During Haley’s stay we strolled along the Liffey, exploring and looking for The Winding Stair coffee shop after being tipped off by a friend that it’s a great place to look out over the river and read. Led by yours truly, we traipsed all over, walking nearly as far west as Phoenix Park and way more north than most Dubliners would advise. Eventually, after giving up and giving in to the cold, we headed back toward city center, when, after only walking for about five minutes more, we spotted the sneaky café, hiding in plain sight. We ventured in and though it was closed for a break between lunch and dinner, we peeked around and made sure to put it on our list of places to return to. The view was pretty magnificent.
And as of last week, I am proud to announce the successful implementation of Claire & Mary’s Plan for Making Friends V2.0. On Thursday, after dinner at my apartment—chicken francaise sans dance—we charged across campus to attend a debate held by Trinity’s 300-year-old Philosophical Society. Unfortunately, as for the topic, it wasn’t too riveting; the junior debaters argued over the possibility of life after death, a topic, you might point out, that is difficult to prove either way without expert witnesses (of which, disappointingly, there were none). Regardless, laughs were had, and post-debate at the generous wine reception (the one they advertise relentlessly each week in the hopes of luring a greater audience), we were smiley and successful in meeting real live Irish students.
One of them, a friend from my Literary Childhoods class, kept us entertained for quite a while, the highlight of our conversation probably being his equation of Trinity’s file keeping system with that featured in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy…papers must be “signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, queried, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months, recycled…”—you get the point. In all honesty, I am still somewhat confused by how the college is organized, but I remain entirely fascinated by this elusive “administration” professors and students rant about whenever anything goes wrong. Claire and I share a vision of some sort of little man behind the curtain à la The Wizard of Oz. I’ll keep you posted on what we found out.
In other news, if you haven’t yet read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, you should. I know it sounds like something your pre-teen sister would read and weep about, but it is a touching story written unconventionally as a compilation of letters among several people, namely a young woman writer in London and the members of the society for which the book is named. It takes place in Guernsey, which is located in the Channel Islands just south of England, during and after WWII. The book broke my heart in a sappy, girly way, and luckily I was able to bring Claire down with me after convincing her to read it too. That being said, we’re planning a weekend trip to Guernsey to explore the island ourselves!
The next month is destined to be full of adventure as not only do I expect several beloved visitors, Sessie Burns and I are setting off for the Canary Islands on February 28th. I expect a week full of sunshine and reading and I plan to pack little more than a bathing suit and some books…and well, loads of sunscreen—let’s be realistic, right? We’ll be away for the first week of March, which is Trinity’s Hilary Term reading week…whatever that means. (Just kidding, Mom.) On my list of things to do (or else), is read Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. For those of you unfamiliar with this long-winded work, it’s one of those books you might use to flatten something or hold down a massive pile of papers. Needless to say, I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised by it.
Classes this term are shaping up to be pretty alright. My two favorites are The Irish Welfare State, which is all about the birth of social policies in Ireland dating back to the Great Potato Famine; and my Subcultures, The Body and Gender class. In the latter, we just read an article from the early 1960s called, “Becoming a Marihuana User,” complete with excerpted dialogues from hippies who said things like, “I came on like I had turned on [smoked marihuana] many times before, you know. I didn’t want to seem like a punk to this cat.” You’ve got to love it. Anyway, on the other end of the spectrum, I nearly lost consciousness in my Supernatural Literature class today, but seeing as I was definitely in the minority and could not be roused by talk of spinning heads or cannibals, I’ll take the blame.
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