Thursday, February 19, 2009

Classes are halfway over!

As time goes on, I find that more and more activities get planned every night of the week. I haven't just "stayed home" at all this week. On Monday, Kristina and I made burgers at her new apartment after my classes were over. Neither of her two roommates were in yet, so we had the place to ourselves. She had spent the day canvassing a part of Cork we hadn't seen yet, as well as checking out all the details of her new place. She seems really happy and excited to have a different place to live in now.

Tuesday evening, I attended UCC's choir rehearsal for the first time. I went with Susan, and it was a lot of fun, if somewhat unlike any other choir rehearsal I'd ever attended. The laidback Irish attitude extends to their musicmaking, it seems, and between that and the fact that our director (Tom) is only a student himself, the rehearsal was a bit scattered and informal. I enjoy Tom's directing, though. He's a nerd, but very outgoing and loud; it's clear all the choir members love him. We had a big discussion midway through the evening about the proper way to pronounce the word Renaissance. Europeans tend to put the accent on the second syllable (Ren-NAY-saunce), but the way the music was written forced an American pronunciation (REN-na-saunce), much to the indignation of the many native Irish in the room. Overall, it was a lot of fun - and I was pleased to see everyone again the next night...

...because on Wednesday, the choir hosted a showing and sing-along of Mamma Mia! in the basement of the library. (The basement of the library isn't really a basement. And it doesn't strictly attach to the library. I mean, there are about 6 classrooms, bathrooms, and 2 computer labs down there, and you can't access it from the library. At all. Needless to say, this confused me a lot the first week I was here, and I was told to go to Boole Basement, and going downstairs in the library didn't get me there.) Anyway, the sing-along was an absolute blast. There must have been 60 or 70 of us in the room, and every girl was singing at the top of her voice with the helpful follow-the-bouncing-ball-type captioning. Tom even joined in, loudly, a time or two. It was brilliant. Afterwards, Susan, Chris, Franzi, and I went to the Thirsty, a local pub. Chris is an Asian kid from New Jersey, who is somewhat socially oblivious but a great guy nonetheless; and Franzi is an exchange student from Germany who speaks excellent English and is very nice. Susan struck up a conversation with one of the musicians there, as well, so a good time was had by all.

Tonight, Kristina and I went to another Comedy Club show, this time at the Old College Bar. It was quite a small crowd; there were only perhaps twenty of us in the audience. The main comedian was great - he also spotted Kristina and me right away, and proceeded to make as much of his routine about America as he could! He was excellent and had us laughing the whole time. We enjoyed ourselves. :)

My computer course is finally underway. It's online, and the program is neat and organized. Despite the fact that it could safely be used to instruct someone who's been living in the Stone Age and has an IQ of 72, I'm actually enjoying going through the neat little lesson plans - which, due to the test date being next Wednesday, I will spend much of my weekend doing.

Hope all is well with ye - tog bog e!

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