College Week

Mmmmmmmmmmm...so tired. Today was a long day and last night was a bit loud, so I'm definitely ready to crash soon.

I woke up with two extra girls sleeping in my room, Aine's friends from last night, and then two guys sleeping down in the living room. Apparently they live somewhere in the apartment complex, but got locked out last night so my roommate took pity and let them sleep over. I tried really hard to eat my cereal quietly, but I still woke them up. Oh well. Tonight Aine and I stayed in, so maybe it'll just be our suitemates here in the morning.

Classes started off the day, although my Irish class was canceled so I was done by 11. We were invited to go to the Irish building cafeteria to speak to the native speakers, but Courtney and I left to go eat lunch at home and then head into town instead. Alice came too, and we went to souvenir shops to pick up some stuff for people at home. Afterward we walked out to sit and sunbathe (in our coats and pants, 'cause that works...) by the bay because it was beautiful outside. It's supposed to get cloudy for the rest of the week, but hopefully still stay dry.

At 5 p.m. I met up with Alice and Courtney again and we went to the campus bar to watch a guy we know get his chest and legs waxed to raise money for Habitat for Humanity. I know, it sounds crazy. The way it worked was there were a bunch of guys on stage in their underwear (most of them not hairy, ironically) and a couple volunteers with wax strips. You had to pay 2 euro to be able to peel off one strip from the leg, 5 euros for the chest, and various amounts for the armpits, butt, and other areas that the guys volunteered at random. Alice paid 5 euros to do it to our friend, who ended up almost hairless from all the people. It was pretty funny to watch them suffer and certainly a very unique way of raising money.

After going back for supper, we had a quick API meeting about the Dublin trip in two weeks and exams and other stuff. One of my professors mentioned today that we have next Wednesday off because it's St. Patrick's Day. That's exciting, although you would think that someone else or the calendar or something would have mentioned it...but anyway, Finn sent us a link to events going on that day in Galway. I guess Dublin is crazy that whole week, but people around here like a good party too. There's a parade and some other stuff that I am going to try to see.

Finally, I once again met up with Courtney and Alice at the bridge and we walked to college to find this Fire Walk thing. We got there five minutes before it ended. These volunteers, who I think had to raise money to participate, each got one turn to walk across this rectangular pit of embers and fire barefoot. After seeing it, I really wish that I could have gotten a turn. I never heard about it until this week--otherwise I would have signed up. It looked really cool!

So now I'm sitting here, doing some reading for class tomorrow and taking it easy. Everyone else is pubbing now, but my roommate and I are just working on school stuff and getting lots of sleep. I'm excited to not have to wake up in the middle of the night. Since I've been going to lots of events lately, I'm going to camp out in the library tomorrow between my 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. classes to get some work done. Then it'll be time to book the ferry to Inis Mor, where we're traveling this weekend, and go rock climbing. Can't wait.

And that's all, folks! Good night.