why, a class kidnapping to Lahinch, of course!
So yesterday** was Jonathan's birthday. He is the guy who knows EVERYBODY - and who EVERYBODY knows... or at least it seems that way to the rest of us! All year long, Jonathan has been affectionately dubbed the 'shepherd' because he was the only one who knew where he was going for the first... forever. Every time our class went on a break or out to lunch after class, we would follow Jonathan around the (completely insane) Main bldg. We decided we felt like sheep and that all that was missing was Jonathan's staff.
Well, since Jonathan has borne the responsibility of giving us direction for the past 8 months, two girls in the class decided that for his birthday, we'd make the decisions for him!
7 of us rented a car (we already had one car), told Jonathan we were taking him out for breakfast, blindfolded him, put him in one of the cars and told him to trust us. Then we stopped @ a petrol station for coffee with his blindfold still on and hit the highway! We drove for a little over a hour before there was a random roadside check that stopped every car. The gardi were apparently looking for someone specific, but our car (which did not have Jonathan, was in front and was driven by me, fyi) kind of panicked when we realised that the other car would be approaching an officer of the law with a blindfolded man in the backseat! All was well... at the last second, they took off the blindfold and he didn't recognize his surroundings. He did figure out where we were on the last turnoff before we got to the beach, but it was a fun game overall!
Jonathan had been talking about going to a beach at West Clare for weeks now and yesterday was the PERFECT weather day to go! It was +26C/78F, sunshiny and breezy all day long! The water was about the temperature of a a liquid glacier, but several of us managed to suck it up and dive into the waves - woot! (seriously, it was about 15F). Lahinch is a few miles away from the Cliffs of Moher and we could see them on the other side of the bay; there were surfers out on one end of the beach and we were pretty much the last group on the other end of the beach from the surfers, which offered a really nice sense of seclusion.
We had all brought food and had a picnic lunch on the beach, took walks, sat around and talked, some of us kicked a soccer ball around... basically, we took the day off! Except one poor girl, Muireann, who received a call from her thesis supervisor while we were in the car during the kidnapping. She had emailed him to talk about our next report and what his expectations were, but he was leaving today for a research project until Thursday a week (the report is due the following Monday) and he wanted to talk with her before he left the country... so she spent a half-hour on the phone with her professor with the ocean and all of us classmates playing around in the background. She felt badly 'cause she was like, "umm... sorry Michael, I gave up the one day you had left in the country before my deadline to kidnap someone and spend the day at the beach... sure... I am a REALLY good student!" Apparently, she pulled it off until the very last minute, when someone in the group told a joke & the entire 7 of us roared in laughter and he heard it... and made a remark about how he hopes the weather is really nice where she is... oops! It's a good thing these guys are so understanding!!!
Overall, I think the kidnapping was a success. Hopefully Jonathan realises how much he is appreciated and remembers this birthday for a long time!
** by 'yesterday', I mean 12 May... it took me a while to upload the photos onto my computer...
