swinging dead cats.

When I was younger, it used to be the case that you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting an Irish dancer.  Now that I'm older and have mostly moved away, it's become something like, "You can't swing a dead cat without hitting an Obie," and how true that is.  When I started working at Glen Helen, I wore an Oberlin shirt because it's all I had clean, and one of the first things Beth said to me was, "Oh, Nick Boutis went to Oberlin."  About six months later, I wrote a $50,000 grant for Nick Boutis during Winter Term.  Just a few weeks ago, someone from a LiveJournal community I follow was like "Oh, hi, I see you go to Oberlin and love Johnny Weir."

 Almost six years ago.  You can really date it by how much dance fashion has changed, and by how happy my wig still looks.  It's nearly 12 years old now and still bouncing.

The same goes for Ireland.  There are three of us on the program, and we'd all run in different yet almost concurrent social circles.  This fact is doubly true with the onset of Winter Term.  I'm not doing one this year because I didn't have my stuff together by the deadline, and I'm kind of in school right now.  Besides, next year, I fully intend on convincing a professor to sponsor the further development of my [nonexistent] figure skating skills.  Anyway, Winter Term means that tons of Obies are in Europe doing extraordinary things, and it just so happened that two awesome people were coming through Galway and needed a place to stay.  It all worked out and they were able to stay on my floor for three-or-so days.

I really can't express how much it helped having them around.  When I'm around new people, sometimes it's hard to be my goofy self.  Okay, so it's never hard to be my goofy ol' self, but it's hard to feel comfortable being myself.  Like, to be less cryptic, with Obies it's almost like "Yeah, I get you right away," and here I feel like I'm so out of context (but it's getting better as time goes on!)... Which is funny, because long, detailed angst aside, I've never really thought I gelled on the same level as most Oberlin students.  So, it was twofold-cool to have Obies around for a few days.  I felt more comfortable and free here, and I also started to feel like I actually do belong at Oberlin.

Anyway, it was triply awesome having them around because they're both excellent cooks!  And I am decidedly not!  My favorite story to tell is from when I was taking Clay's KP shift and Rachel and I were just chatting, checking on the beans Peter left boiling while he ran to IGA for some extra pasta, and all of a sudden the lid fell into the pot, beans flew into the burner, and caught fire.  It was quite an event!  Thankfully Rachel was still thinking rationally and came up with a solution before I ruined everything.  So, basically, I learned to cook this past week, and it was super fun because I was doing it with super people!

We made chicken picatta, brussels sprouts, and mashed potatoes!  And an awesome apple crisp with Dunnes butter!  Best part: leftovers!  :)

Classes, after a bit of a rocky start, I think are finally starting to tie together.  There was some apprehension in taking a German class, because that ended up fitting into my schedule was about equivalent to what we learned in high school.  After much consideration, I've decided that it's worth it because the professor reminds me a lot of Elizabeth Hamilton (read: super amazing and saintly and just plain wonderful) and I'm the only visiting student in the class.  If everything works out as easily and I'm hoping it will, these are the classes I'll be taking:

Celts, Vikings, and Normans (archaeology)
The Development of the Castle in Medieval Europe (archaeology)
Celtic Mythology, Religion, & Folklore
18th Century Ireland (history)
German Language II
Beginning Irish Language

Plus, with German, it's kind of like a toss-away class, but with special advantages like the ones listed above and with all the review I'll be doing with Grammar, hopefully I'll be able to write a darn good essay next semester at Oberlin (none of this forgetting-to-conjugate-every-verb nonsense!).  And it'll be an easy, peasy class.  So it's kind of like I'm cheating the system.  Oh, but now that I'm writing it all out, I'm feeling apprehensive again.  Hmmmmm... Alright, no more overthinking!  I'll figure it out later.  Have some pictures of Galway.