This is my second double chocolate muffin in the last hour

Friday, November 23, 2007

Quinn School Study Louge, UCD, Dublin

3:52 p.m.


I know I know I owe you a post for the second half of "The Harveys come to Ireland", but that will have to wait for now. I've gotten about 7 hours of sleep since I woke up early Tuesday morning, but the end is in sight. I have a group paper due on Monday that has been taking up most (see: all minus meals and biking back and forth to the library) of my time, but hopefully it will be finished by some reasonable time on Sunday evening. But probably not.

I have a group meeting in 6 minutes, but I thought it was supposed to be at 3:00. It was nice to have the feeling of an "extra" hour as opposed to that "what the heck what happened to the last six hours" feeling I've had all week. After 50 minutes of editing attempted English sentences, I decided to give myself a ten minute break and do a quick update - just a few little news and notes things. My apologies if it's not polished.

For Thanksgiving a bunch of the kids in the program went out to TGI Fridays through some sponsored thing where we only had to pay 5 euros for a meal. We had chicken and mashed potatoes. That's all I have to say about that.

Ashley is cooking a Thanksgiving dinner (she even found a turkey!) for Red Sox Nation, Dublin on Saturday afternoon (tomorrow). If I can't go because of this stupid paper I am going to cause serious harm to people and/or objects. If I can make it, it should be a great time.

Arndt is in town. Depending on how things go at this group meeting, I might try to meet him for a soda pop in the city really quick before I go back to work. Another wild Friday night in Dublin (hey at least I haven't spent much money this week!).

I have my Irish history final exam on Tuesday. So that means as soon as I finish this paper I will start in on that. Our prof gave us a pretty good outline of what she will most likely ask, though, so it shouldn't be too hard.

Wednesday is my last day of classes. After that I am off until the rest of my exams, which are on Dec 11, 12, 17, and 18. Kevin and Len are coming to visit from the 20th to the 22nd, and I fly home on the 24th.

Okay, group's starting to show up. Look for more next week after I finish my exam and get about 20 hours of sleep.

Later.

4:03

“Your gut isn’t as big as I thought it would be” – The Harvey Family visits Dublin, Part I

Monday, November 19, 2007

James Joyce Library, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

3:38 p.m.

(unedited)

The last week was pretty eventful. I’ll start at the beginning. I flew in from Dublin last Saturday night and was greeted by Stephen, Mom, and Dad, whose second sentence after seeing me is honored by today’s title. Stephen, who was awesome about driving Mom and Dad and everyone all week, dropped us back at the hotel where M&D showed me the duffel bag full of sneakers, Sports Illustrateds, granola bars, bike lights, hats, Sox World Champs banner, and chewing gums that they had brought all the way across the Atlantic for me. Awesome! I changed out of my standard “wear something Belmont/Boston” shirt that I wear whenever I’m flying (this flight got Coco Crisp) and the three of us headed downstairs to meet up with Kathryn and Brian. K&B had brought me a 2007 Red Sox World Series Champions shirt (again, awesome), and we all caught up on everyone’s various adventures.

The next morning we met up for church and I showed everyone around the chic downstairs of Fortescue Lane. We caught the bus down to school and I did my best tour guide impression as the weather turned from sunny to cloudy to rainy in about 10 minutes. After the tour ended we all headed into town and grabbed lunch at the Porter House. Brian and I had milkshakes that looked like they belonged on a culinary school brochure and tasted pretty good too.

Later that night we started the beginning of what was, for me, eating like absolute kings. We had a great meal at a little Italian restaurant. Mom said she felt bad when she realized that all I’d been eating for the last two and half months was pasta, but I assured her that the meal in front of my had absolutely nothing in common with the Dunnes Stores ziti and microwaved Roma pasta sauce that I’ve mastered since being here. Either way, she said steaks were in order the next night and as soon as I finished one delicious meal I immediately began looking forward to the next night’s.

I had to spend most of the day Monday at school doing work, which worked out because M,D, and K went up north with Stephen to see Nan. I felt bad about having to cancel going to the Jameson with Brian, but felt like the combination of me having an uncharacteristically large amount of schoolwork, being sick, and drinking whiskey early in the morning was just not a good idea. That night we went to Eliza Blues, a little steak place on the Liffey. My meal was incredible, and we talked to the owner on the way out who told Mom about how people get blown off the Cliffs of Moher all the time by doing what I did. This was shortly after I told her I was going back there when Kevin and Len come out. But hey, at least the steak was great.

Tuesday I had school again all day (I know, school? what the heck?) We finalized plans for the trip out west, and I spent at home getting work done. I had a presentation Wednesday morning in OB, went home, did work, got sleep, woke up, and caught the train out to Ballyhaunis.

