Easter? Who Knew?

I hope everyone had a happy Easter with their friends and family. For me it was just like any other day. I went to mass, which was no different than a mass any other sound of the year. I watched movies and made pizza, that was the extent of my day.

I am trying to get some studying in before David comes on Wednesday, but it really isn't happening at the moment. This whole month off thing just makes it feel like I have ages before my exams start, when in reality I don't seeing that I'll be traveling for 10 days.

So wish me look in my pursuit of studying, I need it, the exams are worth a significant percentage of my final grade. At least the weather is currently very stormy, I have a feeling to will be buckets in an hour or two.

Emily Make a Pizza Just for You!

No picture of my my most delicious masterpiece yet (eating sounded so much better than running to my room for my camera, but that is how tempting this pizza pie was.) Upon discovering fresh pizza dough at the English Market I couldn't resist to get some for myself. Garlic and rosemary dough, some gorgeous Italian salami from the Pig's Mouth (the stall's name had pig in it at least), my homemade pizza/marinara sauce, mushrooms, and plenty of mozzarella turned out to be the perfect combination of amazing. I have decided to have my feast again for Easter, but maybe putting some different twists. I was thinking a dessert pizza with goat cheese, cinnamon and cranberries. I'll be certain to take pictures of the results this time around.

On another note I saw a student production of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change. It was brilliant, a great show. The cast had amazing voices (one girl, a friend of a friend, couldn't speak two days before the performance but she was able to pull to off without any suspicion.) A great show, happy I went to see it.

Hope everyone has a happy Easter.

One Essay To Go

I'm not even sure if anyone still reads this thing, and honestly, putting no blame on you; I really stink at this whole blogging thing. So, much has happened in the past few months since Christmas and I will write about all of it mwuhahahaha. Only because I have one paper to hand in before a start my MONTH LONG SPRING BREAK!!!!! (oh you are soooo jealous right now) But really I should be doing my paper, but in perfect Emily fashion I freak out about 3/4 days before the due date, finish a good rough draft of it, then don't work on it again until the day before I have to hand it in. As the Irish would say, I'm grand like. Here comes the documentation, some months more exciting than others, well March is probably the best out of all of them.

JANUARY

The first week I spent getting adjusted to being back in Ireland. I again had a horrible travel experience. Dublin Airport closed down cause of a centimeter of snow OH MY! Long story short, stuck on my plane for about 5 more hours than I should have been. At least AerLingus is AMAZING (really fly aerlingus whenever you can) and kept the movie/game screen on for us.

Second and Third week I spent writing the papers that I was able to get extensions for since my horrible case of mono. (floods + no running or safe to drink H2O + mono = not a good month but a loss of 20 lbs!) I thank thank thank Flavio for giving me all the time in the world to complete those papers.

The rest of January didn't really amount to that much. I'm pretty sure we had a class party, yes there was a class party. That is about all for January. Oh almost forgot, went on a class trip for Archaeology. We explored West Cork, climbed a castle and performed a ritual sacrifice at Drombeg Circle, you know, the usual.

FEBRUARY

February was definitely a better month than January. (those papers were a buzz kill) First week pretty much was just classes, a few quizzes here and there.

Weekend of the second week was my class trip to Florence. I love Ireland because you go on class trips to Italy, awesome right? I love love love Italy to death. My new goal is to learn Italian then move there and become a tour guide for American tourists. Gelato, food, art, cool stationary shops, boots/sandals/leather jackets EVERYWHERE!!! It is a huge thrill to see the art I have been studying forever. Oh and highlight of the trip, Donatello's Bronze David. LOVE IT!!! Michelangelo's David wasn't that bad either (lying he was gorgeous, I mean it, gorgeous!) I just love Italy. I will have to do a tour of the entire country someday, I have yet to see Urbino, Rimini, Milan, Sicily, Venice, Verona, well everywhere actually.

The rest of February was pretty much going out with friends. I saw Leap Year which will be my go to reminisce about my year in Ireland movie.

