Aforementioned deadlines: I found out I had a few extra hours for that second paper and luckily I had done a lot of research in advance. Research being riding the Luas for 6 hours. Plenty of time for thinking! Paper one was a bit short, but I turned it in at noon. Paper two was a bit long and had too many photographs, and I turned it in with two minutes to spare. There is nothing like the creativity inspired by a deadline. The only downside was the embarrassingly loud noises my stomach made in the library. I forgot to eat. (Don’t worry, the first thing I did upon getting home was consume the vegetarian equivalent of half a cow!)

According to the Dubliners, tomorrow is ‘Culchie Day’- when all the country people come into town and pay bills and buy Christmas presents. Perhaps this is the Irish equivalent of Black Friday? All the universities have canceled class and are open to the public. And NPU is having a Commemorative Event in honor of Brendan Breathnach!

Today I ran into Michael, one of the boys from my architecture project group, on my walk home. Michael is from Donegal, and under normal circumstances I have a hard time understanding hisaccent. Today he had another boy with him from the North. I eventually gathered that the boy was here for the open day, and considering studying either architecture or engineering. I told him that he should go with engineering because the architecture campus is a very long walk away…