Today began like the most typical of days. I woke up at 8 am, not by my alarm clock but because I had to pee. I lay in bed for half an hour, no intention of leaving, enjoying the merciful warmth provided by my comforter and two wool blankets. To avoid paying extra electricity expenses at the end of the term, our apartment (meaning the collective 6 people living in it) rarely turn the heater on. To enter the kitchen one must first acquire a hat, a scarf, and some hard-core layering skills. So I put off getting up for awhile, choosing to listen to the fascinating gusting noises coming from near my window. Wind? Rain? My grumpy heater vent? Or just sleep deprivation? In Ireland, you can't really tell. Frankly, grumpy wymana didn't care--she figured that by this point she was probably seasoned to handle any horrible Irish weather the gods could throw her way. But as per usual, the gods had different ideas. Wymana lazily bats her curtains aside to check the sky. Grey. Deceptively unassuming.
It is very fortunate that my Gaelic class currently happens to be covering the weather unit. I have a lot to say about the weather this week and I also have some vocab to study for tomorrow's quiz. In such a case, I do not feel guilty at all about a weather rant. So, with the help of a well-loved workbook and a shaky memory, here it is in all its glory:
An Luan: Ta an ghrian ag taitneamh. Ta se tirim, ta an aimsir go deas beaganin. The first beautiful day I think I've experienced in Ireland, so far. I could feel the Vitamin D soaking into my skin, the instant happy. The hills were alive. Spring in the weather, in my mood, and in my step.
An Mhairt: Ta se an-fhuar, ta se ag cur baisti, agus ta se ag cur sneachta. More like slushing, actually. Whatever is falling from the sky has to be as wet as possible. Grumpy wymana returns from her long grocery adventuring looking an-fhliuch. With a little extra dose of grumpy.
Agus....
Inniu: Ta an aimsir go hannais ar fad, ar fad. Ta se an-ghaofar (with gusts up to 150 km/h), ta se ag cur baisti, agus ta se an-fhuar. Think yesterday was bad? Today just blew it out of the water.
It was so bad that they actually cancelled all classes from 3 pm on. Too bad my last class ended at 3. I did some pretty hard-core adventuring to get there. The deal was the wind: on several occasions, it was blowing so hard that one could not move forward. Trees were down, power lines were down, trucks were down. Celtic Mythology ended at 1 pm, the power flickering throughout the entire hour. Walking back, I was ushered into the West Wing of the Main Quad and out of the open by a security official. Apparently slate was flying off the West Wing roof. Five minutes later, I watched a tree crack and fall in the parking lot. A little ways towards my next class, a huge tree had cracked and taken down a power line (and half of the power line's pole). I squeezed past the broken trunk, then did some intense Indiana Jones-style tree-hugging to avoid the completely flooded sidewalk. By 3 pm, UCC was telling faculty and students not to leave the buildings they were in. Well, by about 3:20 pm I'd missed all of the notifications and was back at my apartment, curled up in a warm pair of sweatpants with my emergency jar of shock nutella and a box of tissues.
2014 could perhaps be the beginning of the apocalypse.
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