Eleventh Day

It was back to Waterford today for my Irish Language and Culture class. I packed my lunch as a part of my new attempt to budget everything, which, come St. Patrick's Day, probably won't matter! Not much happened today, but we learned some basic phrases in Irish like hello, goodbye, how are you, what is your name, where are you from, etc. We found it really hard to pronounce some of their longer d's like "duit" but on the other side of it the Irish can't really pronounce "th" the way that we do because for the most part their h's are silent. 

From 6 to 8 I have my literature class, but we are really good at finding ways to get off topic, so class in the sense that most people would think of it is really only about half of that time. Today, we read one of Yeats' poems titled "A Faery Song" and it's about Diarmuid (dear-mid) and Grainne (grahn-ye), two lovers who ran off away from Grainne's fiance, Fionn, a warlord. Fionn was much older than Grainne, and so she didn't want to marry him; instead she fell in love with Diarmuid (not sure about the spelling) who was one of his soldiers, and the pair ran away, searching for places to rest at night to hide away from Fionn. The poem doesn't even refer to their names, except in a short footnote, so when I was talking about it, the rest of the class including Dr. Reed were thinking I had a different version with better footnotes. Earlier, however, our professor for Irish language was talking a little bit about the story, and I explained that we heard it earlier, AND the story is from the movie Leap Year. Suddenly Dr. Reed goes, "I have heard so many references to that movie recently and I've never heard of it!" and then he looks at me and points and says, "Every single one of those references were from you!" I reply, "Of course it was, I'm obsessed with that movie. I've only seen it a million times!" So I explained some of the background of the movie, that it takes place in Ireland, and Declan tells Anna the story of Diarmuid and Grainne. I thought it was pretty funny that every reference he'd heard in the past few days was from me.

I spent a lot of time on homework today, unfortunately. This is pretty much how things will be going for March until my literature class ends and leaves a lot more time open in my schedule. But for now, it's saving money and getting stuff done (for example, I avoided the pub tonight and am trying to get a head start on my presentation!) Sorry for the short entry, but if I think of anything else I will be sure to put it in the next one!