Thanksgiving #1, Harry Potter and Annemarie's Birthday

Sadly, there are no creepers to report for this blog update. I feel like that is rapidly becoming a mainstay of my life here in Ireland. I have a creeper magnet or something. But it's all relatively tame this time around.

I am rapidly set to have more Thanksgivings in Ireland than I ever had at any point while living in America. Last Thursday, Annemarie hosted a Thanksgiving at her house for me and her Irish rooommates (and one of her roommate's friends). It was, in a word, lovely. I am not the biggest Thanskgiving food fan in the world, but she had Stove Top stuffing her mom had sent her and she made a turkey and we found apple (sadly, no pumpkin) pie in a store. It was really fun and totally delicious and awesome. It also looks like I'm set to have two more. On actual Thanksgiving, I'll have class (obviously) but my classmates want to take the other American in my program and me out to a Thanksgiving lunch. Something tells me we'll search for a long time and end up eating turkey sandwiches in a pub, but it's a really nice thought of them. And then on Saturday I'm headed to Londytown for my cousin's Thanksgiving! SO excited to go back to London. I fully intend on going to the Landward (the apartment building I lived in while studying abroad) and enlisting some random passerby to take my picture in front of it. I also fully intend on eating schawarma and I'll be able to have CHIPOTLE. Thank god I googled Chipotle that once and discovered it now exists in London.

Anyway, Saturday was Annemarie's birthday! We went to a matinee showing of Harry Potter and it was AWESOME. I already want to see it again. The best part about breaking the 7th book into two movies is that they really didn't have to cut anything. I'm biased, though - the movies could be the worst things ever and I'll still think they were about the best thing I've ever seen. It was so good. Then later that night, we went out on the town for her birthday, which was also a great time, one of the best nights I've had here so far. So overall, it's been a very successful week!

Now I'm just trying to kind of keep my head down and grind out the last of my papers, exams, etc. I have a huge paper due this week that I'm actually really worried about, but I have to convince myself at some point to stop editing it before I edit it so much it turns completely crap and totally unrecognizable. I'll also be home three weeks from today! I can do this, I can do this.

In other news, ND plays USC next Saturday, which means it's time to break out my favorite picture of all time:





In conclusion, I am so close to surviving semester #1 of grad school. So close! miss and love you all...eyes on the prize.

More Procrastination

Today was one of those days when I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I was reminded of how much I love grad school, how much I'm beginning to feel at home in Galway, and how much I actually love what I'm studying. I think I pretty much have to be a student for as long as possible and then become a professor, because I actually can't think of anything else I want to do with my life. Mostly, I'm beginning to realize there IS a practical, real-world outlet for the insane, at times debilitating, nerdiness I've possessed since my earliest days of childhood. It's called academia, and it's probably the only place I belong, as sad as that may be.

ANYWAY. In keeping with the above and being a nerd, on Saturday I went to see Due Date with Annemarie. In the first place, it's pretty fun. I'd definitely recommend seeing it. It's no The Hangover, which is sort of what I was hoping for, but it was truly very funny. In the second place, there was one awesome joke that Annemarie and I laughed hysterically at, into a completely hushed and quiet theater. The joke was that Robert Downey Jr and Zach Galifinakis (I know I spelled that wrong, but since I acknowledged it, it's okay) are at a Western Union in Birmingham, Alabama, and Robert Downey Jr's wife is supposed to wire them money. Long story short, Zach Galifinakis's character gave the wrong name, so she wired it to the wrong name, so RD Jr says, "oh, so now my wife has to get back in her car, drive to another Western Union, and wire me money again?" The clerk says, "yeah, but she'll have to go do that tomorrow. We're closing in five minutes." RD Jr looks at his watch and says, "It's 6:35." The clerk then says, "Yeah, but I gotta meet my boys. We have dinner reservations at Chili's." RD Jr deadpans, "You have reservations... at Chili's?" Obviously no Irish people got it - I mean, why would they? - but Annemarie and I just died. It was probably the best part of the movie, or at least one of them, and the joke was totally lost on pretty much everyone in the audience. I also can't think of an Irish equivalent of Chili's, so I can't really think of a way to explain it to anyone I know should they happen to see it.

