Taking time to slow down

As some of you may have noticed, most of my posts are centered around my weekend travels. You've heard a lot about the places I visit, but I think enough time has passed that I actually have something to tell about my daily life in Cork. The most noticeable thing about my daily life is that it's much slower than my life has been in a long time. At most, I have 4 hours of class per day, and I don't have classes at all on Fridays :) While this is a nice academic break, it leaves a lot of free time to deal with. You wouldn't think that I'd feel like I have to "deal with" free time at all, but it adds up. So to fill my time, I've taken to actually working out on a regular basis (woah), reading (duh), and sewing. It's going to be quite the shock to come back next semester and be super busy as usual.

As for academics themselves, I'm really liking my classes :) The prize for my favorite class is a tie between Step Dancing and Modern Irish, which is the gaelic language. Step Dancing is a class of 7 girls taught by a young woman named Margaret. It's really nice to dance again and I love learning all the new steps. The Irish language is really weird. So many odd spellings that don't go with the pronunciation whatsoever and rules that I'm only starting to be introduced to. But I really like learning everyday phrases and we're getting to the point where I feel like I actually know a little. Nowhere near being able to converse, but I overheard someone on campus talking in Gaelic and I understood a phrase that she used. I was so excited :) I'm also learning Tin Whistle, with a new song each week. We've been doing some ornamentation, but our rudimentary playing is never as cool-sounding as our teacher's. Admittedly she's the teacher, but I hope we learn more ornamentation soon. My other classes, Intro to Irish music and Intro to Anglo Irish Lit are lecture classes with good information, but lectures are never going to be my thing, so they're not my favorite. Finally, I'm starting my Geology class this week. We had one lecture last week and it turns out that there's a field trip at the end of the semester as part of our assessment. We'll be going out to the countryside near Antrim to do geological stuff...not really sure what yet. It might conflict with my plans to visit Italy, but cross your fingers that I'm scheduled for the other group!

Now some of you may be wondering about the nightlife here. Pubs are frequented all nights of the week and the busiest nights for college kids are tuesday and thursday. Yep, most students go home on the weekends so they party during the week. As for me, I usually go out a few nights a week and get a pint at whatever pub we've chosen for the night. My favorite is still the cider, but I'm learning to like some of the beer. I still have a ways to go until I like Guinness though. They do have clubs that fill up on the busy nights, but that's not my style and the way the girls dress for those clubs is definitely not my style. I much prefer a pint and some live music.

Have I left anything out? I think that gives a bit of an insight into my everyday life here. We did just discover a map with lots of fun looking stuff to do during the day, so we'll probably be checking those out in the next few weeks. I'll let you know if we find anything cool :)