Knowing that this was the last week of classes, of college really, until exams in May, I really wanted to anticipate the upcoming vacation. But at the same time I had to freak out about all the things that needed doing before then. I had no classes on Monday, since usually it is just Irish. So I spent the day studying frantically for the Irish exams scheduled for the next two days. To break the monotony a bit, I worked on my essay for Religions, mostly just technical things such as citations.
Tuesday started with the Irish oral exam, followed by work at the computer lab, such as printing the Management group essay and checking into the flights and printing important documents for the entire April vacation. Of course, there were classes too, so that took up a fair chunk of my day. When I attempted to hand in the Management essay, I discovered at about 5 pm they did not accept student work after 1 pm. Frustrating, to say the least, not to mention it put a kink in my plans for the next day because I would now have to get up early to turn it in on time. But to make the day better, I attempted a recipe I had found online, citrus pork and egg noodles, and it was quite delicious. I'm getting better at the cooking. Granted, it always takes me at least twice as long as the recipe says, but at least the food tastes good.
As you already know, I got up early on Wednesday in order to turn in the group essay. That was a bit awkward because the office door was closed and the secretaries gave me a weird look when I peeked inside. Then when I was filling in the cover form, I realized I needed my group members' student numbers...which I actually had no reason to collect until this moment. Luckily we worked it out (meaning they printed out a class roster with all of our numbers on it), the essay was in and I made it to class just fine. At the end of the time, the instructor gave us our marks on the group presentations. My group was commended for having the most technically detailed report. I thought 13 out of 15 marks was quite remarkable for three international students having little to no prior knowledge on the topic, and two non-native English speakers. During the course of the day I managed to wrap up the Religions essay. That evening was the Irish written exam, which was even more intimidating than the oral because a lot of the spellings seem nonsensical. Most of my free-time during the day was committed to figuring out and memorizing the way the letters are usually arranged, such as the fact there are generally two vowels next to each and the second is the one which is pronounced. Then the very peak of the storm hit that night with a message saying Grandma was in the hospital with seizures. Turned out they were "side effects" (not exactly, but similar) of the stroke she had had last year. Everything seems to be ok now, but at the time, I was really worried.
The eye of the storm was definitely Thursday. I had finished everything except turning in my Religions essay, which I did in the morning, so I slept in and relaxed the entire day. I spent a lot of it watching Jemma bake things, particularly caramel slice. Definitely on my recipe wish-list. It was amazingly good, and I can't believe no one in America has ever made it before. At least none of the Americans I know here have ever had it. We had a movie party at a friend's house that evening. He picked us up from our apartment, we being heavily laden with goodies, i.e. caramel slice and cookies. Halfway to picking up another friend, Jocelyn realized we had forgotten the movie we promised to bring, so we had to go back and get it. While we were waiting for her to return, our host, henceforth Muccy, got a call from a friend saying he was already at the house and from the pizza guy saying he couldn't find the house. By the time we had the movie and picked up our friend, Muccy was late to his own movie party. He dropped us off and had to go find the lost pizza guy. There were so many desserts there, I'm surprised we didn't all explode. At some point during the night both fudge and chocolate covered strawberries appeared, in addition to our two kinds of cookies and caramel slice, and chocolate coated cereal crunch things. The movies were good. One, "In the Name of the Father" was based on true events during "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. The second, "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert" was one of the strangest movies I've ever seen. Like...crazier than "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". I may have lost a few brain cells during the course of the movie. This one was set in Australia and followed three transvestites on their journey. I won't complain about seeing it, because I can now pronounce judgement if someone were to ask my opinion of it. Not likely. It's not particularly well-known. So we got back kind of late, since we started the party late and watched two movies. It must have been close to one. I didn't feel much like sleeping, so instead I decided to pack for the vacation. Which brings us to the resurgence of the storm that began the next day with the excitement that comes with spending two weeks as tourists in other countries.
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