French Lessons

Sorry that it's been a while, but I've been a bit busy the past couple of days. Today is my day to relax and veg, so I shall now try to bring you all up to date.

Let's see, Friday morning I had a couple of classes - my two math ones to be exact. They both went fine. I had about an hour in between the two, and rather than walking all the way to Elm's village and back, I decided to go to the little coffee shop in the SU. I ordered some peppermint tea and worked on the problem for my Mathematical Investigations class. I didn't really make any progress after the hour was up, though. :( Thankfully, my friend Arne - who is in the class with me - and I stayed after in order to talk to the professor. We were both completely stuck. He worked through some of it with us, and got us past that initial barrier we couldn't surpass. That was so, so, so helpful!!

That afternoon, Jen and I had French lessons with Simon, one of the guys from France. It was really fun, but also very hard. The mechanics I can understand alright, but it's the pronunciation that gets me. Although, I did find out from Simon that actually, English/American accents in French are considered to be, as he put it, "sexy." Haha! He said it was cute. That blew me away because I had always been under the impression that not being able to speak their language perfectly would get you kicked out, so to speak. I'm learning that a lot of those things that I had formerly been led to believe are not actually true, which is very comforting. :)

The three of us pretty much just hung out the rest of the afternoon. We watched John Tucker Must Die, followed by one of Simon's favorite movies, and then some stuff online, mostly Flight of the Conchords, which I had not been previously acquainted with. It was a fun night!

The next morning we walked to the bus station downtown to take the 9:00 bus to Dublin. On the bus, I was ooh-ing and ah-ing over the scenery outside. It was a double-decker bus, and we were on the 2nd level, so we had a good view of the countryside. I kept trying to get some photos of sheep, but I was never quick enough. By the time I realized we were passing some, and got my camera out and on, we had driven past them already. I like the sheep, though! I slept for a bit of the ride.

Here are some images of my first double-decker busride:



The "Emerge Icy Exit" sign. I thought it was funny.



Pretty house



Pretty sky



Melissa and I on the bus.


Laurent and Iris were sitting in front of us.



Beautiful countryside
I had to take a picture of the sun shining, as it is such a rare occurrence in Northern Ireland. hehe



Once we arrived in Dublin, our group was so large that we realized we needed to split up into smaller ones. Several people, including myself, were very hungry, so we set off in search of some food. Even then, we split in two because some people wanted to go to a restaurant for fish and chips while others wanted Burger King. I went with the Burger King group. I know, I know, not very authentic, but we were in Euro-country now, so everything was even more expensive for me. I still spent a great deal of money throughout the whole day, but I tried cutting corners wherever I could, and at lunch, this came in the form of American fast food. It was cute, though, because Christelle and Valerie had never been to Burger King, and Matthieu loved it and wanted to go again. (All three of them are from Belgium, where they don't have Burger King).


This huge spire thing in downtown Dublin. It was so incredibly tall. I was walking next to Baptiste, one of the French guys, and he said he had a challenge for me. Apparently, I was supposed to climb to the top and hang a huge American flag there. I told I would, but that I had forgotten my gargantuan flag at home that day. Maybe later. Haha!

We noticed that the spire leaned quite a bit near the top. Baptiste said it must have been made by a French arhitect. Lol!!

Maeva, Julia, and I in Dublin. (They are the two French girls I have mentioned a few times. I like them a lot!)

We went to a money exchange place so that I could turn my American dollars into Euros. Then we headed off to a tourist information center so as to obtain a map of Dublin. I found a magnet there that I simply could not pass up. It says "Rush Hour in Ireland" and has a picture of a guy herding sheep down the road. I love it!

We met back up with some people at Trinity College Dublin, where we all took many, many photos. I took a video of a pigeon, too. I thought he was just too cute to not document a small part of his journey.

We passed several street performers throughout the day. It was so cool! In the park, I saw genuine swans for the first time in my life. I cannot believe how amazing they are!! The park itself was also quite wonderful. I just love how everything has such character and history over here. It's so great.

Oh, it was really cold, so I bought a hat. It's blueish green and very cute! :)

Here are some more photos:


Pretty statues


Pretty statue


Clarissa (Germany), Christelle (Belgium), Me, Jen (U.S.), Valerie (Belgium), and Matthieu (Belgium)


Me, Jen, Matthieu.


Me, Jen, Matthieu, again. (There always seem to be multiple cameras to look at)


Christelle and Valerie at Burger King. They are so cute!


Some crazy rugby fans, dressed for the game.






Me, Matthieu, Valerie, Christelle at Trinity College Dublin



Jen, Matthieu, Valerie, Christelle at Trinity College Dublin





















That's the best one I could get of Dublin Castle. At least you can see the outline of it.







I thought this was cute.



Jen and me with our new hats





This is a close-up of the statue below we saw in the park. It came from the U.S.












Psht, yeah my camera didn't really work on this one, and I was too tired to try and adjust it. Just take my word for it, though, this building looked amazing at night!


This is a real guy. It was cool



lSmile, Matthieu!

We went to a pub to watch the Ireland vs. France rugby game. We had many, many French people in our group, plus a few Irish and the several Belgians who rooted for Ireland. I found that I enjoy rugby much, much better than American football. It seems to have all of the excitement of football (and then some) without all the annoying breaks. It takes FOREVER for anything to happen in football, but rugby is much more thrilling! :)
(P.S. Ireland won, much to the chagrine of the French. I am told it was a good game, though).

Some of us went to Pizza Hut after that. I had already had a cold, and after being outside and active all day, I think it was starting to catch up with me. I was fading more and more as time went on. Thankfully, a few others wanted to go home after that, too. There were busrides every hour; Melissa, Jen, a Korean girl named Jisun, and I took the 9:00 one. I am so glad they wanted to go home, too. If I had had to go out to a pub for a few more hours like everyone else wanted to do, I don't know if I would have made it. In fact, we took a cab back to Queen's from the bus station downtown, rather than walk the 30 minutes or so trip on foot. I came back and just crashed. Hopefully I can recouperate enough today to be able to go to classes tomorrow. I was planning on playing some volleyball, as there is what sounds like a league that just kind of plays for fun, but I'm too sick this week. Linda, one of the German girls, invited me to play. It would be really fun, I think. Oh, well. Maybe next week!