loading us and our stuff into cabs, we rode over to Copley Court, our home for the next four months. I was staying in an apartment with at least 5 other people, I knew, but none of them were IFSA people. After getting my key, I let myself into my apartment on what we'd call the 3rd floor, but is the 2nd here. 4 of my flatmates were already moved in and I met two right away. I learned that there were going to be 7 of us, 5 girls and 2 guys. We each had our own bathroom and bedroom, which was VERY exciting. My room is yellow with yellow curtains and a view of Cork. It's lovely and very cheerful. After dropping my stuff and locating my contracts, I went back downstairs to meet up with the rest of the group. We were all going to walk into town together. Geoff showed us how to get to city centre and then the group split up. The bar-hoppers from the night before went off together and the rest of us went with Geoff to UCC, which I really appreciated, since we were going to campus so I could talk to Karen about my sleep disorder. Geoff took us to campus (not the most direct route, but he's from Dublin, so it's not his fault, really) where I was to meet Karen. She was running a little late so we looked around and admired the Ogham stones. Once she arrived, we briefly spoke and then Geoff basically said see you in a few weeks and left. We walked around a little bit longer and bought ethernet cables and other absolute essentials and then decided we were starving and had to eat NOW. Since most of us hadn't had much of a lunch, unless you'd bought something on the train, we were all hungry.

Our token "local" Mary, whose mother is from Cork, led us to this delicious Italian place where we all happily ate dinner, before deciding to head home and unpack. At that point, I had absolutely no sense of Cork, beyond a pretty campus and a confusing city centre, but I'd learn. Since we had our official UCC Early Start orientation the next day, I didn't stay up very late. After chatting some more with my flatmates and meeting the 3 I hadn't yet met, I unpacked and turned in, exhausted and excited for everything to really start!

Orientation Day 2 - Let loose in Dublin!

Our day began the same as the previous day. Geoff picked the 8 of us up from breakfast and took us on the bus to the office for our next series of discussions. Our first topic was Academics - the differences between the American and Irish education systems. We talked about grading scales, teaching styles and had a rather intense discussion on the use of "I" in essays and different styles of citations. Yes, it was lots of fun. Yes, I got a little too excited during the Great "I" Debate, but really, it's an important and fairly controversial issue and I have strong opinions about it which I won't go into here because, frankly, I don't think anyone really cares what I think about this particular topic. ANYWAYS, we talked about school stuff for a while and then had a break during which part of the group went for coffee and I and most of the group went on a walk and ended up buying postcards. Don't get overly excited - I did not buy any since I left my purse in the office and therefore you won't be getting a postcard quite yet. Sorry - I promise I will work on that.

We reconvened and began our second session entitled Ireland Today, but really it was a free-for-all that continued until we left to go for lunch. At this point, I went up to Tim to talk to him about my sleep disorder and what I need to do to work with professors and make them aware of my situation. This made both Tim and Geoff excited because it was a legitimate excuse for them to do stuff - I think Geoff has visions of getting paged on the emergency beeper because someone got lost in Cork or something. This was a legitimate concern and something they could actually help with, so they were both rather pleased with me, although I don't think Tim knows my name - I'm probably just Sleep Disorder Girl, but that's fine - I don't think Tim knows anyone's name, so at least I have an identifying feature!

Lunch was delicious. If you're ever in Dublin near Merrion Square, I highly recommend stopping by Angel Park Eatery for a bite.

After lunch, we had a guest speaker come and talk to us about the consequences of a poor decision he made while drunk. Very cheery lecture - part of the requisite scaring us all into good behavior. (Since I'm writing this over a week later, I can tell you that the tale didn't discourage the people that probably needed discouraging and therefore was fairly ineffectual since the rest of us don't need scaring.) Following that, we discussed with Tim and Geoff our collective need for cell phones, which they were going to procure for the 6 of us who wanted to get them as a group and then we were free to do as we wished!

Collectively, we had decided to go to to Kilmainham (pronounced kill-MEN-um) Jail and then to the Guinness Storehouse for dinner and then to split up, as we chose. Geoff and Chris, our guest speaker, took us on the bus to the right neighborhood. It was in a part of Dublin we hadn't been to yet and we were told not to linger too long there. Apparently it's not the best part of Dublin, but we had no problems. While we waited in line for admittance, a man who was with the group ahead of us turned around and asked if we were American. He too was from the US and had been traveling with a group of students from Russia. He was really interesting - he had been in the army and had then learned a half-dozen languages (among them, Russian and German, if I remember correctly) and had actually studied for a while at IU - along with a bunch of other places. In the course of talking to him we learned that he taught at West Point, though he hadn't "been smart enough to study there." He was really interesting, but once his group went in, we lost track of him entirely, which was fine because we were busy learning about Irish politics in the museum before our tour of Kilmainham began.

