Another beautiful day. . .

The sun was shining, I was trying desperately to stay out of it. . .with only some success! I really don't want to jinx the weather by buying sunscreen, but I can't avoid the sun forever!

Today was a great day. I sat in on four initial class lectures and decided to go with my original class choices of 'Representing Ireland in Literature and Film' and 'Modern Irish Society.' I met Kate, a grad student at UW Madison studying Medieval literature, and we got along great. She, Berit, and I have decided that we are the outcasts (jokingly) because we aren't here with a big group from a US college. Actually, we found out there are only 4 people in the program who aren't from the US - Berit, two Italians, and one Japanese girl. We are going to seek them out and invite them to hang with us since they don't have a group either! But truly, we are getting along great. We are all in the lit class, and Berit is with me in Society while Kate is taking Gaelic Literature (which I sat in on today -- very fast paced!) We are also in the same traveling group, so have all of our trips together. We have also made a bunch of plans to go to different things, especially theater events. We're going to She Stoops to Conquer, a play being put on by NUI's drama society, on Friday. While this will be great, there's unfortunately a ton of stuff going on the first week of the Galway Arts Festival that we want to do, and we have our papers for all of our classes due that week. Our goal is to get them done the weekend before! Anyway, after our lectures, we bought our books and went to our opening reception this afternoon -- very nicely done at the College Bar. We sat outside right by the river and ate and drank in the sun. . .could it get any better?

I don't have anything due tomorrow, but I do have some reading due Friday to get started on. Nothing seems like it will be too much, but they are very focused on interdisciplinary here -- not to be confused with multidisciplinary -- the goal is to find where the many subjects intersect. We are allowed and encouraged to sit in on lectures from other classes when we want to, which is cool.

Sorry no pics today -- tomorrow I don't have class until 11:30, so I may hit the gym in the morning. After class, Kate and I (and hopefully Berit) plan to walk the city a bit and return for a film showing at 4:00. I'm looking forward to another full day!