Catching up

Sorry for my recent lack of communication, but this is the last week of classes, and I have five papers due on Friday. However, the good news is that Friday night I'm leaving for England!! I'm going with Jess, Jaye, Julie, and Julie's friend Angela, and we're spending two days in London and a day each in Oxford and Bath. Woohoo! I finally put up the Dublin pictures (I thought I had already done that. Oops.), so you can check those out if you like.

Otherwise not too much has been going on in my life... just taking it in turns to work on my papers and procrastinate to an intense degree. Thursday night Stefania's boyfriend Davide (Dah-vee-day) came for a surprise visit! He came on a trip with three other friends, and on Friday Davide cooked, and the friends came, and Irena and Elise from across the hall, and another friend of theirs, Wendy from South Korea, and we had quite a night of it! Davide cooked fish and tomatoes with garlic and olive oil (and some hash browns on the side), and we had a cheesecake because it had been Irena, Elise, and Wendy's birthdays within the past week. Irena was having an Erasmus party in her apartment, so we all went over to hang out and dance, and it was really fun! I forgot how much I enjoy dancing, even though I'm not very good at it. I was one of two Americans there, and everyone else was either Italian or French, with an exuberant German boy thrown in and a couple other oddballs. All in all an excellent night. Saturday I took a break to go exploring with Jess and Jaye to try and get into Menlo Castle (which I now know that you can do, and lots of people do it). We didn't actually find it, due to not knowing how far it was, so we turned back too early, but we still had fun. We also found a sweet but idiotic dog, who we named Kevin, and later Caomhan, the Irish version (pronounced "kwee-vahn"). His real name was Charlie, but he didn't seem to mind being called by all different names. He continued to trot cheerily into the road and eat garbage and such.