MARCH

The best month by far! Why? My PARENTS came to visit, that's why!!!! After giving my presentation of Giovanni Lanfranco (look him up, he's amazing!) I flew out to Dublin and met my Mom and Dad as they were waiting for their luggage. Because there is so much to say about their visit, I'll just blurb some highlights.

Dublin: Palace Bar, The Barrister, Alice in Wonderland, Passing the Dinosaur place about ten million times. Toilet - To Let? Driving on Left. 1,000 Motorcycles

Cork: Jury's Hotel. Showing them my city. Book talk. English Market. Tea, tea, and more tea. My Claddagh Ring.

Ring of Kerry Drive: Killarney and Killarney National Park. Beach on the Ring of Kerry.

Dingle Drive: Everything. Dingle, the food, Connor's Pass, Beach, Views, loved it all.

Galway: Portal Tomb, Galway Bay, Sea of Limestone

We had great weather, did not rain once of the ten days that my parents were here. My parents fell in love with Ireland, how could they not?

St. Paddy's day was another big day in Cork! I couldn't believe I was celebrating it here. I drank Irish drink, wore green, went to the parade and ate a burrito (i know it doesn't fit, but it was good!) A wonderful day followed by a day of paper writing.

The rest of March has been paper writing since it is the close of the academic year. Classes are finished, celebrated by doing a pub crawl and enjoying some trad sessions. I have another cold, so I am taking it easy for when David comes to visit. Almost done with the paper I'm working on, but I have plenty of time to finish it off. So everyone enjoy a cup of tea tonight and wish me luck in my month of studying for exams. (I need it seven exams and a paper all in a span of 13 days in May.)

Cheers from Cork!

The Little Cultural Differences I Love

More focus is on passing the course rather than getting perfect marks.

The Friendliness of Everyone!

Food is enjoyed and there are no public displays of complaining about self restriction of food or gloried vegetarians.

Everyone goes out on Thursday night.

The ability to walk everywhere.

A friend buying you a drink no questions asked.

Words like grand and cheers.

Class parties which are a night out, not bringing food into class.

Being able to buy one can of Coke at the market.

Tea and biscuits can be enjoyed at any time of the day.

Rest of my time in books.

One thing that I noticed was lacking in my life in Ireland was reading, well reading outside of the art history world. Since my time over here I have only recreationally read two books: The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins and Animal Vegetable Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver. I did start reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, but got a bit bored with it.

So as a break from my classes and the overload of essays that I had been working on I decided to pick up on my personal reading. Between trips for my archaeology class exploring sites of West Cork, my up coming trip to Florence, and my few nights out a week, I need something to feel my time at night that is free.

My first book of choice, well more short story really was George Orwell's Animal Farm. This was my first time reading the story, and I loved is. I do admit that Napoleon scared me, but Orwell presents this political fable that is very much relevant today. My favorite character in it is Squealer I do have to say. Just the description of his skipping back and forth and swishing his tail when he argued automatically got me imagining a pig actually doing this. Animal Farm is a good quick read and I suggest it to those who've never gotten the chance to read it.

I am now moving on to Pudd'nhead Wilson. My dad has always claimed that it is not only one of his favorite works by Mark Twain but one of his all time favorite books. I remember trying to read it once when I was younger, but I don't think I fully appreciated books that didn't involve some type of fantasy. Now I am older and my taste in books have greatly changed so I'm giving Puddn'head another chance.

This weekend for the Super Bowl I'll be watching it at Captain America's, looking forward to that. Who'd of thought I'd be staying up all night just to watch the super bowl? Cork is just grand; it rained quite hard today, but I invested in a 6 euro Penney's umbrella and it kept me much more dry than my old 4 euro Penney's umbrella.

A Not-So-Typical Study Abroad Experience

Please excuse me everyone for my long absence, but I have been through quite the adventure since November. I went through pretty much my own person hell for about two weeks and I will indeed give every detail.

