Called on account of music

So it's Rag week here at UCC, which quite honestly meant very little to me on Monday. But...now it's Saturday. I've seen hordes of Irish kids going out on a Thursday dressed like it's Halloween. I've seen a mechanical bull bucking students off in the middle of the Quad. I've had a class end early on account of the loud music, cheering, and fire alarms sounding right outside the window. There was also a giant pig parked in front of and sometimes inside of the O'Rahilly building all week. Turns out that Rag stands for Raise and Give. All of the different clubs work to raise money for different charities, and because we're in Ireland the pubs donate part of their Rag week profits to charity. It's basically one big competition to raise the most money and have fun doing it. Classes are poorly attended, campus feels like a big carnival all week, and needless to say the professors seem to wish Rag week would die a terrible and painful death. A little less then half of us showed up for government on Tuesday and our professor walked in and said "Wow, big group, everyone fully recovered? Anyone still drunk? Why so many? Did someone tell you lot I was giving a surprise exam?" It was fun, it was an experience, and I'm glad we were here for it.

For some other stuff...we all realized going into this that we weren't going to see our families for 5 months. And I was okay with that...until I started thinking about birthdays, Easter, that kind of stuff. Who makes sure your birthday is special if Mom's not there to do it?! And when was the last time I DIDN'T do a birthday dinner with my friends?! One of the other girls here from the U of I turned 22 this week, her golden birthday, and I apparently became a mom overnight. I made sure her apartment door looked pretty when she got up (see picture above) and tried my hand at baking in this country. Turns out we don't have measuring cups in our apartment...so I eyeballed everything, and somehow managed to make a birthday cake that everyone swears was great. We had a mini version of a birthday party that was a lot of fun :-) Beth says she felt really special, which is good. Because even if we're thousands of miles from our family and friends our birthdays should still be special. Like I said, I apparently became a mom over night.

One last thing, can we get a date check? I've been here for almost a month already...and it's going SO fast. Study abroad is such a strange experience...all of the sudden I've got a crazy new group of friends (and you go through so much, in such a short amount of time, that you get really close really quickly). I'm feeling at home in a city I'd never seen a month ago. I'm getting the hang of classes at a brand new school. But at the same time you never really quite forget what you're missing at home. For instance it feels really weird that all of my college friends went back to Iowa City this week and started classes, and I wasn't there. I find myself getting homesick for some things...but I love it here too. Just an odd feeling all around.