Getting into the swing of things

By October 5th, I was getting the hang of this whole Cork thing. That Monday, I went to fencing club for the first time. I was totally nervous - I hadn't picked up a blade since my foot surgery the previous November - and I KNEW that inevitably I'd do a million things wrong. Lucky for me, it was still early enough in the semester that tons of people were showing up, which meant that I was able to avoid doing any actual sword-work that day. Instead, after warm-up I did lots and lots of footwork and coordination drills. For me, this was excellent - a chance to get my feet advancing and retreating again without worrying about swords, and a chance to get back into the level of concentration that's supposed to be maintained in fencing. I did fairly well in the coordination and reflex drills and knew that I needed to work on my footwork (at least some things are consistent across sport-lines - I never wanted to move in tennis either!). It was lots of fun and best of all, one of the girls from my early start class was there, so I wasn't entirely alone!

Tuesday was supposed to be Chorale Society, but I had to skip it - having missed an IFSA dinner while on Inis Meaín, I definitely wanted to go to this one, since it would be my first opportunity to meet Maria, our new advisor. Unfortunately, I ran a little late and ended up sitting at the opposite end of the table. It was nice though - I sat with some of the IFSA kids who didn't do early start, who I had not yet had the opportunity to meet. I also sat with two of the early start girls I didn't see very often, so it was nice to catch up. I heard all about their adventures at Oktoberfest, which made me glad I hadn't gone, since they had been so excited about it and had had such a miserable experience.

On Thursday, I again had lunch with Hope - we had figured out that our schedules worked out really well for meeting up for lunch on Thursdays and it was a nice way for me to start my weekend.

Friday, I found myself again on campus, even though I didn't have class. I was meeting Janusz (and Cliona, though I didn't know that yet!) for coffee to talk about the Jewish Cultural Night and Jewish Cultural Festival that Iona (the chaplaincy on campus) was holding the following week. I had met Janusz at the Society Fair, but was nonetheless surprised to actually hear from him. We talked about ways for both Cliona and I to get involved (she was going to help organize and cook and I was going to teach a couple Israeli dances and maybe a song or two), but eventually we ended up talking about the Jewish community in Cork and community feeling towards Jews and Israel in Ireland. Now, it's important for me to mention that Janusz, who's from Poland, isn't Jewish, even though he was organizing both the Evening and the Festival and Cliona, who's actually from Cork, is planning on converting, and currently learning Hebrew. Technically, I was the only Jewish person there. Janusz plays klezmer music, which is how he got involved - he had actually started the festival the previous year and he told us about how he didn't know what would happen to it when he leaves, since what little Jewish community exists at UCC isn't very involved. Cliona and Janusz also talked about the bias they felt Irish media exhibited when discussing Israel - Janusz in particular compared it to coverage in Poland and the States, where they both considered media was more neutral. We ended up talking for a couple hours and I really enjoyed myself - I was definitely looking forward to the events.