Winter is here, and as you can see, we've been doing a little bit of blog-hibernating. This post promises to be a pretty full one, since several things have happened these past few weeks that have definitely been out of the norm for us.
First: it snowed. Winters in Ireland are supposed to be pretty mild. They only get snow once in a blue moon, and when it snowed this past January, it pretty much shut down the country because they don't have the infrastructure to deal with it. So they all chalked up January to some freak event, and thought that it wouldn't happen for another 30 years, since that's apparently how long it traditionally is between snowstorms for Ireland. But all they had to do was wait until December, and they would get the snow storm of their lives! The day after our Thanksgiving celebration, it snowed, as I told you in the last post. But when I wrote that post, I didn't know it would keep snowing daily for about 12 days, nor did I know that Trinity was going to close campus for two days because of it. I had only one day of class that week... that means a six-day weekend for me!
Game, however, never shut down. It never adjusted its times for opening and closing, and for a week straight, Aaron had to walk the 45 minutes into town through the snow. He had a really good attitude about it all week and I'm not going to lie, I am pretty proud of him!
Second, my computer died, which means Skype is currently unavailable to us. Randomly one night it just crashed. I tried to restart it and the start up screen told me that a Windows file was either lost or corrupted. It was the scary type of start up screen... not with the fancy logos but with the creepy computer type, like all old computers used to type in, so you know something serious is wrong! Aaron's been working on fixing the computer on his days off, but it looks like we might have to wait until we get home to get a Window's disk and reinstall Windows on my computer. We've missed Skype so much. We haven't had a chance to talk to anyone since Thanksgiving, and that's been pretty rough lately.
(Third)... especially since I got sick. The week after the freak snow storm on the following Tuesday, I was sitting in class, enjoying an excellent lecture on the Turn of the Screw (probably as vague as ghost stories get) and thinking, "this is weird, I feel kind of achey." My skin was all of the sudden super sensitive, like it gets whenever you have the flu. After class, I grabbed a sprite (my sick drink of choice) and met Aaron at his work so we could ride the bus home together. We picked up some Chinese food on the way because I definitely did not feel like cooking, and I realized my appetite was gone. I went to bed early that night and woke up feeling even worse. I definitely had a fever, and when I checked it that morning, it was 101.9! I haven't felt that sick in a long time... Aaron took great care of me, and I had yet another six-day weekend, since I didn't go back to class on Thursday. When Aaron had to go in to work, my friend Elizabeth, who also lives in Trinity Hall, came by and brought me food and medicine and movies to watch (I never thought I would enjoy 17 again so much). Finally, I went back to school the following week, which was the last week of school.
That last week was really interesting, since the core course covered Chick Lit, and my last Victorian Child course discussed The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I had to read three Norah Roberts novels, P.S. I Love You, and several others. I've never had to read that much for one week... it was seven novels total! But now that school is over, I've been focusing completely on the papers I have to turn in by January 17th, and getting a first draft of them done before we leave on the 29th!
Aaron's boss had him work until close on Christmas Eve, which was 5:30, but he had Christmas and today off! Today is St. Stephen's Day (also known as Boxing Day in England) and Ireland's version of Black Friday. All week we've been seeing ads for all the deals the big department stores are putting up. We're happy to stay in today... I would hate to see what Grafton Street is like! The only shopping I did this morning was to our local Centra to pick up some milk and eggs so we could have french toast for breakfast. :)
Our Christmas was wonderful, but we missed our families so much. Christmas Eve we experienced an authentic Polish celebration, complete with periogi (a filled dumpling that's fried and eaten with sour cream) and borscht! (beet soup with dumplings floating in it, whose names I forget.) Our friend from Canada, Mika, is 100% Polish, so she introduced us to the way her family does Christmas. I went over in the early afternoon and together we made bread, carrot cake, and potatoes and helped Mika finish up the borscht. Her cousin from L.A. flew in, and a fellow resident of Trinity Hall also came over (and she's from Louisiana and had a cousin that went to UCA so we actually talked in detail about Conway... which was really cool) so there were five of us to celebrate Christmas Eve!
Christmas morning, Aaron and I woke up and I made us some cinnamon rolls. It was my first time so they weren't the most amazing things, but we have many more Christmases to go for me to perfect the recipe! Aaron read the Christmas story from Luke and then we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. We exchanged presents to each other. I got Aaron a novel that I think he'll enjoy reading, since it's about adventure and hunting, and some chocolates and a little notebook, and he got me a jinormous book of craft projects!! After that, we went on a walk around Trinity Hall and played in the snow, and then spent the rest of the day lounging around. For dinner, we had quite a spread. I made a roast chicken with stuffing, roasted potatoes, braided bread, and cinnamon apple sauce! I'm pretty excited about the leftovers too...
We're both so excited about coming home in just three days!! More than any other time, we've really missed everyone during Christmas. We hope you all had a great Christmas and we look forward to seeing you :)