In totally unrelated news, my cousin Emmy just sent me an official evite invitation for her Thanksgiving in London. (sidenote: there is some serious irony inherent in the idea we're celebrating Thanksgiving in England.) I'm so excited! I get to see my cousin and her husband and her kid and also be in London. I will go to the Landward and the ND center and I will eat schawarma and Chipotle and I will walk along the Embankment and I will ride the Tube and it will be so awesome. LONDON I MISS YOU EVERY DAY YOU ARE THE MOST PERFECT CITY IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

Full disclosure: I'm writing this update to avoid working on an essay I currently have writer's block on, and I've now run out of things to talk about.

Love love!

I Can't Conclude This Essay

Currently, one of my least favorite things in the world is structural dependency theory. I have an essay due on Friday that is meant to gloss over how colonialism relates to both structural dependency theory and modernization theory. If your eyes glazed o
ver after reading those two sentences, multiply that by about 1,000 and you might be sort of close to where I am right now.

The essay is meant to be 2,500 words. I have 2,200 words. Literally all I need is a conclusion. I have been staring at my open Word document for close to two hours now. I have made a Christmas playlist on iTunes and have danced to it while doing dishes. I have done two loads of laundry and watched two episodes of Friends and one of Gilmore Girls. I don't even like Gilmore Girls. I find the dialogue way too staged and I think Rory (Alexis Bladel or whatever her name is) is one of the worst actresses to ever get a job on a TV show airing on a major network. I have aimlessly paged through the textbook I'm supposedly referencing throughout this essay. I have also invested way too much time into deciding precisely why I don't like Gilmore Girls. Now I'm updating this blog.

The one thing I literally cannot bring myself to do is write a conclusion to this essay.

I know a lot of people are probably groaning that I'm complaining that I can't finish an essay that is due on Friday. But I'm fully aware that I don't really know what I'm talking about in this essay, so in an ideal world, I need to finish this essay today, let it sit for a few days, and go back and read it on like Wednesday to see if it makes any kind of coherent, logical sense. And I actually cannot bring myself to write 300 words so I can just close my computer and get on with my day. I wish I had Mean Girls on DVD. That would be an excellent time waster.

This is an illustration of what I might do later today if I still don't have a conclusion to my essay written. Instead of using it to dis on girls from my high school (mostly because there were about 10 girls in my high school and I liked all of them and also that would be beyond pathetic) I may create the first Burn Book for Tea Party candidates.

One time in college (sidetrack) I watched Mean Girls three times in a row. This was due to two factors: 1) a lack of desire to do anything actually productive with my day 2) I was home alone and I couldn't get off the couch to remove the movie from the DVD player. Not like a mental block - I was actually, physically restrained from getting off the couch because every time I picked up my head even a tiny bit, the Long Island Iced Teas from last night began throbbing in my skull and my entire body begged for mercy. It was one of the worst days ever, and is also an excellent example of why you should always enter the Backer with a strong and clearly delineated idea of the amount of Long Island Iced Teas you plan to allow yourself to consume. Eventually Katy came home and fixed problem #2 for me. But right now, watching that film three times in a row actually sounds like a phenom way to spend six hours.

Anything. But. Writing. This. Conclusion.

Oh, Erin Wash, if you're reading this - I also read about ten entries from your blog. So thanks for that. It was really helpful, informative, fun, and interesting. How many more synonyms do you think I can come up with to describe your blog?

One More Crazy

I actually forgot about this until just now, but I had another very odd conversation with another very odd man.

This one occurred before one of my classes. It's a long story, but I go to this undergraduate class sometimes not for credit. Right before it started one day, an older man, clearly a mature student, turned to me and asked me the time or some similarly simple question. When I answered, he was like, "Oh! You're American!" and I was like, "yeah, guilty." He then asked me if I was from Boston. I said, "No, Chicago," (as I'm telling people I casually meet in situations such as these I am from Chicago) and he says, "Oh! You ever go to Canada?"

