the end of the weekend

Chris came to Limerick this weekend, well actually Thursday night until this morning. It was really great to be around someone familiar. We cooked (well I cooked and chris ate) and went out to some really great restaurants (and ate too much of course), visited King James's Castle, the Hunt Museum, and walked around Limerick ( I would say to shop, but there wasnt an act of purchasing). Chris got tattooed by Danny Bullman on saturday, so we missed the play I wanted to see: Waiting for Godot, but we did see the Departed (me for the second time). I tried to go riding on Sunday morning, but my taxi didnt show up, causing me to miss my bus out to Adare. We had a giant angry rottweiler hanging outside of our house since saturday, nearly attacking people who came too close, and was only finally removed this morning.
It was a turbulent, trying, and very rewarding weekend.

This is a brief synopsis because I have too much to do and not enough time.

I WOKE UP THIS MORNING....

...to an empty sky and a frost covered ground. It is the first frost of the season. The winter months of Ireland are just starting to begin, but there hardly seemed to be any difference in the weather until just 2 days ago. We went from regularly warm and comfortable days and cool nights to chilly days and cold nights in a short span of time. It seems like fall was skipped over. Ireland apparently seems to get stuck in a rut somewhere between Halloween and Christmas, where the weather quavers between pleasantly sunny to bone-chilling rain (the latter is in short supply now thank god).
The weather is alot like my time spent in Ireland so far: it has it's ups and it has it's downs and they seem to be almost sinusoidal (pardon my science). Some days I get caught up in how amazing it is that I am living in a different country, with a culture that is completly different than mine and it both amazes me and frightens me.

I have alot of work to do, between catching up with my studying for my exam modules and writing essays for my folklore and music courses, as well as lab reports, tutorials, etc, and alot of it needs to be done today.

*sigh*