Orientation ad nauseum

One week ago today was the day-long orientation program for visiting students. About 3/4 of them were undergraduates visiting from the USA. True to "Irish Time," we started about quarter after the supposed starting time of 9am. This was the first day for the campus to be open, and they hadn't turned on the heat yet. So there were about 400 of us huddled together in the gym trying to understand Irish accents, keep from shivering, and keep from falling asleep. In a sense it was a good combination because shivering staves off sleep.

I think the highlight of the day, and I am backed up on this choice by the fact that the group next to me stopped playing hangman for a bit, was the Religious Provision of the program. That's right, if you were wondering where the Catholic, Methodist, Baptist or Jewish services, we'll tell you. Not only that, we've invited each to speak to you. I'm thinking that wouldn't fly in the USA, but that's just me.

The Catholic priest's advice was to fall in love early in the term, because he's found that these things among visiting students last about 8 weeks, and by doing it early you leave yourself plenty of time to recover and still study for exams. Also, he said, don't be cowboys, taking a seige mentality in Ireland; get out and meet the Irish people and interact with them.

When he was done, the Baptist guy, wearing a suit with pink tie and matching pocket square, bounded up to the podium and launched into a boisterous and barely intelligible speech, from which I could only glean the following: falling in love is grand, so do it whenever you can, semester be damned; and, cowboys are smashing because they take charge of life and shoot the heck out of whatever they don't like.

On a more mundane front, over the last 24 hours I was finally able to add minutes to the mobile phone I bought, which in turn enabled me to contact the girl who went on exchange to my school a couple of semesters back. We were able to meet up briefly and she said she's indebted to everyone in the USA because they were so friendly and helpful, therefore I should let her know any way she could help out. So I got that going for me.

Weather today: about 45, windy, light rain, aka "pissy." Same as yesterday. And the day before. And before that. Ad nauseum.