where to start....

its been a while since i last posted....and lots has happened.
but here's a general recap of my last few weeks, incase you're interested.

ireland
great as usual. got to see all the family again. my cousin got married, although that was in england. it was a great affair, full of booze and dancing. and i had a great time, despite my inebriated aunt (the groom's mother) trying to set me and my other single girl cousin up with the best man, and every other friend (single or not, she didn't really care) of the groom. she would grab you by the arm (it was like a death grip, for real, you couldn't escape it) and she would drag you over to...someboyd, say fergus. "feerrrgus, have you met catherine? she wants to dance with you!" and then she would shove the two us together. awkward, but bearable thanks to the numerous bottles of beer i had previously consumed.
my uncle also died when i was over in ireland. he was old, though, so it wasn't tragic. but it was sad to see my two cousins and realize that their father was dead. irish funerals are something else though. they are a drawn out process...the wake one night, the removal of the body the next night, and then the funeral the following day, for a total of three days. irish funerals are also much less somber than american ones...it seems more of a celebration of life rather than a mourning of the departed. and it was nice to see ALOT more of the family. but still hard to cope with the loss... but it's never so much the actual thought of my uncle dieing that makes me cry, but its the sight of other people crying and in distress over his death that really brings me to tears.

new york
well i was supposed to go to new york the weekend before i went back to school..one of my civil friends was getting married and i wanted to see everybody else still in the city.., but some bad luck befell me. my flight to new york was at first delayed an hour, and then we all finally boarded the plane only to be told that we need to get off the plane again. when we finally reboareded and took off, we were in flight for an hour when the pilot came on the air announcing that we had some techinical difficulites, something to do with the decompressor/air conditioning, and that we were turning around. when we landed back in shannon, there were fire trucks and ambulances waiting for us, so apparently the problem was a little more serious than i had thought. after waiting another two hours, they finally announced that our flight was cancelled. unfortunately for me, the time they rescheduled the flight for would have meant i'd probably miss the wedding and would have only a half day in new york. so in the end, i just opted to fly straight home to chicago.

berkeley
the first thing that i noticed about berkeley is that people actually wait until the little man lights up to cross the street, even if there are no cars around for miles. living in new york for four years, i picked up the habit at crossing the street whenever there was the tiniest of gaps between cars...sometimes i would have to pick the pace up and run across to avoid those crazy yellow cab drivers. but here, life's a little slower i guess. people actually wait, and i feel like a criminal for crossing the street when the red hand is lit up. oh well.

berkeley's really nice, it's a very pretty campus, and a great place to live as far as i can tell. its kind of weird for me though, because for the past three years i've been coming back to school and i've been so used to meeting up with old friends that you haven't seen all summer, and that isn't happening here, so its a little lonely. also my suitemates are quite reclusive...they're nice, but i only see them when they come out to the kitchen for food. its so unlike my hogan 4A suite where we always used to hang out together in the lounge...hopefully it will become a little more social with time.

but last night was pretty good...i went down to "game night" in the dorm, and met some nice people, and then some of us went out for a drink after. so atleast i know a couple people now. i also went into san francisco yesterday..such a great city. a little hilly to walk around, and by a little, i mean alot, but still how can you not love a city with the perfect weather and the ocean next to it?

yea, i think i'm going to like it here.