Wowsers

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What a week. I don't even know where to start. I've been meeting a bunch of people in my classes from all over the world. In my international business class it's almost 50/50 Irish 3rd years and international students, including representatives from all over europe and the U.S. My teachers have worked for Russian and Japanese Business Schools, Irish Businesses, and even the United Nations. Each class seems like on its own it will be trying, to say the least, as all of them culminate in open-ended case study presentations and research projects- put together I'm beginning to realize that I won't be getting out much towards the end of November. At the same time, it really is quite shocking how differently they approach school here. In essence you have zero expectations until the very end of the course, a system I actually am likely to perform better in than at home. In either case, it was a great week because I found all of my courses interesting except for the "study abroad irish seminar" which was a godawful 3-hour lecture led by a wench with no sense of humor. My whole view of globalization was changed in less than an hour of my class, and international business is equally fascinating from a more practical/operative point of view. Business Law and Entrepreneurial management both look equally promising, but weren't as front-loaded with information. Either way, this semester is going to be excellent academically. This is in no small part due to my classes all being "small group" aka less than 30 people, however. Some others have been troubled by the 30+ person classrooms.

On another note, I'm absolutely dying to play disc. I've been talking to a few of the UCD team members, and it turns out one of them- a guy named Tony Laffan- was in Baltimore playing with my summer league this year! Small world, right? Either way, Nick and I are going to sign up for the team at the club fair this week, but i still have to wait til next week to play. I must say that my desire to play is starting to be all-consuming, hehe. We'll see- the jury is out on the team, but i'm still betting on a fun semester once we finally get rolling.

On to the main event though! We spent this past weekend in Monaghan, which is up in a little section of the republic of Ireland that juts into Northern Ireland. Literally we were surrounded on 3 sides by Northern Ireland, which turns out to mean absolutely nothing because there is no identifiable border and you can cross it at will. We were randomly assigned host families from the area, which is incredibly rural. Dan Hislop was my partner in crime for the weekend- he's a guy from Boston who goes to JHU in my beautiful hometown of bal-tee-more. We were hosted by a single mom named Gronah Colton, who had 2 daughters and was fiercely independent of men in her life. Kelly, who was 10 and pretty awesome while she was there(her dad had her saturday) and Katie, who was 5 and essentially a walking demon- more on that later. On top of this, though, she was hosting 5 high schoolers in her house from all over the place. 4 were girls from Canada, Germany(2), and Venezuela, and one was a dude from mexico. It was really refreshing, actually, to have all those 16-17 year olds around to talk with and hang out with since katie was a bit of a monster. The girls were also staggeringly beautiful 16 year olds, so dan and I were chuckling all weekend about how much we'd like to meet them again in about 4 years. In either case, the house we were staying in was a beautiful 2-story house set in the rolling countryside of ireland. It was really interesting because the level of opulence on display in Gronah's house and all of her siblings houses was truly dumbfounding, considering it was out in the middle of nowhere, Ireland. It really says something about the financial influx in the past few years here. Anyway, the students were all very nice and incredibly diverse in interests, literally all walks of life were represented in those four. I rail on katie for the pure reason that she is a highly energetic young girl who has never been punished or reprimanded in her life. She does what she wants, breaks what she wants, and goes where she wants(even staggering into Dan's private bathroom once while he was in the shower). This particularly detached parenting philosophy may work with a girl like kelly, who seemed born with a certain sense of what is right and wrong- but is decidedly ineffective with a wild girl like katie. Apparently this lack of reprimand is extraordinarily common in Ireland these days, purportedly because the current generation had very authoritarian parents. It's an indulgent philosophy that seems strange to an outsider like me.

