Caving

I cannot believe how fast time has gone.  I'm leaving in two weeks, but it feels like I've only been here for two weeks.  Where did the time go?  Anyway, the worst part of it is that the last couple weeks of my time here are unfortunately being consumed by essay writing.  Stupid, I know.  I also recently found out I have to write an extra essay on top of everything else.  Basically, dreariness is overtaking my life.  (This is not helped by the fact that I developed self-diagnosed seasonal affective disorder, thank you 3:30 sunsets.)  But I'm determined to live in denial of these responsibilities, and make time for long overdue blog posts. (Pictures/media to be added later because they take a surprising amount of time.)  For example, tonight I am having a Christmas celebration with my roommates.  We will be making the delicious peanut butter hershey kiss cookies and enjoying a movie and hot chocolate.  I'm thinking The Santa Clause, but I'm not sure yet.  We're supposed to decorate, but I don't think any of us actually went and bought decorations.

Now, for some more interesting information, here are my tales of Dublin in the snow.

Actual shot of Ireland covered in snow last week. 
Yeah, I'm awesome.

Beautiful as it may be, Dublin simply shut* down when it snowed.  It managed to hold it's ground for a few days, and in fairness it was a really annoying snowstorm.  For six days it snowed and hailed and thundered.  Seriously.  It would go on.  It'd snow for an hour, take an hour break, and snow for another two hours.  Or hail.  For six days.  Very seldom in my life have I ever disliked snow, but Dubliners do not own/know to use shovels.  No one bothered to start clearing the sidewalks on campus until this past Monday, more than a week after the snow began.  And since it was by that time a 3 or 4 inch thick sheet of ice covering the ground, it took construction equipment.  It was actually kind of funny, I wish I'd taken a picture.  They also use brooms to sweep stray snow away.

Trinity was closed Wednesday-Friday, and the library closed for the entire weekend.  What was more frustrating was the fact that on Thursday and Friday when the library was supposed to be open with shortened hours, they would announce at 2:30 they were closing at 3 instead of 5.  On Monday, they seemed to think for some reason closing at 8 instead of 10 was justified by the fact it snowed 5 days previous.  It doesn't make sense.

Taking issue with this all is entirely on me.  By now I should be used to the endearing bureaucratic peculiarities of Trinity, but just when you think you've got it, they sneak back up and yell surprise.  Not the fun kind.  Like this morning for instance.  Tutorials were supposed to end last week, but my Shakespeare tutorial got snowed out.  So I emailed the coordinator yesterday to ask if it was going to be made up.  At 10:15 this morning, I checked my email to find she had forwarded less than an hour beforehand an email my professor sent at 9:30 am on Monday that our tutorial was rescheduled for 11 am today.  Super.  Love the advanced notification.

This post is really rambling and I apologize.  I need to get back to finishing my Shakespeare essay, which is unfortunately even less coherent.  (Seriously.  My own comments on the essay as I have written it include the phrases: "does this make sense?" 3x, "is this true?", and "absolutely disgusting phrase.  find something else". Paper writing is buckets of fun.) I also may have repeated information from a previous post.  Again, sorry.  Barcelona post coming soon, promise!

*Edited to remove Freudian slip/profanity 14/12.