Now, I have never been to Canada. (When I told this story to Katy over Skype, she shrieked, very loudly and very Katy-ly, "WHAT??? YOU'VE NEVER BEEN TO CANADA???" I know this is unusual, so I sort of laughed and said, "no, never been to Canada." Katy: AHHHH!!!! WE HAVE TO GO TO CANADA!!!! I then mentioned if we went to Canada together, we would have gone to every North American country together as we went to Mexico for spring break, and you can imagine the shrieking and screaming and Canada-insisting that happened then.) ANYWAY. This gentleman, upon my telling him I have never been to Canada, says, "Oh! But it's just right there!" Confused, I say, "No.... it's probably like a 10-12 hour drive." "From Chicago??" "Yes... well... yes." I couldn't think of anything to say, really. I mean, it's a drive to Canada from Chicago.

He then says, "No! It's like, an hour, tops. I know geography." "Um... no. Because you have to drive up through Michigan or Minnesota first." Although, at this point, I will say I was starting to doubt myself. As I don't ACTUALLY live in Chicago, I started to wonder if there was a way to get to Canada from Chicago that I was just overlooking. But then he made it all better by saying...

"But those lakes. Isn't there a bridge or something that you can use to get across?"

As Annemarie said when I told her this story, "Uh, what? Those lakes are bigger than some OCEANS." I mean, not really, but you get the point. No, there is not a bridge going across Lake Michigan to Canada.

After I cleared up that misconception, though, there was more. "So, Chicago, eh? You read any German newspapers?"

"I... don't...uh... speak German."

"Well, right, but do you read any?"

"Um... no."

The only thing I can think of for this is perhaps he knew, in the back of his head or something, that Chicago was a big Polish immigrant town. Maybe he sort of knew that, and then got Poland and Germany confused... I don't know. I mean, it's a stretch, but it's the only way I can think of to legitimize that one.

I then explained to him that the Windy City was not named for the winds (although, to be fair, I think I told my dad or someone that this summer and whoever I told had never had any idea), told him that I was sorry, but I didn't know when the Great Fire was (although I did know Mrs. O'Leary's cow started it, which was a bit of trivia he was impressed with), and that, yes, Barack Obama is from Chicago, and no, I do not know him. (And to be clear, all this imparting of knowledge was because he asked me all these questions, not because I was volunteering Chicago information.) He was also about to ask me something else but class started.

So, yeah. But I do want to be clear about something. I was telling this story to some people in my program, and one guy was like, "Man, you're going to go home and tell all these stories about these weirdos, and everyone is going to think Ireland is full of crazy people." Although I have met two extremely odd men, the vast, vast majority of people (and men) in Ireland have been incredibly nice and haven't asked me odd questions about America's third-largest city or assumed I was a gangster. (Although, now that I'm thinking of it, both these odd men were somehow tripped into asking me odd questions by the mention of Chicago. Hmm.) So yeah. The crazies are just the ones who stick out in your mind.

I'm officially a student again... ho boy

So I have survived my first week of graduate classes!


I can't remember if I've said this in an earlier post or not, but I only have classes three days a week - Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I'm taking either 3 or 5 classes, depending on your viewpoint - I have two that aren't for credit (an undergraduate lecture course and a research seminar) which is why I say that. The three classes that I'm taking for realsies are: Colonialism in 20th Century Cultural Theory, Approaches to the Study of Colonialism, and Decolonization: The Politics of "Development." They all sound incredibly similar, which I think might be confusing until I get the hang of it. There are either 6 or 7 people in my program - I say this because 7 people were there the first day, but one girl hasn't shown up since, so I'm not sure what her deal is or if she's coming back.