Back to work for now, I’ll write more about the rest later.

4:58

It’s been so long since I’ve updated that my Firefox history didn’t remember this website.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

UCD Quinn School Study Lounge

4:30 p.m.

WOW so it’s been a busy few weeks since I was at the Cliffs of Moher with the guys. Halloween came and went (I was K-Fed, yeah…). Strangely, Halloween happens to be the big fireworks holiday in Ireland, and while there are a few big displays, most people stick to walking out their front door and setting off a couple store-bought or home-made fireworks and hoping they don’t blow their heads off. We did not take part in this tradition.

Lyd came to visit me from Nov. 2 through the 5^th. We went to a rugby game with a few of the other kids in the program; it was really cool. Leinster (the part of Ireland that Dublin is in) played against Cannucht in a match that featured about half the Irish World Cup team on one side or the other, so that was great to see that high level of play (although it was probably wasted on us, since the best of us only knew about 80% of the rules.

Lyd flew back home on Monday afternoon, and then on Thursday I flew off to London to visit Kevin. Kevin is in London for the year studying at the London School of Economics, and his dorm is about a 10 minute walk away from campus, which is right by Trafalgar Square. I got to his place at about 6, where we had dinner and then met up with his friends to go on a pub crawl. Later that night we went to some club that Kevin’s friends were going to, and in the roughly ten minutes that we stayed I ran into Gautier, the French kid from my Globalization class at UCD. Crazy stuff.

The next night we hung around with Kevin’s friends in the big lounge in his dorm, and then, after a failed attempt to meet up with BC/UCDers Dave and Chris, we walked over to Picadilly Circus and met up with Nicole (Belmont) and some of her friends from BU who were studying in London. Since I was flying out the next evening, we decided to call it an early night on Friday so that we could get sight-seeing first thing in the morning.

So one of the great things about studying abroad is that often times your friends, like Kevin, are studying in other cities, like Kevin was, and you can stay at their dorms or houses, like I was doing, and they can give you the personalized tour of whatever city they’ve been studying in for the last few months. Unfortunately, my two previous short trips to London put me in a much more expert position on London tourist attractions, as Kevin revealed that he was really yet to explore the city at all. Great. If anything, I guess, it made the two of us setting off into the city with virtually no money and a desire to “Do London in 3 hours for free” more of an adventure. We first walked down to the Mall, checked out Green park, and went and took picture in front of Buckingham Palace, which was buzzing with people even though there was no changing of the guard that day. We then walked back through the park and over to Big Ben and the Parliament building, where we ran into a huge group of livid Somalian protestors upset over Ethiopia’s “genocide” in Somalia. I think Kevin, who is as globally minded as they come (he’s the president of the Boston College Model United Nations) was more upset that they were standing in front of the statue of Winston Churchill, which means he couldn’t get a picture with it. (I guess he’ll have to walk down there again sometime before next July…) From there we wandered down to Trafalgar Square where we looked around a little and expressed mutual sadness over having just missed the 28 foot tall blow up statue of Jason Taylor, the best player on the worst team in football. (Miami played a game in London a couple weeks ago, that was part of the promotional stuff.)

After realizing that the National Gallery was free, the two of us became instant art fans and spent a couple hours looking at van Gogh and being surprised at how recently Picasso had died. We both though he was a lot older…apparently we weren’t the biggest art aficionados strolling the halls of the National Gallery that day.

After we had had out art fill we went outside and, getting a prime spot on the balcony outside the museum, took some pictures overlooking the Square. It was getting dark, and fortunately for me they were observing the November 5^th holiday that had just passed with a grand fireworks display over the Thames.

Tired from a long day of walking we went back to his building. I grabbed my bag and headed off for Gatwick, where I got in a fight with the security people who said my backpack was too big (psh, it was fine in Dublin), finally boarded the plane, and headed back to the Dublin airport, where Stephen Mullen, Mom, and Dad were waiting for me. It was great to see them, and we all went back to the hotel and met up with Kathryn and Brian.

So yes, it’s been an exciting few weeks, and I wish I had more space to tell more exciting stories about each of my stops, but I guess I’ll leave the adventurous tales for when you see me in person so that I’m not all out of good fresh Ireland info. I’m sure the Fam’s visit will also be worthy of a couple posts.

Okay, I have to head off to office hours before my next class. Busy time coming up academically, but hopefully I’ll have time to write.

Later.

Go Sox! (Sign Lowell!)

5:05 p.m.

(p.s. a special Hello to Mr. Twiraga, who sent me a Facebook message requesting an update! Hi!)