In either case, we showed up friday and met everyone, then went for a 4 hour walk in the countryside because two other girls(one from italy and one from germany) needed to be walked home, since no one knows what lurks in the bushes at night. It was fun, though we popped into a few pubs on the way back and it was pretty funny, as everyone looked at us like we were wearing big red noses and wigs. We also had a crazy experience with irish drunk driving- just as we were passing the statistics sign for monaghan county that said 100 people had died from drunk driving so far this year(which is insane, considering how small it was) some guy floored it by us, slammed on his brakes and tore into a 180- then did the same thing back and forth four or five times. We decided "operation human shield" was in order, and dan and I ran interference while the girls hustled around a corner of a near building as the spectacle continued. He eventually drove off, and we continued our walk, only to find him tearing around a corner about a mile later, nearly nailing us once more. Needless to say, that was more than enough excitement for our taste, and we went to sleep immediately upon returning. It was just really terrifying that people get wasted and drive around so much, because the roads are so much smaller and much more technical in terms of maneuvering.
Saturday was cooler, despite being punched in the nose at 7am by Katie who had invaded my room, because we got kidnapped by the Grandma of the family(we knew her as nothing other than grandma), then went across the border to a saturday Market, which was AWESOME. Instead of going to malls, everyone spends their saturdays at the market, bargaining for various goods and running into all their friends- chatting about the week. They had great food, and lots of high-quality wares available for incredibly low prices. Literally you could do all of your shopping there, including food, and never bother with markets or supermarkets except for things like dairy. It was a blast, and we got some great memory foam pillows for basically nothing, since the ones at school are crappy and uncomfortable. I'm looking forward to trying that out tonight 😉.
That afternoon we went around and met grannies three other kids- two daughters and a son, the latter of whom lived right next door to Gronah. He was busy building an enclosure for his Akitas, Huskies and Malamutes that he breeds. It was pretty neat, because the malamutes were some of the nicest dogs i've ever met, being very affectionate even after meeting me for barely a few minutes. After meeting the dogs, we wandered around for the afternoon with his sons who were totally obsessed with professional wrestling. We wandered out into the hills and took some pictures, which in and of itself was stunning. It really is just a whole different shade of green that doesn't exist in the states. The constantly wet climate promotes more chlorophyll somehow, and it makes for truly breathtaking contrast with the skyline, particularly when you can see 50 miles from the top of a hill. The only comparable landscape I can remember would have been somewhere in the northwest, and probably dominated by trees instead of hilly grasslands. After, we went down to "play" wrestling on the trampoline in our backyard. We probably bodyslammed and powerbombed those kids a thousand times, because they couldn't get enough of being tossed around like rag dolls by the big americans. Either way, I eventually got them to play a game of 3 on 3 ultimate frisbee with us, which was absolutely a blast after I taught them how to throw properly. That evening, we went out and I ended up wandering around the various pubs of monaghan, talking to locals and enjoying the scenery. Sunday wasn't much, as we just killed time until the bus, though MJ, Anya, Victoria, and Luisa and Ed(the students) were very sad to see us go. It was interesting to see them in the process of adapting to a rural environment, all having come from major metropolitan areas. In all it was good fun.


Anyway, it's very nice to be back in the apartment watching the Ravens dominate the Raiders. I'm really enjoying settling in, though my routine probably won't be established until I get a chance to work Ultimate into my schedule. Whatever the case, I look forward to signing up for frisbee tomorrow and getting my schedule there, plus I face the troublesome question of where to go next weekend- as we have a weekend to kill and expect good weather... so we might as well go somewhere in Ireland. Maybe Donegal or the Dingle peninsula? Perhaps Kinsale? I'm sort of leaning towards Kinsale because our Landlord(who is also an arcadia employee) is from there and he recommended it highly, so it would be fun to go down there so we have something additional to chat about next time he's here. He's currently doing his dissertation on decision-making processes in the E.U., which made for really neat conversation last time we had a meal with all the program members.

-EDIT-
I've set up another place for my pictures! Check http://picasaweb.google.com/tom.pettit for all the ones I like so far from my trip.
-EDIT-

Slainte,
-TP

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Photos

Centaurs
Dan and I were suddenly viewed as centaurs- beasts to be ridden by the young irish kids- upon their discovering us living down the hill.