And I ask you friend, what's a fella to do*

... if the chance is there and the ocean calls. This week was pretty epic, I swear. But no spoilers, go read the full story!

Monday - Fucking moo

So Monday was pretty uneventful. We were 15mins late from a tutorial that lasts 50mins altogether. Went home, had lunch, went back to have two more classes. After that, Eszter and Vera had krav maga training which inspired me to go swim - so I did. On my way to the swimming pool, two guys came up to me and asked me about some event's venue. Apparently, they tought I was working for the Hub (which is some kind of a helping group for students here, and the first week they were roaming the campus in bright orange coats and helping new students find rooms and buildings). Just because my jacket is orange. Duh. So anyways, I went swimming, which was pretty cool, I managed 3kms and then cycled home. It was already dark and on my way home I almost ran over a kid (around 14 years old) who was hanging out with his friends and he decided it was a good idea to jump in front of me and shout "fucking moo" in my face. I had to ride off the cycling track and onto the road, so that I don't bump into him. This way I almost got hit by a car, while he was laughing his ass off with his friends. I was sooo pissed at that stupid kid I shouted after him and almost turned back and ran him over on purpose this time. It took all my self control not to go back and yell at him for minutes. After hitting him hard with my bike. Idiot jackass.

There are definitely more bikes than places for them...

Tuesday - boring classes

EFL starts to bore me beyond reason. Or it might even be reasonable. This Tuesday we were supposed to talk about (surprise, surprise, childhood memories again). The teacher actually asked what the word 'outsider' meant. I can't believe she hasn't yet realised this is totally not our level. The girl I was supposed to work in pair with downright refused to discuss such boring and easy things. We talked a bit about societies instead (she has also joined archery but she is not a beginner like me so she attends another training) and I got to know she is also a Hufflepuff. Or at least she says she is, tho she is not so much of a HP fan, she just likes Fantastic Beasts and Newt.... On Irish Language, we learned the numbers from 1 to 10. And 0 too, which you pronounce exactly the same way you pronounce /annoyed/. After school, I went shopping and cooked a meal. Chicken breasts are bloody expensive so I think I won't be able to eat meat more than twice a week or so.

Those rare moments when the sun shines, Ireland is breathtaking
(and this is just the campus)

Wednesday - soaked through and got applause!

By now I think I understand why Irish people drink so much tea. The cold and the wind and the rain, that fucking rain! When we cycled to university this morning I got so wet by the heavy rain I felt as if I had just been swimming and not cycling. Especially since my bike has no mudguards. (Since then, it has. But until this Friday, it was even more of a nightmare.) And sitting through a 2 hours long lecture (and then a tutorial) with drying jeans makes you cold, really cold, and also your skin underneath the denim is itching. Which makes concentrating on the subject pretty difficult. I still remember we were talking about "keening" at the lecture though. It is some kind of a sorrowful weeping and shrieking women used to do at funerals. Pretty powerful, in my opinion.
After this lecture, we had an Irish Language class and learned about the alphabet. At the end we got the task to come up with an acronym for those letters that can take a 'h'. These letters are b, c, d, f, g, m, p, s, and t. (For any suggestions, my comment section is open, btw.) My mind decided it was high time to come up with something cool so as soon as I looked at the letters, my acronym was born. I read it out loud and the class seemed to like it, especially the teacher, Billy. He seemed amused, tbh. He laughed, congratulated me and even asked the class to applaude me. (And later during the week, several people came up to me saying that sentence was cool even though I have never spoken a word to them, don't even know who they are.) Now that everyone got so excited really bored, here is my acronym: Be Careful Doing Fucking Gaeilge, Mate. Pronounciation Sucks Terribly! :D
When we finally had a break between classes, we took the bus (a double decker!) into the city to buy some waterproof pants you can wear above your jeans so that we wouldn't get so soaked through again. My money is slipping out of my hands so fast I started to get anxious about it. (Since then, some Erasmus-money arrived to my bank account so I am not in immediate danger of starving to death or having nowhere to live.)
In the afternoon, after another endless and exceedingly boring EFL class (still about childhood memories! I started making jokes about the class and that seems to amuse both the others around me and me enough not to die of boredom...), we went to a Language Exchange event which sucked even more than Irish pronounciation. It was a bit chaotic and nobody wanted to learn Hungarian, of course, but you could only teach your native language, which is ridiculous. So we found no language partners and left after half an hour. Huge disappointment, I was really looking forward to this event.
But my evening ended pretty well, since Wednesday night equals archery training! I stayed for all the three (okay, 2 and a half) hours and got to shoot a bunch of arrows, some of them really close to the middle of the target. One of my arrows even hit the middle circle! So I am getting better - or luckier. Probably luckier. But I don't care as long as I feel success over it.

This is Michael - the first Irish guy to wear jeans!

My jeans after cycling in rain...

