Well, I've been a little behind on these blog entries, and for that, dear reader, I most humbly beg your forgiveness. I am writing this at a very awkward moment for me - I'm on campus at the moment, having only just now activated my wireless account, and the only place I could plug in to charge up my laptop is the next to the womens' toilet. Needless to say, I am a little embarrassed.

It's been a busy time for me, a rollercoaster emotionally, intellectually, and physically. This weekend, against my better judgment, I went to Galway with some of the other Americans. It actually wasn't too bad of a time, but there were some things that just plain went wrong. For starters, I realized that I don't necessarily like my roommates all that much. It's not that I hate them, necessarily, but I just don't have a whole lot of common ground with them. One of them is a "player" from Miami who will always be hitting on cute girls (much to my chagrin, I can't compete with him on that - to be fair, he is an exceedingly likable guy who has an extensive knowledge of pop music), and another is a fraternity brother who always takes pains to say that if he was at the U of M, he prolly wouldn't be in a frat. Fair enough, but he strikes me as having a more or less similar outlook to frat guys, except that he's much, much smarter. Anyway, I was a lot more comfortable hanging out with the locals than I was with the Yanks (it didn't help that at dinner on Friday night, I was seated with a group that started talking about their sex lives and, in an interesting twist, bashing Irish women for not being hot). I played darts with a couple of Galway blokes in a pub, had a Guinness or two, and basically just shot the shit. It was great craic, as they say over here. And it turns out that one of their best friends was from Saint Paul.

On Saturday we (meaning the Americans) visited the Aran Islands, a remarkably scenic place which was once the most desolate location in Ireland but is now home to a thriving tourist trade. Splendid isolation is still available to those who seek it, though, and upon arriving on the island, I promptly rented a bicycle and went out on the back trails of the island. The particular rock I was on, Inish Mor, has a prominent ridge cutting it in two, and it was there that I went biking. I wish I could get my pics to load online (and I wish my camera didn't have a smudge on the lens which is detectable in every photograph) so that people could get an idea of what I'm talking about (and you'd get to see me in some truly terrible posed photographs - I don't photograph well). Anyway, on these bike trails you'd not see another human soul for hours - it was as if I was the only person in the world. And here is where things get interesting (and weird). All the talk of sexual conquest the night before had, I suppose, rattled me, and I couldn't help but notice the large number of attractive German and Italian tourists who were on the island. There were so many secluded glens that were surrounded by stone walls and therefore invisible from the already underutilised footpaths... So I began to concoct in my head a fantasy about making love to a beautiful stranger in the clearing, knowing that we would never see each other again, but we would have, for the rest of our lives, memories of that wonderful afternoon. Pretty turgid stuff, right? Well, it wouldn't have been worth mentioning at all except for the fact that while I was preoccupied spinning my webs, my phone fell out of my pocket, and I didn't notice it until I was off of the island! And there is no chance of recovering it, either, not if it fell out on those back trails.

And so today I couldn't even find my wallet. I'm hoping that it's in my room (I really think it is) and that I just left it under a pile of clothes. At least I still have my passport.

And thank God, classes (real classes) start in two weeks! The Semester Start-Up Programme is good, but I'm at the point now where enough is enough. More to follow!