On Edinburgh Castle

Edinburgh castle dominated much of the cityscape, and was very nice. A bit intimidating, really, but great to visit. It was built on the top of an old volcanic protrusion, and the gate is on the eastern side. The main road then wraps its way in a spiral-like fashion and goes through a series of four gates, and finally brings you to the top. The rock that it's built on is, in my opinion, cooler even than the castle, but the combination is incredible. Imagine trying to plan a sneak attack. Inside are several museums, and tours are done (I believe) hourly and free of charge. Admission, however, is a hefty £11. But it's well worth the money, and if you make sure to visit every possible corner like I did, you can spend hours inside and get the most from your money.

On P.S. I Love You

It's a BIG DEAL as it's set in Ireland and I had to listen to the girls in front of me discuss the plotline in depth on the plane ride from Shannon to Edinburgh. For more info, go to the official site. I'll probably see it when I'm back in Ireland just since, heck, I'll be in Ireland and why not?

On Recycling

A friend of theirs is a bartender at one of the pubs downtown, which is how the 3L vodka bottle came to be at our house. Pretty cool, huh?




Only brown glass is recycled here (so no paper, no aluminium, no plastic, no clear glass - basically only beer bottles).

On Crunchy Nut Feast Cereal

"Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Feast Chocolate Curls take the irresistible taste of Crunchy Nut to a new dimension.

"Tantalising every tongue with their ludicrously tasty clusters of oats, wheat and corn, wrapped in sumptuous honey and nuts and combined with delicious milk chocolate curls."

- Kellogg's website

On A Charlie Brown Christmas

We watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" tonight online (we used YouTube here, here, and here - it's in parts). Exams are now done, and I'm letting myself sleep in tomorrow. It's been days since I've woken up after 07.20 and weeks since I've woken up after 08.00. Which wouldn't be so bad except I usually stay up 'til 12 or so. Or so meaning those nights I can't fall asleep until nearly 3. And I finally learned how to say Herzegovina thanks to the efforts of my roommate.

On GMIT

Tomorrow at 14.30 I have my final exam (for oceanography - wish me luck!). Monday's was again at the Galway Race Course, today's was at a theatre not far from here, and tomorrow's will be in the GMIT Sports Arena. GMIT is, I believe, the technical school around here. It's actually quite close, though everyone seems to think it a ways.

On The James Hardiman Library

NUIG has one central library (they also have one for medical and nursing students, I believe, though over with the hospital), the James Hardiman Library. To see what the inside looks like, here are maps of the ground floor, first floor, and second floor (see the "Pure Sciences" area? that's where my books are for botany and oceanography, and that's where I go to study). To see what the exterior looks like (and to give you a feel for just how terribly small the place is), NUIG put up a wannabe-impressive photo of the place here. As it says, "The Library provides 8,500 square metres of space on three floors and contains approximately 1,600 reader places. Collections exceed 620,000 bound volumes with 50% of these on open access shelves." I guess they've never seen Madison's library system. Madison has the 11th largest research collection in North American with over 40 libraries and with, they say,

• More than 7.3 million printed volumes
• 55,000 serial titles
• 6.2 million microforms
• 160 linear feet of manuscripts
• Over 7 million items in other formats, including government documents, maps, musical scores and more

So I guess that's that. Easy to see which I prefer and why. The one thing I like about this library though, is when you're going for easy studying, they have huge windows on every side that are pretty to look out of. My favorite library, Memorial library, is the largest in Wisconsin.

On The Late Late Toy Show

For those of you not in Ireland, you probably missed the Late Late Toy Show. To watch it, go here. Basically, it tells you everything you need to know about the coolest gifts out there. For information on the toys, go here.

On December In Ireland

In December, the average temperature in Galway ranges from 2-8C. There are approximately 24 days with precipitation (so far we've had 7), and on average the city receives 122mm of of rain. Today the sun rose at 08.36 and set at 16.19, giving us 07.43 hours of daylight. For information on traveling to Galway, read Wikitravel's article here. For a forecast of Galway's weather, see here. And finally, for information on holiday programming we're able to watch here, go here.

On The Galway Races

One class down, three to go. The exam was - Ali phrased this perfectly - brutal. It was held at the Galway Racecourse in Killanin Stand. Next week I'm in Millennium Stand. The racecourse is about half an hour by bus from campus, and we sit, well, in the betting rooms and study beside the barstools. My other two exams are at the Black Box and in GMIT's sports hall. There is only one location on campus, the rest we have to pay to get transportation across the city to. The weather has been atrocious lately; it's warm, but it rains on and off and almost constantly. Umbrellas are rarely usable as the wind is so strong one can hardly stand let alone handle an umbrella (fancy flying Mary Poppins style?). So if you by chance think perhaps the day might be nicer than the last or the one before that, and neglect to bring your rainjacket with you to college as I did today, when you walk the fifteen to twenty minutes home, you're guaranteed to be soaked through and through within the first two minutes. In the absence of the white of snow, we have an intense green that blankets everything. The grass is the brightest greenest green I have ever seen grass or just about anything to be. And now for a song, provided by YouTube (don't bother to watch it, it doesn't change) is the song Galway Races done by Luke Kelly.

On December

And when did it become December?? It still feels and looks like October, just with a lot more rain and wind.

And when did it become December??? It still feels and looks like October, just with a lot more rain and wind.

On Exams and Resulting Stress

It's that time of the year. My finals are Wednesday, next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. And things are just about usual with them. My current major stress is stats, though I know I will do fine on that. I'm mostly worried because it's first and I won't do outstandingly, because no matter how hard I try, well, stats just sucks. In a more far-sighted view, oceanography is worst. Because it has the most physics and is the class I like least and am least good at. And I haven't gotten to study for it much because (oh joy), it's my last final and I have three beforehand.

Also though, stats is stressful because I just learned today that (they never announced this or made it apparent at any time, either, and I only learned through one of my housemates) graphing calculators are not allowed. And.. I don't know how to use non-graphing calculators or do the equations out by hand because I've never had to. I tried it out though by guessing and I got it right on my guess! (It's because actually it's very straightforward, I was just worried because everyone had all these long equations memorized.. and yet I figured it out based on logic.. so not sure about that but it DID work for me!).