Vera and Eszter trying to warm up

Language Exchange - disappointing disaster

My luckiest arrow so far

Thursday - being tired and the English tense system

After a two hours long lecture on TESOL (or TEFL), we had a two hours long tutorial also in TESOL (-- for non-linguistic students/people, this is Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, sometimes simply called Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) --). It was pretty funny and laughably easy, at least for Eszter and me, since we had learned English as a foreign language ourselves, so we basically know all the names for the tenses and all the rules. Well, most of them, at least the basic ones and some more. English Studies major is not really good for anything else but this kind of knowledge. So after a good half an hour of shining, we stopped answering all the questions so that the others won't kick us out. That is, rather me, because yeah, it's usually me talking. But it seems we will enjoy this module quite a lot and won't have problems with homework. Only problem I might face is that there are huge windows, one wall of the classroom is basically just a big window (not just here but also at some other classes) and I tend to be tempted to gaze out instead of concentrating on the class.
After lunch, we were still so tired with Eszter (we kept yawning all morning at both classes and in between) that we decided to buy a cappuchino at Scholars', one of the pubs on campus. It was moderately expensive and rather tasty but we haven't gotten any less tired from it. In the afternoon we had a short literature lecture on The Handmaid's Tale and we were finished for the day.
I was exhausted and had a splitting headache so after taking a pill and getting a quick shower, I went to bed quite early.

Cinnamon cappuchino at the Scholars'

Friday - sport and culture

Friday morning I got up at 6:30 to go to the swimming pool, finally joining the Swim Club for a training. There was a big storm and so I almost backed out but I really wanted to give a chance to that training so I ended up being strong and cycling there in the rain and wind. The practice was one hour long and there were only 4 of us (plus coach, a nice ex-swimmer guy). It was soooo weird, swimming with others, having tasks to do, having times set and all. I haven't been at a proper swimming training in more than four years now. Up until now. It was also very exhausting, understandably. But I did pretty well, not only did the coach praise my freestyle strokes, even I was satisfied with myself (after all, I was much faster than the other two girls and sometimes even faster than the guy, mostly keeping up with his pace). And one of the girls was Swedish! Lucky day already.
Since Friday was a Culture Day in Ireland, there were several programmes organised, for free, all around the country. I checked the ones taking place in Limerick, contemplating to go see some art galleries or museums. And then I came across a storytelling session's description: Storytelling in the Hunt Museum with Darren Shan! I couldn't believe it was actually THAT Darren Shan. I had to check his FB page and he, indeed, texted he was going to come to Limerick. I got so excited! Took the bus (double decker again) to the city and while the others were visiting King John's Castle, I went to Hunt Museum and listened to Darren freaking Shan reading excerpts from two books that inspired him when he was young and also from Cirque du freak. And we also had a nice Q&A where a lot of kids asked surprisingly good questions and he answered all in detail. He was so funny and nice; really awesome one hour. At the end, he was signing books (if you had some with you - I didn't, of course, since I wasn't planning to bump into him when I packed my baggage at home). But still I stood at the end of the line and he signed me a piece of paper and he was so nice that he even signed one for one of my best friends at home. And he was so happy and excited when I said I was Hungarian, told me his biggest and best fan group is in Hungary and he really loves us. Awesome guy.
And back home I was taking a double decker again. It is still fun.

Finally got a mudguard on my bike!

Great craic Saturday!

We had to get up pretty early again, since we were going on a trip and had to be at the library on campus by 7:15 in the morning. Sleepy and all, we boarded the buses and headed to some bay near Galway from where we took a ferry to one of the Aran islands! During the ferry ride, we got wet by the ocean spray splashing into our faces but we had so much fun - two guys were playing the guitar and we were singing songs like My heart will go on (yeah, I know, too obvious on a ship, but it was actually really cool) and Shape of you from Ed Sheeran and some others. We enjoyed the ride a lot.
Then we arrived to the island. It was pretty small but it still took us hours to walk all around it. There are only 220 or so people living there but they have an own airport! And I was lucky enough to walk there when a small airplane was just taking off, I took a pretty great video of it. Mom would have been so excited to watch this live. And the fun does not end here: a handful of people were crazy enough to undress and go swim in the ocean! Me included. The water was around 10 degrees 'warm' but since the weather was fucking windy and it was raining, it seemed much colder. My skin and muscles felt as if I was burning. And the waves were really huge and strong - even for me, a not-so-bad swimmer, it was hard not to get too far away from the others. I am not saying I panicked but it took me more effort than I was expecting to get back to the group after a few towering waves over my head. But it was stil great craic! Especially changing back to our clothes, so wet and unable to dry off because of the rain, and also unable to cover any body parts properly because of the fucking wind. Even rain drops were falling horizontally instead of vertically.
On the ferry ride back we were relaxing a bit and Eszter braided our hair. Then the bus took us to Galway but we only spent there an hour or so, which is definitelyy not enough to discover the city, so instead of trying and failing we simply looked around a bit on a street (it was still lovely) and then ate a hamburger in McDonald's. Wasn't even that expensive.
We arrived back to campus kinda late, around 10pm or so, I think. Tom was kind enough to come and fetch us by car so we didn't have to walk back home. After quickly washing down the salt and sand from my skin, I went to bed. No dinner, no washing my hair or taking care of my sandy-salty swimming gear. Too tired for that.

The two guys making great music and fun

Me and the ocean - still kinda dry

we found a crab!

View from the ruins on top of the island

Highest point of the island

grass and stone walls everywhere - tipical Ireland

Galway

Chilling in the chill weather with the girls

The only road of the island

Eszter braiding Vera"s hair - and me trying to warm up a bit

The team of brave guys!

Of course I was the last one...

In the freaking Atlantic ocean!!

A shipwreck at the coast

Waves!!

And so yeah, this week was pretty awesome. With all the clubs, friends, Darren Shan and ocean. But today I really have to catch up with myself - I still do have some duties, after all....


*Steve Earle's Galway Girl originally says "And I ask you friend, what's a fella to do if her hair was black and her eyes were blue"