Snow Day...in Ireland??

And they said it never snowed in Dublin...which I suppose was true, until about 4 days ago. That's when Ireland had the coldest November on record, and the air was filled with tiny balls of styrofoam - the Irish version of snow/hail - not really sure what to call it, but it was coming down all morning as I was trekking to class in my snow boots. Yesterday was technically "Open Day," the day when all the high school kids come and tour Trinity, and all the Trinity students get the day off. That is, all the Trinity students except a few unlucky ones, such as those who have to get up for class at 10 in the morning to dissect a pig, a dog, a fox, two pheasants, a pigeon and a hen that was in the process of laying an egg which looked like it could have come off the shelf of a supermarket. Very cool, also somewhat nauseating. I might stick with dissecting cow eyes... (last week's lab).

We just got an email that school is closed again tomorrow, making it a long four day weekend, but more significantly, the first time I've EVER gotten a snow day in college. Unfortunately, a bunch of my friends had trips planned, which may no longer happen due to the airports being shut down... I guess we'll all just have to sit around the fire and drink Cadbury hot chocolate together and eat biscuits ;)

Haven't updated in a little while, partially because the fun excursions have become more spread out now that we only have 2 weeks of class left and most people have around 8000 words to write for their classes. For the first time in my life I have less work to do than the humanities majors. I'm going to try not to get too used to this.

With going back to the States on my mind, I started a little list the other day of some of the small, quirky differences between Ireland and America that I've noticed - nothing culture-shock-worthy, but little things that you might not notice unless you spent a semester here:
1) Typing Skills: Irish college students don't really have them. I mean, they're super fast two-finger typers, but the girls in my class were complaining about having to make electronic versions of their lab reports because it was going to take them twice as long as handwriting them. And one of the guys hand-wrote a 500-word summary of glaucoma article, then preceded to manually count all the words...
2) Maintenance: Same-day service doesn't exist here, at least not to my knowledge. It took three weeks of badgering the maintenance company before they finally came in to look at our broken freezer, only to have them stay for five minutes saying that they'd come back in a week after we'd defrosted it (because it definitely takes a week to defrost a freezer...). We've been trying for two weeks now to get someone to come out and turn on the heating in our bedrooms - probably just a flip of a switch, but now that the snow's come, chances of that getting fixed before we leave in two weeks is looking pretty slim. Don't even get me started on the burnt out lightbulbs...
3) Slippy: The Irish word for "slippery." As in, "I fell on my way to class today because it was so slippy!"
4) "Hay-tch": The pronunciation of the eighth letter of the alphabet, as opposed to "ay-tch." "Hay-tch" actually makes quite a bit of sense though, considering that's how it sounds in "hamburger" and "hippo."
5) Prices: None of that silly "$15.99 sweater" or "2.95 mocha latte" stuff - a five-euro sandwich is just five euros. So much simpler, yet I still feel weird not getting any change back after handing over a "fiver"...

That's just a sampling. Little things I'll probably miss when I get home in about a month, though we only have two weeks of class left (which is just absurd). Many more I probably won't realize until I'm back in the Lou, eating Subway, shopping at Forever 21, or ordering Dominoes pizza. Oh wait. Yep, they have those here too. Maybe the transition back won't be so hard after all.