This is me, learning.

A note from Joe: My most sincerest apologies to my loyal readers for not updating this blog in so long. The following post is from September 26th. I wrote it during one of my classes, so, seeing as I needed to occasionally raise my eyes and pay attention, parts of it are a little rambling. I will try to put up another regular post tonight to give you an update on Oktoberfest and the past week.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Organisational Behaviour (as they call it here), UCD, Dublin

11:15 a.m.

I’m sitting in Organizational Behavior and writing this in my notebook. Considering I’m the only one here even pretending to take notes, my professor’s loving me right now.

I went to Dublin Castle last Friday. All of the little trips we do within the country are completely covered by the program (including meals and pints!) (The teacher is drawing tick figures right now, but anyways…). Dublin Castle was fair, and when I turned to the kid next to me after the tour and mumbled “That was short, huh?” only to see that it was the tour guide, I promptly found my way out of the castle and started the bike ride back home. On Saturday about 45 of us went to Kilkenny for the day. We toured Kilkenny Castle (which was pretty cool) and had Kilkenny Beer, which wasn’t bad. We went on a walking tour of the city, and it was really cool to see all the old churches and get some history outside of the classroom. (note: my teacher just said “It’s alright to giggle”) Almost al the historic Irish stuff is run by the Office of Public Works, who call themselves the Irish version of the National Park Service, only they don’t have cool hats. (I made up that last part.)

When we got back, James (yes, James Harvey) was asleep on the couch in the living room. We met the Hanover girls for a beer that night and crashed on the earlier side.

I’ve been pretty tired lately (I think staying up until 4 to watch the Sox every night is catching up with me) so things haven’t been too wild since James’ arrival. The landlord came by on Saturday also, and apparently was surprised to find James as the only one home (James my roommate, McLovin, and I all were on the Kilkenny trip, while Ricky, Rory, and Josh were all in Sweden for the weekend.)

I’ve had class the last three days, but I guess James has been busy exploring the city and gathering documents for the whole Irish citizenship thing, and has gotten some pretty cool stuff (The California Harveys would be having a field day). On Monday night, James and I booked some last minute tickets to go to Munich for Oktoberfest this weekend. Rory, Ricky, and Josh are going too. It will be my first trip to Continental Europe, and it should be a really great time. We’re flying out Thursday afternoon and coming back Sunday afternoon. I’m pumped. (n.b. My teacher was just talking about the concept of perception and showed us the Muller line illusion to try to prove some sort of a point, and finally finished with the example by saying “apparently they are the same length” in a kind of doubting voice. I’m speechless.) I’ve been taking it easy the class few days because of classes and trying to catch up on sleep and saving budget room for this weekend. I’ve got to stop eating muffins.

Oh! I almost forgot. After two years of Fr. McGowan’s 23 minutes masses up at Our Lady’s, thinking that he could not be beat, I have experienced his match. I started going to the 7:30 daily at the church down the street, and on Monday was back out the door by 7:46. That’s under sixteen minutes. Crazy.

We always get out of this class late, which is really too bad because on Wednesdays at 12 we have our program meeting, including free sandwiches and a very limited number of chairs. We’re supposed to get out at 11:50, but both weeks so far she has stopped lecturing at 12:02 and begun the never-ending attendance-taking process. This class is kind of ridiculous.

Me and another kid from BC, Dan, and I are the only non-Irish kids in the class, and were 2 out of the 7 (out of about 50 in the class) who raised or hands last week when the Prof asked “Who chose to do the assignment this week?”. I talked to a girl the other day who said that not a lot of people get A’s. I think now I understand why.

Oh! She just said “And I’ll finish on this (It’s 11:43), so that means there’s only 20 more minutes of mindless banter before she stops to take attendance.

I should probably wrap up so I can catch these closing words of wisdom and so people won’t be scared off by the length of this post when they see it.

I’ll try to get you another update after this weekend.

I need to shave. Coming from me, that means a lot.

Later.

11:46