The beginning of this story begins with my trip to Edinburgh. I had started to feel a little ill before taking off for that trip, but nothing serious, my glands were very swollen so I just figured it was the beginning of a cold. I Get up Friday morning to catch the bus to the airport. When passing a police officer directing traffic, not allowing cars to go down the road past the college, I did not suspect a thing. As I near Western Road (where the stop is) all I see is water, the street was 3 feet underwater. I backtrack and rush myself to get to city center to again try and catch the bus. Every one of my routes was blocked due to officers telling me there is no chance of getting near the river. I somehow make it to the other side of the river, (Cork City Center is actually an island) I see that the city is too under water.

The story behind the flooding (I discovered after coming home from my trip) was due to the release of the dam over night. If the dam was released any later though, the dam would have broke, and all of Cork would be under water. Everything near the river was damaged. UCC suffered a lot of damage, enough to close school for a week. Half the city was left without running water (including myself but more to that to come).

So while in Edinburgh my friends and I discover the news that school is canceled for a week, and we were all happy. In Edinburgh however, I started to get a little sicker. I was totally drained of all energy that weekend, lost my appetite, had the chills and fevers, and almost fainted in the bathroom of my hostel the morning I was leaving.

As happy as I was to head back to Cork (my hostel in Edinburgh was disgusting), what was awaiting me was even worse. My apartment was one of the buildings that had lost its water (the reserve center was 20ft underwater after the flood). It happened on Friday, so I was lucky to get some showering in over the weekend. My roommates brother did fortunately have running water at his house down the road, so we went to his place a couple times to shower.

This was the week of Thanksgiving, just to give you a time stamp. That whole week I was feeling miserable, and my glands were still extremely swollen and very tender. I decided to go to the health center just to find out what it was. My dad thought it was probably the flu, that is what the doctor figured it was too, but she took some blood tests to make sure it wasn't mono.

I went to my friends on Thanksgiving, this is when I noticed that my energy was completely zapped. She is about a ten minute walk from my apartment, and I hardly made it home when I finished my meal. (She was also the one to tell me before the doctor that I might have mono, and after the weekend she had me convinced that that's what it was).

So after Thanksgiving is probably the worst of my sickness. I couldn't get out of bed, I couldn't eat, I started to get tonsillitis (by monday my throat would be completely white), and I didn't have running water. I was severely dehydrated because I was living off bottle water, often time running out and not being able to get more some friends hours later. I had the week off school because on Monday the doctor confirmed that I had mono. I was miserable, and all I wanted was to go home.

By December 4th, the worst of the symptoms started going away. My apartment had running water again, but I couldn't drink from the tap. I still had no energy, but by the 8th I had enough to make it to Issaquah. I am thankful that I got to go home for Christmas, I just wish the circumstances were better.

In the end I dropped tow classes (a blessing cause I don't know how I would have gotten around to writing the papers and studying for the finals for both of them) and I have three more essays to write that I got extensions for. So I should get to those, but I am still not completely adjusted to the time change, so I decided to start them tomorrow. Wish me good health and luck in his New Year; I wish the same to you.

Not-so-good Week Off

I do have wonderful things to write about my trips to Rome and Edinburgh, but at the moment a much serious matter has arisen to write about.

On Thursday night Cork City was almost completely flooded. Anywhere along the river was from anywhere from 2 to 20 feet under water. My apartment was not harmed, I actually had no clue that any of this had happened. I left Friday morning to catch a bus to the airport since I was leaving for Edinburgh, I ended up having to take a taxi since all the streets that I could catch the bus were flooded. I though this was no big deal until we got a text on Saturday saying that school was canceled until the 30th.

Sunday night I was dreaming about my wonderful and much needed week off when I get a text from my roommate saying we have no running water at my apartment building. I figured it wouldn't be out for that long and went back to sleep.

Monday morning I woke up feeling terrible. I had been sick all week since coming back from Rome but it had mainly just been tiredness, an achy body, and for the past 3-4 days swollen glands. I returned to my apartment on Monday now hit with all the notices that my water won't be back until the 30th. I had a few really bad days of illness and decided to go the doctor. The doctor said I most likely have the flu, and that I'm past the stage for antibiotics. But because my glands are really swollen she took blood work to make sure I don't have something viral in my glands.

All this sickness has kept me from my paper writing, which I desperately need to do. Still no water, all I can say this is not the Thanksgiving I had in mind.