October 2, 2003

Right now, as I type these words, I am in London, England, which is famous the world over for not being Searcy, Arkansas, where I would normally be typing these words at this time. London, England is a fantastic place to be, full of many overpriced sandwiches and large red buses with minimal concern for pedestrian lifeforms. I will be here the entire semester, so if you were hoping to meet me for lunch sometime, I hope you've been saving your Frequent Flyer Miles.

The trip started out innocently enough. We had the standard, fairly uneventful trans-Atlantic flight. This meant that the flight was horrifically boring. The flight was one and a half hours longer than usual, as a result of a plane-eating hurricane off the coast of North Carolina, which is evidently like some kind of bug-zapper for hurricanes. I would like to say that I didn't notice the additional length of the flight, but that would be heinous lying.

I did actually manage to get some sleep on the flight. It is imperative that you get sleep on the plane, because you are effectively shortening your night from 10 hours to something like 15 minutes, and if you don't sleep you are setting yourself up for some tremendous bleary-eyed exhaustion "the next day." However, if you do sleep, you will be tremendously bleary-eyed and exhausted anyway, but at least you won't have reduced yourself to trying to play license tag bingo with imaginary flying cars or listening to "American Airlines Presents All the Songs From Cats That You Personally Hate" over and over again on the armrest radio.

This is because airline sleep is not like normal sleep. In normal sleep, you close your eyes and lose consciousness and dream and your body gets some time to recover and your mind gets some time to stop thinking about packing. In airplane sleep, you close your eyes and float through some kind of semi-conscious state that isn't asleep enough to get any physical benefit but isn't awake enough to keep you from laughing at whatever Adam Sandler movie the airline is inconsiderately playing for you. Thus, you get no benefits whatsoever from your "sleep," unless leather burn from where your forehead landed on the seat ahead of you counts as a benefit.

You see, I tend to sleep forward, with my head rested on the back of the seat in front of me. It was therefore necessary according to the laws of irony that I sit behind Laurie "I Can't Decide Whether I Want My Seatback Upright or Not" Padgett, because of whom I repeatedly found myself unceremoniously squashed against the tray table. But it was all right after a while, and I was finally about to drift off into sleep, when the captain decided that it was time for morning, and switched all the lights and last week's CNN special report on, despite the fact that the sun was not visible and I had maybe slept for all of 31 seconds. Not that I'm bitter.

So then we were in Ireland, and I was very happy about it, meaning "tired." I was not looking forward to carrying my suitcase for any distance whatsoever. Yup, hard to believe, isn't it? Just two weeks ago, I was in Ireland! And it only feels like 80 years ago!

I can barely remember any of Ireland, in point of fact. I was so exhausted that most of my Irish memories are of calf muscles cramping. This is why I spent so long describing the flight. But you probably want to hear all about Ireland, and I can't blame you. So I will proceed immediately to make some stuff up.

Riding the bus through downtown Dublin, the sun was just barely peeking over the buildings. Just about everybody on the bus remarked that it felt like 7:00 PM or so. But the sun wasn't setting, allowing us to settle in a bed somewhere for a quiet evening of recovery. No, the sun was rising, heralding a new day of walking tours and cramping calf muscles. That is right. Our professor scheduled a walking tour on our first day in Ireland, also known as "Jet Lag Day."

Jet lag is a phenomenon whereby a person's body feels like it's in Central Time (hereafter, the correct time), as opposed to Greenwich Mean Time, which is something like 80 hours before the correct time. So even though the sun and all the Irish clocks and all the Michelob ads were telling me that it was 7:30 in the morning, my body was telling me that it was 1:30 in the morning, and if I didn't put it into a soft mattress RIGHT THEN, it was going to be very cranky. My body is very demanding. I usually do what it says. In Ireland, I had no such luck.

Dublin is a wonderful city, although, as I remember, it's kind of blurry, the sun is all wrong, and there are all these calf pains. We stayed at Trinity University, a marvellously historic university. It was a big, grand place, with lots of Gothic facades, or perhaps Neoclassical, or maybe Doric, and a big bell tower that would ring only for virgins (You guessed it. It never rings). It was stately. It made you feel like you were very scholarly just by being there. I actually felt like I was studying something important, rather than "Biology: the DVD Series that Won't End."

The walking tour was great. There was some walking, and some seeing of old things. There was a tour guide that said some stuff. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Finding food in Dublin is something of an ordeal. We have only two requirements - that it be cheap, and that it be located around Trinity University, sometimes referred to "that place where none of the restaurants are cheap." So we would go from one place to another, standing around awkwardly in Irish pubs, eschewing international fast food joints with unlikely names like "Abrakebabra," wandering around alleyways for hours, and then eventually eating at "Abrakebabra." This was followed by returning to Trinity University to listen to all the other people talk about how they found authentic Irish food* for something like 5 pence and plus they had live entertainment by leprechauns and members of the IRA.

After our first night, I felt much revived and ready to walk, so we all piled in a bus for a lengthy sit-down tour of the Irish countryside. The Irish countryside is very beautiful. At least, that's what I hear. As far as I could tell, the Irish countryside is a large green blur, as seen from a tourbus flying past everything at 75 kph. Our tour guide had plenty of useful information to tell us about ancient Irish tourist destinations that we couldn't actually see from the bus. You can see from the following actual transcript of his tour speech:

"So the Absolutely Gorgeous Irish Monastery was then voted most spectacular and breathtakingly beautiful landmark by the Aesthetics Committee for the Universe and you can see it on the left if you'll turn your heads right after we pass this - whoops, you missed it."

We visited Waterford crystal, the least child-friendly place in existence, as measured in expensive breakable objects per square foot. You can get anything made out of beautiful, expensive crystal in Waterford, including globes, beer mugs, and, of course, dancing bears. No home should be without a Waterford crystal dancing bear.

We learned about Irish history. Pardon me if I'm not impressed. Ireland seems to have the biggest second-banana complex of any nation I've ever been to. The whole country is full of statues of rebel leaders who got quashed, clergymen who almost made Pope, lawyers whose bills never passed, and soldiers who died trying. The symbol of Dublin commemorates its military utility to the English conquerors. The symbol of Dublin is three castles on fire. The tapestries hanging in the Irish parliament hall commemorate grisly Irish defeats.

The only thing the Irish can lay claim to is monks. Yes, the Irish made a lot of monks back in the day. The monks were great. They built gorgeous monasteries that were later converted into gorgeous ruins by the English. They built gigantic, soaring phallic towers. They copied the papers of Judea, Greece, and Rome, and hung onto the classics while the rest of Europe forgot them. This is because, and this is a historical fact, Ireland is in the official boonies of Europe. The reason Ireland kept all the great books is because nobody cared enough to come to Ireland to put a stop to it. So, sure, civilization got a leg up thanks to the dutiful Irish monks. I'm not sure why this is anything to be proud of.

Nevertheless, Ireland is spectacular and gorgeous, and I would recommend a visit to any of you, provided you occasionally stop the bus and get out and look at something. I would also recommend being allowed to drink. I imagine Ireland is a LOT more fun after the traditional 85 glasses of Guinness.

* also known as "beer"