All or Nothing in the Life of Steph

Hi all!

If you are reading this, you probably already know that I am a terrible extremist. Everything is literally ALL or NOTHING with me and my life. So it should come as no surprise that after nearly 2 mos of "nothing," I enjoyed a week of "all"!

Last week was wild. I gave up a crush (before it became a real crush and I risked an actual crushing) on Tuesday. I had seen this guy ONCE outside of class or class-related stuff in the previous 6 weeks since school began. Then, the week I give up my crush (literally within the next 48 hrs), I feel as though he's stalking ME! :) He really wasn't. It was just that Wed, I nearly physically ran into him in the library, and then Thursday, I was having coffee with some classmates and in he walks, sits down for a while at another table and gives us a 'nod' hello as he walks by half-an-hour later... then that afternoon, my friend/classmate, Muireann (pronounced: mweeruhn) and I went to a french guest speaker-thing by a guy from Paris and he's there, TOO. and if seeing him THREE times in 2 days wasn't enough, when I went out with the rest of my class that night, there he was with his friends in the on-campus bar! WHAT?? oh well. I guess it's true what they say (or at least what my mom says!): "it's all in the chase" :) If only he were chasing me. But no! I gave up that crush! REALLY! Not saying that if anything happened, I would be disappointed -- just saying that I won't dream about him in class anymore... :)

and THEN! If that wasn't enough emotional adventure for one week -- last week was also my social week :) I had great fun and made many new friends. Wed night, the classmate from California (Nicole) who lives in my bldg had a party, so I went up there between laundry loads so that I didn't seem like a snob and I met some really great people from Donegal and the States and Sweden. And another classmate came by and he had me nearly peeing myself I was laughing so hard at some of his stories involving electric fence-shock and being chased by goats & donkeys... you really had to be there, but there's a great pic of me on facebook in hysterics about the chasing story!

And Thursday night was "class party" night. There are 11 or so of us in the class (not the class with the crush, obviously), and 8 of us met at the on-campus bar where we listened to this really great band sing "trad" songs (traditional irish songs) for hours. It was SO cool watching people (mostly the guys) sing along to all of these wonderful melodies they've known all their lives! Great craic! (craic, pronounced "crack" = fun) After the trad music (with which that CD Ky told me I needed would have been helpful!), 6 of us kept going. Turns out that it was Brian's 22nd birthday... Ang, that's the guy you met at the Argentenian speaker-thing... so we all went to a "pub". It was a little more "clubbish" than I'm used to, but they played a lot of old stuff, so I didn't feel 32. I was out until 2:30am. WHAT? I am too old for that! haha! But it saved on cab-fare if I stayed, and I was enjoying the craic. :)

Turns out that this will most likely be a weekly event! But I won't be out so late this week 'cause I am going to a "Utopian studies" workshop all day on Friday. Still. It's really nice to have a tiny little social network. Not like having a local assembly, but knowing that I can call someone if I need help, or just to talk, is a reassuring feeling, you know? :)

I LOVE YOU ALL!