Catch up and Differences

Hey, It is getting late on a Thursday night but that is okay, because I only have one class tomorrow, even though it is at 8:45am (my earliest class). After my voice class, I have the rest of the day, and the weekend to myself. Tomorrow is Culture night in Dublin, so tons of museums and different things around Dublin will be free to do. I still need to go through the brochure and pick out exactly what I want to do.

My flat mates and I just got a new room mate. His name is Aitor and he is studying at the European Business School here in Dublin and he is from Spain. One of my room mates and I took Spanish is school so it has been kindof fun helping eachother to speak and learn new words. I was The Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde the other night and it was incredibly funny and enjoyable to watch. One of the Actresses was sick though so there was someone reading her part which meant she had a script on stage, but it didn't take away from the show.

On Monday a bunch of American Professors are coming in to check out the Theatre Performance program through IES and the Gaiety. One of the people coming will be Geoff Proehl, one of my teachers at The University of Puget Sound. We have already arrange to get coffee with Claire (the other girl from UPS) and I after we do a presentation for the professors. In all of my classes, we have been working on this short new script to create short performances to show the professors when they come. I hope we impress them, and I am fairly sure we will, at least in some ways.

The other day I set out for an hour long jog, and then got lost. It took me 2 hours to find my way back.

Ok, and I wanted to take a minute to talk about some differences between America and Ireland. Here it goes: The pedestrian signals at streets suck here and no one pays attention to them, and if you did it would make a 3o minute walk into a 45 minute walk. All signs are written in both English and Gaelic. Unlike in American, streets are not set up on a grid pattern which means the curve all over the place, and street names can sometimes last for only a block before they change. For example, the street that the IES Study Abroad center is on, is Lower Rathmines, but the street starts out as South St. James and changes to Camden and several other names before it gets to Rathmines. Streets can be called Upper, Middle, and Lower as well. The more northern part of Rathmines is Upper Rathmines and then there is Lower Rathmines. They also don't care if they put Lower or Upper before or after the name of the street. Therefore Upper Rathmines and Rathmines Upper are the same road. Irish people, always underestimate how long it takes you to get from one place to another, five minutes is a common time. If you didn't know it already, different counties have different accents. My Acting teacher is from the County Kerry and sometimes replaces "T"s with "D"s. So in stead of "mother or other" he will say "mudder or udder." He also likes to say "ye" instead of "you" but I have yet to talk to someone else with an accent like him. Irish still call euros "quid" sometimes even though they are no longer on the Irish Pound. A female third wheel is called a "gooseberry" or "Margerie". A slut is called a "slapper." Soccer is still called soccer here because they have a sport called Gaelic Football, which is a cross between soccer and rugby.

I can't think of anymore, but I will write more as I think of them. :)