Well, the internet situation in the house has reached a desperate peak. *cue dramatic music* Right now the only way to connect is by cable in the front office, so I'm sitting on the floor and another girl is at the desk to use the internet for a few brief moments. When I have a lot to do it's easier to go to campus, but it's a 20 minute walk and it gets dark at 8pm here, so by the time dinner is over at 7 it's really too late to go.
We had tea this evening instead of dinner. It was cute - basically breakfast, as far as I'm concerned. Eggs, sausage and ham, tea, toast with butter and jam, and fruit. Now that I'm using my cell phone as an alarm, I also plan to make it to breakfast on time tomorrow for the first time since I arrived.
Tomorrow I'm going into the city again. I got so spoiled living on Cote-des-Neiges with all of the busses going by; the bus that stops outside the residence goes right through the center of town but comes very sporadically and not very often. A group of us wanted to go downtown after lunch today, so we waited for 45 minutes before I decided to just go home and get some work done (which ended up meaning taking a nice long nap). Of course, the bus came about 3 minutes after I left. I knew it would, too. I'm just taking one for the team and all that.
I went to Mass on campus today. It was rather odd. There was a lot more kneeling, from the beginning of the Eucharistic prayer right till the end, and also at the final blessing. The music was good, a student was playing the small organ, and the girl who sang looked about 19 but had a huge operatic voice. The problem was, they had her stand in front of the microphone, which is very sensitive. So even though she stood about 2 1/2 feet back, and was obviously trying to sing as quietly as she could, it was still much too loud. And everyone sang at the gloria and Alleluia, since they knew them, but there were no songbooks or anything for the regular hymns. It was the opposite of North America - usually the church will bend over backwards to get people to sing, handing out songsheets or books and announcing the hymn and having a songleader, but no one will open their mouths to sing. Here, people sang when they could, but they had no lyrics or anything to help them. Also, it was at least half made up of very old people. Why they would come all the way down to campus when there's a perfectly good church just around the block, I have no idea. It kind of killed the student atmosphere though. And the priest is one of those post-Vatican II showmen, who referred to God as "she" at one point (I couldn't help rolling my eyes), but he otherwise seems nice. I might try to student-only Saturday evening Mass next weekend.
I'll be going into town tomorrow to get a bunch of things done, and especially hopefully getting everything straightened out with the customs office. I'd like to take a walking tour of Trinity College, which ends at the Book of Kells, before all the students start showing up in the next couple of weeks. I also might meet up with one of my housemates for lunch. She's from Spain, and speaks English well enough but speaks French better than English, So I finally have someone to have my lazy trilingual conversations with! I've also booked a very cheap flight to Oxford for a week starting October 9, so I have to figure out where to stay and how to get there from the airport and all that.
I'm signing off for now since I don't know who will need to use the office next. More updates and adventures to follow.
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