The Original Galway Girl Visits! (Week 6: Oct. 5 - Oct. 11)

Greetings avid "Amelia's Adventures" readers! See, I'm back on track with this posting on a Sunday night. I bet everyone is relieved. And though I know that everyone is thrilled that I am blogging at my normal, semi-designated time again, I am sad to disappoint with probably my lamest blog post ever. But, alas, the show must go on. Please, when reading, if you happen to be falling asleep, keep the snores to a minimum volume...I don't want to hear snores erupting from every corner of the world because of this boring post. My apologies in advance. In fact, before I begin, my week was so boring that it is not even worth it to break it down day-by-day...it was that boring. Well, perhaps not boring; rather, just sort of "blah"...a chill week, a week to catch up on sleep, etc.

Although to add to the fun of a monotonous week, I had my first assignment due on Monday (an opinion-based reaction paper for my "Human Sexuality" class), so that actually took up a good 2-3 hour window on Monday. Yay for productivity! Also, I was busy filling out forms and such to send back to Richmond for various things, so yet again, that took up another 2-3 hours on I want to say Tuesday? This week was filled with mundane work, writing papers and filling out forms. Boring, boring!

But one exciting thing that happened was that Monday was the first day of my Irish language class. It was a little bit hard to understand since I registered late since they switched me from class to class because of different openings and schedules. Irish at first really does sound like gibberish. The sentence structure is all whacked out. Like they put the verb before the nouns and adjectives. And the alphabet? It's like Hawaiian, but rougher and with a lot more consonants instead of more vowels. I'm just learning, so maybe that's why it seems odd to me, or maybe just because it is a completely crazy language. Nevertheless, I find it very enjoyable and have already picked up on some of the Irish language that is displayed around Galway.

When I went to basketball training on Tuesday though, it was somewhat of a waste. Like I said last week, the coach told me that if I had been here for a year, I would have been on the "A" Varsity team, but alas, I am not and therefore not really a concern for him. So I think I'll just do the Galway league...though I hope they still give out cool gear. I mean let's face it, why go through the trouble of playing sports if you don't get cool gear?! That's always a big factor in my decision-making: will I get a sweet t-shirt or sweatshirt out of this? I'm always looking to add to my t-shirt collection. I've been eyeing a few gems out and about around Galway, and I'm definitely getting a jersey of some kind before I depart.

Bryeanna and my good friend Mary Colleary, the original Galway Girl (as far as we're concerned), has graced our presence for 10 days! We're thrilled to have her hang with us, because she's practically a local. We've joked with her that since she had an Irish boyfriend, that she had the other side of the Galway experience, whereas we've done more touristy things. Regardless, it has been fun catching up with her and hearing about her adventures when she studied abroad here two years ago. We look forward to more castle hunting and adventuring this next week.

I'm sorry but I'm a little scatter-brained at the moment...I am writing this while booking my trains for traveling around France. I plan to add a little extra special post tomorrow about sports in and out of Ireland. Also, check out The Collegian and thecollegianur.com for a column by me about Oktoberfest, hopefully to be out in the next issue!

That's all for now! Stay tuned for my Collegian pieces and my sports update tomorrow! Hopefully I'll also have learned more Irish so I can start incorporating that into my blogging, though y'all will just think I've gone completely mental over here. Not crazy, just crazy in love with Ireland.

Slán go fóill!

(Bye for now, in English)