Anyway. The first class, Colonialism in 20th Century Cultural Theory, looks at how colonialism has shaped the culture of subject colonies and of the conquering country (i.e. Great Britain). Approaches looks at the problem of imperialism and colonialism from different literary viewpoints: from theatre, from British literature, from Spanish literature, etc. The last one I thought was going to be my least favorite because it's about economics and policy and other things of that nature. I have never taken an economics class and have never had a desire to. If anyone from high school is reading this, you know AP Calc literally reduced me to tears. Literally. And as this past year demonstrated, policy ain't really my thang either. So I thought it would be one I just had to grin and bear. Surprisingly, though, it's interesting (at least so far). I also think I can handle it. So go me!

I find the workload extremely manageable. In our research seminar, we all had to go around and voice a concern we had. I said just that since I've been out of school for a year, I'm worried about losing my study habits, etc. Everyone else said they were worried about the amount of reading. I am now worried that I'm NOT worried about the amount of reading, if that makes sense. It seems really comparable, maybe even slightly less, than ND was. Maybe I just had outlandish expectations of what graduate school reading loads would be, but this seems totally doable. However. I am now stressed that I'm not stressed. If everyone else is worried, my thinking goes, shouldn't I be, too? Maybe I think I can do more than I really can. I don't know. No point in worrying about it until I do the first load of reading for class next week, right? Right.

Interesting things I learned (not academic things, just interesting things mentioned in class):

My program used to be a huge magnet for former IRA guys. I forget which professor was saying this, but he or she was saying that they have a distinct memory of some guy walking around with a limp and when asked why he limped, saying it was from a British bullet. So. There's that. It makes sense, given that the subject matter is colonialism, but still. I thought that was really interesting. Sadly (or not, depending on your viewpoint), I don't think anyone in my current class has fought with the IRA.

One professor claimed that American schools were better at teaching writing than Irish and British schools. I find this incredibly difficult to believe, given the abysmal state of public education in America, but if it is true... go us. USA! USA!

I thought I learned one more interesting thing but now I can't remember it. Must not have been that interesting.

In other news:

It rains. All. The. Time. Here. ALL THE TIME. it's unbelievable. I didn't know the sky could PRODUCE so much water! I now assume every day that it is going to rain. I may not know when, and it may start pouring out a clear blue sky, but it WILL happen. It's like Ireland is experiencing a perpetual monsoon! Apparently we get the worst of it, too, because we're in the west.

I have now met both my roommates for real! Rebecca (she's the one I hadn't really met as of my last blog entry) is incredibly nice. She is an art student, doing what she calls interior architecture which I assume without knowing for sure is just what we'd call interior design. She's very, very sweet. Siobhan is also great. We went out together one night last week (see post below) and she was very fun. I'm so excited that I get to live with such great girls. ND kids, I also hang out with Annemarie McGrath a lot here, if you knew her. She is also doing a master's program at NUIG.

Stupid things I have done:

We all know my hearing is pretty abysmal. I was talking to the other American in my program (her name is Katie) and she was saying how she's been looking into clubs to join and how she's going to join the Sinn Fein Society (Irish political party: say like Shin Fayne). I, however, heard that she was going to join the Champagne Society. I was like, "ooohh, that sounds fun! What do you do there?" Her: "...talk about politics..." I must have sounded like such an idiot.

I was early to class one day and needed to go to the bathroom, so I set off looking for it. The building all my classes is in is basically DeBartolo. It's just this big, impersonal building full of classrooms one after another. I combed that damn building for close to half an hour looking for a bathroom. At one point, I muttered under my breath, "What, people don't PEE in this country???" and someone overheard me and I'm sure assumed I was insane. I'm not kidding, though. Bathrooms appear to be INCREDIBLY scarce in that building. Eventually I found them, but I walked past the same people multiple times on my circuits through the building. I suppose I could have just asked them, but I am desperately trying to give off the impression that I belong, so all those people saw as they were sitting and studying or socializing or whatever was this girl stomping angrily by them once every ten minutes.

This is quite long, so I'm going to sign off. Miss all of you!