Happy Sunday! Today, I did absolutely nothing for the first time since I've been here in Ireland. It was really nice to just kind of lounge around in the apartment all day and wear my sweatpants. You have to wear them inside here, cause if you wear them out, people call you a "Knacker." This basically means, "Trailer Trash." People here dress up to go everywhere. I have to put jeans on to walk a half minute to the store just so someone doesn't laugh at me or mock me. It's a hard life.
So, today I "picked" my courses. Remember, I have a two week period to basically bail on any of these courses without even letting the professor know. I like what I have though, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to stick with my courses. I needed 1 art, 1 humanities, a 400 level course and some kind of cultural course. I'm going to get everything I need. Seats don't fill up over here. There's no panic to schedule courses, or courses that have no room left. You always get what you want.
So basically, here is what my schedule looks like:
As you can see, I'm taking 5 classes, plus playing a sport. No classes before 9. Be jealous fellow Nittany lions. All classes like I said, end at 6. Then my sport starts at 6 or 6:30 depending on the day. The courses in color are my core 5 classes, and the times they regularly meet. The boxes in white with red writing are tutorial days that I am thinking about taking. I only take one tutorial for each class. The boxes in white with black writing are tutorials set in stone because it is the only time I can go to them. Also, notice how I have no classes on Friday. Awesome! I did that for traveling purposes.
So here are my course descriptions:
HI4082 Europe: Society and Governance
HIS 2-1-0
War, revolution, restoration 1914-24;
democracy/dictatorship and war 1924-44;
American money and reconstruction;
decadent decade? depression and sobriety;
political mobilisation and violence; authority
restored; conservatism/fascism/Stalinism; the
twenty-year crisis: international relations; the
Nazi new order and total war; Holocaust;
reconstruction and Cold War; 1945: Europe’s
‘zero hour’? re-establishing order: the
European economy and culture; the ‘second
sex’: youth, political protest and cultural revolt;
the post-post war society and state; rebuilding
the European house: Thatcher and Gorbachev;
race, ethnicity, and memory; after the Wall: the
return of ‘Europe’.
GA4105 Irish Folklore 1
LCS 2-2-0
An introduction to Irish folklore with special
reference to the following areas: definitions
of folklore; folklore collection and
classification; verbal arts and minor genres;
story telling and narrative genres; indigenous
and international tale-types in Ireland;
traditional custom and belief including
calendar customs. A case study in folklore
collection based on field recordings made in
county Limerick in 1980.
MU4136/MD4022 Irish Traditional Music, Song and
Dance
Regional styles in instrumental and vocal tradition;
Irish song tradition - repertoire and style; tradition
and change in the music of the Irish harp; traditional
music and society in contemporary Ireland.
Practical instruction in traditional music, dance, and
/ or song performance. This module will be taught
as a beginner’s module for students attending in
Spring semester only.
SO4016/4096 Issues in Contemporary Irish
Society*
SOC 2-1-0
Power, control and legitimacy in Irish Society;
social differentiation, exclusion and
marginalisation; social control and social conflict;
ideology-dominant and submerged discourses;
the nature and reality of consent and resistance.
PO4015 Government and Politics of the EU
PPA 2-1-0
Examines the development of the European
Union as a political system from the aftermath
of the second World War onwards; the
institutional system of the EU including decisionmaking
procedures; the policies of the EU and
their effects on member states; the ongoing
debate on institutional reform and the question
of a European Constitution.
A few politics and Irish culture courses. It should be fun. And the two European politics courses will probably just be a refresher from the stuff I did sophomore year. I'll have European Society and Government with Pierre and Jeremie, so I'm excited about that, and I'll have Irish Folklore and music with the Penn State girls! It should be a fun semester!
Also, if you want to find out more about the frisbee team I'm joining, just follow this link to their page. It's great to actually see an organized frisbee team that plays other schools!
http://ul-ultimate.110mb.com/main.php
Tonight, around 5, Pierre and Jeremie came back to the house bearing gifts! Ya see, I forgot to pack a towel. So, I've been drying off with t-shirts after I take a shower. It's terrible, because they get soaked immediately and the bathroom is probably the coldest place in the house. It's all concrete and tile, and the heater is broken. So I've been freezing. Earlier today I asked Jeremie if he had one, and he said yes, and he would wash them for me tonight. What a great guy! But, upon their return, Pierre brings me back a towel! Haha, he told me, "I heard about your troubles. I had an extra. Don not worry about it." What great friends! I'm sure Pierre won't forget about the gesture though, and I won't either. The towel has Pierre emroiderd in cursive across the top! Haha.
So after giving me a towel, the two invited me for a drink upstairs. We sat around the kitchen table and drank Kilkenny Ale. Verrrry thick, but good nonetheless. We chatted about our schedules and Jeremie got out Nutella and bread. I have never had a Nutella sandwich before, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Nutella on white bread is amazing. Probably gonna be my new snack from now on. So I had a beer and a Nutella sandwich for "dinner" as the two of them joke. They find it so funny that we eat between 5 and 6 in the states. They can't believe it.
As we talked we got on the topic of school and research. They told me that in France, they use Wikipedia for everything. Literally every citation within a paper is Wikipedia. I was floored. I told them that in the States, it isn't a legitimate source, and we can't use it. They told me in France, they don't care. They can also use Google as a legitimate source too. I then told them that in America, we have the term, "Google that shit", whenever someone cannot provide us with an answer to a question, or when two people are having an argument about something. Hopefully it sticks with them!
I found it interesting that they've never heard of Gatorade. Not very important, but I just thought it was crazy.
Tonight we went to the Stables and had a pint. They played the Colts and Jets game on a projector screen. It was kinda blurry but it was still football! It was great. We ordered Domino's to the bar and then ate there. It was a fun evening.
Now, all the Irish kids are returning to campus now. It's gotten so much louder. It's literally like a Friday or Saturday night at State College here right now. Music blaring, someone has a megaphone, and I walked by 4 guys sitting on a couch outside drinking beer. I'm really shocked at how immature the majority of kids living around me are though. If you stood outside the dorms at an American college and shouted, "MARCO" on the top of your lungs for a good 15 minutes, someone would yell at you or tell you to shut up. You would be deemed immature. My friends would probably say, "You were the man in highschool." Thing is, here, they'd take that as a compliment. It's cool to be loud and immature, yelling "MARCO" for 15 minutes in the courtyard. Like some girl has been doing for the last 15 minutes. Not like this in the US at all. Very annoying. I'm now listening to some kid yell at this girl (in joking) from 2 apartment complexes down. I know it gets crazy when everyone returns after break, but these people would get a verbal ass kicking if they went to Penn State and yelled the way they are. I'm tempted to walk out and say, "I remember my first time returning to college after a long break."
The culture over here is just so different. Even the biggest party animals in the states know when it's time to study. Over here, not the case. They take pride in slacking off. It's like their thing. Classes start tomorrow and everyone is flipping out. As I walked home tonight, there was a girl walking toward me in a dress holding a cocktail in her hand. A car comes slowly by us and a guy yells out of his car, "I'm gonna rape you!!!! Tonight you're getting raped!" And then they proceed on. I was shocked. Like in the US, you don't joke about that. You don't just tell a girl you're going to rape her. And the girl didn't even look or flynch. Like it happens all the time. Just blows my mind.
So I guess I am going to get ready for bed because I have to wake up early tomorrow so I can have extra time to find my classes. Ugh, school.
Alright, take care everyone.
Hopefully you don't have to fall asleep to the sound of a guy yelling "Oi, Oi, Oi, Oi!" over a megaphone tonight.
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