Saturday 2 May 2015

French toast, Vikings, and Getting Fancy

I'm currently knee-deep in exam study, so writing this blog is my study break. Well, I don't know if knee-deep is an accurate description, but yes, some studying has been taking place....

The last three weeks since I have gotten back from Europe have been good, though not as much stuff to write about has happened. There were the last two weeks of classes, and then this last week has been "study week" before exams start. We don't get a study week at home, so I've studied more in advance then usual, and I'm worried I'm going to forget everything before the exams even start haha. I'm curious/anxious to see what they're like. I haven't had to take any exams here yet, so it'll be interesting to see the layout. Apparently, even though classes here are laid back, exams are super intense - you need to identify yourself, sit in a certain seat, and literally leave your cell phone at home. Who knows if it's actually as scary as they make it sound, or if they're just trying to intimidate us. Probably a bit of both.

Aside from school and exams, the fun stuff that I've been par-taking in is mainly just a lot of hanging out and eating food, which you can never go wrong with. I think I might've mentioned this before, but all us international students here agreed at the beginning of the semester to have a night where they would cook traditional food from their country for everyone. Before the break, we ate Mexican and Brazilian food. Since the break, I've gone to American night, French night, German night, and yes, we put on a Canadian night as well.

I know only the name of one thing I've eaten - not including the American food, because really, we eat most of the same stuff haha. Other then that though, everything from all the other nights is unpronounceable - but delicious.



The one thing I know the name of! It's called: kaiserschmarrn. It's a German dessert that is like shredded pancake, but not as sweet.

So basically, what Canadians eat for breakfast is has more sugar then what Germans eat for dessert.....














Apple pie from French night! My roommate Vivien made this actually. He did a good job too, cause it was delicious.

We didn't have French night at our apartment, but they did make a lot of the food here and needless to say, our apartment smelled amazing for a couple of days!






For Canadian night, myself and Julie were kind of stumped on what we were going to do, but eventually decided to do Breakfast for Dinner - so we made French toast, scrambled eggs, sausages, and fruit salad. This mainly stemmed from the fact that my parents brought over this huge jug of maple syrup when they visited, and there was no way just me and Julie were going to make that many pancakes before coming back home. So, we had over 25 people in our tiny apartment, and made over 50 pieces of French toast. It was absolutely crazy, but I'm pretty proud to say that it was a successful night. So successful in fact, that security had to barge in, and tell us to be quiet. That's the second time our apartment has been bombarded by security ..... I'm going to blame that on the fact that we live right next to reception ;)

Canadian night! Julie had brought a huge Canada flag with her, so we finally had a good reason to hang it up in our apartment. And it's still there hehe.

This is the crew that stayed till the wee hours of the morning - no, not to clean up, but to play card games. Man, we're just the coolest.



This week as a study break, me and Julie finally went to Reginald's tower. It's the third museum in Waterford, and the only one we hadn't gone to yet, so we walked down to city centre and made an afternoon of it. The tower only has three small levels, so it didn't take long. It was all history specifically regarding Waterford, which was really neat, seeing as that's where I'm currently living. Of course, I don't remember much.... only that Waterford used to be populated by vikings, and everyone drank wine because they thought water was contaminated.... you know, the cool stuff. I hadn't been to city centre in a while, so I was reminded again how different & pretty Ireland is. I have three weeks left here, and I'm going to try to not take any of it for granted.




Reginald's tower, is literally a tower. And for how big it is, the door is quite small.













The view of Waterford from one of the windows on the third floor of the tower. It was a grey, sort of nice, sort of rainy day.





On the Thursday just passed, there was a black tie event held in City Hall specially for international students, and everyone looked magnificent. It wasn't quite what we all expected - it was just a whole bunch of speeches, and then appetizers were passed around. Nevertheless, it was kind of cool - the mayor and the president of WIT were there, and even though I only understand about 50% of what they said, what I did get was interesting. After that, there was a slew of pre-parties, the party, and then after-parties. It makes it really obvious to see who came to Ireland just to drink haha. Overall, it wasn't the best night I've had here, but it was the last big international event, so it was definitely worth going to.




From left to right:
Eva, who's from Germany; myself and Julie; and Bruna, who's from Brazil.










Looking forward, the next week and a half is exams, and the last week and a half I'll be hopefully heading up to Belfast, and then Killarney & Dingle. Nothing has been booked yet, but as it's been pointed out multiple times to me here: "Stop stressing and it'll all work out." Not exactly my strong suit, but I'm working on it haha.

I know some exciting stuff is happening at home right now, so good luck to everyone who's traveling, opening up new places, or simply celebrating exams being done :)

And a final thought for you all: I've learnt quite a lot about what the Europeans/Brazilians/Mexicans/everyone for who English is a second language, think about English. And the consensus is that it's strange. Their proof to back that up: this picture hahahaha


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