Kilmainham was fascinating and I cannot recommend it enough. It's a wonderful example of Victorian-era reforms and we learned a lot about the political history of Ireland while we were there, since Kilmainham became famous as a prison for political prisoners. Really interesting, but very scary. I understand that they truly intended the inmates to repent their crimes, but the idea of the panopticon seem more likely to induce feelings of paranoia then repentance - or at least I felt that would be my own reaction. (The panopticon was constructed around the idea that someone (in theory, G-d/Justice and government/jailers) was always watching your every move, so any transgression would be seen. It was supposed to dissuade criminals from acting.)

From there, we decided we definitely needed something lighter - and a drink! - so the Guinness Storehouse seemed the perfect next stop. Our group broke up with half of us going through quickly to get to the free beer at the end, while the rest of us learned in great detail all about the stout-brewing process. From that, I learned the following fascinating facts:

• A pure water supply is super important in the brewing process and to malign the purity of a brewer's water supply is a major insult.
• Guinness employs master brewers who taste test all the beer.
• Guinness claims to have created the first stout. I later learned that Beamish (or was it Murphy's?) supposedly was brewing its stout several decades earlier, so go figure.
  
• The yeast that is used today is the descendents of the yeast that Mr. Guinness first used.
• A supply of yeast is kept locked up in a safe in the event that something happens and this yeast would be used to rapidly build up the stock again. Wouldn't want Guinness to have to use non-regulation yeast, would you?
  
• Roasted barley tastes similar to a coffee bean. Not my favorite flavor, but not horrible.
• Hops plants grow really tall. I forget quite how tall, but I think it was easily over 6'.

The Guinness storehouse was, in everyone's opinions, vastly overrated, but we were all glad we went. Now we don't have to go back. And for anyone who cares - I drank my taste (about the size of 2 shots) but declined the pint I technically could have had and tasted someone else's pint. The "taste" we got was of some variety that was darker than any other type of Guinness I've ever seen. Whatever it was, no one liked it much and the experienced beer drinkers told us that it was harsh even for Guinness. The pint at the end was of a different kind of Guinness and not as bad, but still not anything I wanted to drink.

After hanging out in the Observatory Bar for awhile, we were exhausted and starving so we took the bus back to the Temple Bar/Grafton St. area and walked around looking for a place where the 8 of us could all have dinner together. By the time we found a restaurant, we were so excited I think we nearly started crying. This is what happens when you don't feed people for hours and then give them beer. Not recommended. After dinner, we split up. 3 girls went pub-hopping, two girls went back to the hotel, and two other girls and I wandered around for awhile, just people-watching and sight-seeing. The Grafton St. area is pretty happening, so there was lots going on, but after an hour or so of that, we were wiped and hopped on the bus to get back.

We'd been doing really well. No one had gotten lost yet, no calamities, nothing had been broken.... clearly something had to give. (**Nobody needs to worry, this is more humorous than scary. Everyone stay calm! :) ) We got off the bus and crossed the street towards the hotel. Two guys were following us further back, but they weren't bothering us, so I assumed they were guests too. We went into the hotel and past the key card part and they followed after us. We got in the elevator and they did too. One of the girls noticed they were carrying beer cans and appeared to be drunk. I had walked in the elevator first and pushed our floor button, but when the guys walked in, they just pressed the already-lit button. We arrived at our floor and they got out. We stayed in the elevator and pushed the 4th floor button and got out on the next floor. After a quick discussion where we basically decided to go hang out in the basement bar for awhile until they left (we were slightly concerned they were waiting for us on the third floor), we rode the elevator down and hung out for awhile. After some time had passed, we decided it would be safe to go back upstairs. No one was hanging around the floor, although we hadn't seen the guys leave. We knocked on the door of the girls who had headed back first, but they hadn't seen anything which cracked us up, for some reason. After saying goodnight, we all went to our respective rooms. We were taking the train to Cork tomorrow - finally we could unpack and really settle in!!