She needs to dye her roots...

wow. two months. i haven't written. remember the good ole days when i wrote almost every day? yeah... i didn't have any friends back then. awww....

but here i am! two months. two months. a lot has happened, as i'm sure it has in your life.

let's see, well, i went to ireland with my parents and sister. and it was amazing. my sister and i didn't fight once. I KNOW! it was a miracle. we did sing a lot in the back seat, which i'm sure drove my parents a little nutty. but my dad was too busy concentrating on not driving on the wrong side of the road. and i must say, he only slipped up about a handful of times. however, one of those times was entering a circle/roundabout, while a motorcycle was trying to exit, therefor heading right as us, while 2 new parents and their child in the stroller were walking on the sidewalk, right where i'm sure my father wanted to swerve... but luckily we went left, the motorcycle stayed to our right, and everyone lived.
but ireland was truly amazing. we saw a castle when we wanted. we walked where we wanted. we drove when we wanted. we stopped to lots of archaeological sites. one of which came with its own female german tourist who insisted all other paying toursits must get out of her shot when she was posing for a picture for her husband. my sister does a fantabulous bitch-german-tourist impression now.
we said 'dingle dingle' and 'tweedle dee tweedle dee' a lot.
OH! we also went to the small, and i mean like 1 road, 2 block long town/city/place one of my great-grandfather's left when he was about 16 to come to america to start a life... which led to me. it was really amazing, i wish i could describe it.. oh, but don't think i won't try...
so my father knew his grandfather grew up by this lake, which happened to be the named after the town/city/place he grew up.. the town/city/place we were looking for... that is no longer on any map. before the trip, my mother kept trying to prepare my father for the family luck we have, where not everything turns out well, and this place could be completely gone with no remaining original dwellers. (considering it's not even on the map... as i said). so.... i forget what 2 cities we were making our days journey between, but we left this like ancestral outing to one of our last days, and one of our days with lots of driving we had to get done before the sun went down (because trust me, you did not want us driving on the roads of ireland in the dark.. let alone in perfect sunlight). so, on the map of ireland, the lake (which we think my great-grandfather grew up by) is still drawn on. hooray! our plan: go to the lake.. drive around it... see what is there. so, on our way up, we stopped at the last big city before we hit the small roads to take us to the lake. our plan was to ask a local if they knew of this town/city/place. however, every person i asked was a tourist. so we stopped at this lowly pub on the way to the lake and my sister and i went in.. because surely, itw as about 3pm, and if anyone was going to be in there, it had to be old local men who know all about all. so we found 2 elderly men, probably on about their 8th beer each... we asked if they had heard of it.. and oh man. what a mistake... we stood there for about 8-12 minutes (yes.. 8-12) while they pondered, threw around city names, family names, beer names, sheep names, until i finally thought we could give our thanks and leave.. and then no.. they kept talking. but FINALLY we got out. and the only help the drunk men offered was 'well, if it was there, it's there now'. ok!
off we go to the lake. we find the lake. we turn down a road. a small small road. we come to a fork. we don't know where to go. it's not like this is NYC. there aren't any street signs, no businesses. this is, farm country ireland headquarters. with small irish cottages, and nothing, and i mean NOTHING else. we decide to turn back at the fork in the road, back to the main road, to see if we can start again... and AHHHHHHHH! LOOK! there it was. an erected stone with the place/city/town's name etched into it. we had found it. our roots.
so we immediately jumped out, and took a timed picture of our family with the stone with our digital camera while a car full of old irish ladies drove by us.
anyway, there's much more to this. we went to a pub, who knew of the family line my great-grandfather left behind, we went to the church where we think they were born?, we found a great cemetary in the city over with a lot of tombstones with the family name on it. it was awesome.
so that was one part of ireland.

theeeeeeeennnn... i returned to school. had a 2 week break. and for the first work my good friend N from home came to visit. we spent 4 days in sydney, a few at my university, then he had to leave, but i still had a week left before classes started up again. and N, don't think i'm just breezing over your visit. there were so many stories, i'm just sure the readers are still trying to calm their nerves from my ireland story, i want to give you a chance to catch your breath. for another blog my friends, another blog.

so yes, N came, went, school started back up. i joined my dorm's soccer team, i've had LOTS of assignments, i got sick :( , i've done laundry, painted my nails, lost sunglasses, oh.. and my newest tradition... watching NFL live at 3am with 2 other americans. it's fabulous. sunday nites/early monday mornings, from 3am to about 2pm we watch football, and it's sooo nice. none of htis cricket or australian rules football, or rugby... regular american football.

the first time we put a football game on... all the austrlians kept asking 'is it the superbowl already?'. that is their only exposure to nfl. the superbowl. so everygame they saw, they thought it was the superbowl. also, they can't believe it's called football when you hardly ever use your foot on the ball. well i can't believe they don't pronounce potato and tomato the same way. so i think we're even.

for a while tho, there was a certain cricket tournament, the Twenty20 World Cup or something. and it was very very exciting. i like cricket. the final game came down to India and Pakistan. and boy, were there lots of people watching in the common room. but it was so exciting, because they were all so exciting, and every hit or catch or run people were screaming and the final match was soooooooooooooo close, it literally came down to the last bowl (throw/pitch). it was awesome. india won. it was good stuff.

ok, well my laundry was done in its cycle about 8 minutes ago, and this ended up being fairly long. so i hope you enjoyed and i'll post with more stories from ireland, N's visit, and from my life here at university.

by the way, i only have a month left of classes. a whole school year here is nearly done. then i'll be returning to the states for about 3 months... but then that means i have to start my thesis soon...

i'm thinking of doing a cladistic analysis of the homo habilis specimens. it's very contraversial. what do you think???