Comin' Back after a Bloodwound

Six Nation Rugby started this week, and believe it or not, I couldn't be more thrilled. Caitlin, my flatmates and I went to a darling little sports bar, adorned in all the green we could find in our wardrobes (which meant I was wearing my green tie-dyed "Ann Arbor Townie" t-shirt), and cheered on the home team for a rollicking 80 minutes of big men with bad hear tackling each other. Ireland was playing France, and thus the French had overtaken Dublin for the day, so the tension even within the pub was immense. The game was gruesome, with several people breaking or bleeding, but thoroughly entertaining. I think  I like rugby so much because unlike football, the play doesn't end when the man holding the ball is tackled to the ground--instead, he passes it out of the heap somehow, someone on his team snags it, and starts running again. I have a natural aversion to the French players, especially the one with long black hair and a nasty goatee. That particular one looks like a Tin-Tin villain.

In case you haven't heard, Ireland was VICTORIOUS over France, with a score of something like 30 to 21. We yelled, toasted, and then peeled out to get sandwiches at a cute little French cafe. I guess we can't all be that loyal for long.

Saturday evening we dressed classily, intending to find a sophisticated night club in which we could sip on glasses of red wine without having to worry about cover charge. However, no such place exists in Dublin, and certainly not on Saturday night. We ended up instead at the Palace, a classic movie theatre turned trashy club, in which all women wore skimpy backless dresses and all men wore rugby colors and other embarrassing pendants of team loyalty (clown wigs and pirate sashes come to mind). Caitlin, being the brave girl she is, sat in the noisy club with us, and even danced a bit in spite of the mostly wretched Euro-pop/techno music. 

Otherwise, I've started research on my final papers. They're freaking me out more than they should--they're not supposed to be terribly long and the topics themselves are quite easy. I would probably write the same amount in two weeks at Hamilton. I'm just caught up on the fact that these are the ONLY PAPERS we get to write. One try, one grade, and that's the grade you have to live with. I second and third guess myself all the time, and I can't shake that dreadful feeling that something's going to happen to adversely affect my performance, and that I'll somehow slip through the cracks and flunk out and waste all of this money my parents sent to get me here.

I spent an enormous amount of time on GoogleEarth today. I walked down my street, checked on Hamilton College, zoomed in on St. Marks in New York City and a portion of the rainforest in Brazil. I think I've been overwhelmed by the bigness of the world recently. Which makes it sound like I'm high. I'm not. I just am realizing how quickly time is passing, and how much of Ireland there is to see, let alone all of Europe in general. I became a little sad, because I know I don't have the resources to get every place I want to go. Damn you, GoogleEarth, making everything seem so small...

At any rate, that's all I've got for you today. A little melancholy, but that's probably just the Irish outlook rubbing off on me. By the end of the semester I should be able to see the bleak side of every happy moment.