2/25 Ash Wednesday

2/25 shower later fine

Today was the Ash Wednesday which is the first date of the Lent, so we didn't have a meat instead we had a fish for the supper. Lent is the term for preparing for the Easter Day which Jesus resurrected from the dead three days after his crucifixion. It call Ash Wednesday, because remember (O man) that we are dust, and to dust we shall return."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Wednesday

2/24 Shrave Tuesday

2/24 fine

Shrove Tuesday is a term used in Ireland, for the day preceding the first day of the Christian season of fasting and prayer called Lent. Lent, in some Christian denominations, is the forty-day-long liturgical season of fasting and prayer before Easter.

This day is also known as Pancake Tuesday, as it is customary to eat pancakes on this day.
Pancakes and doughnuts are associated with the day preceding Lent because they were a way to use up rich foodstuffs such as eggs, milk, and sugar, before the fasting season of the 40 days of Lent.

So, we had pancakes after dinner today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_tuesday

2/21～2/23 protest against government!

2/21 fine

Many people joined the national protest demonstration through Dublin city centre on Saturday to blame the governments policy of economic recovery plan and also consequense of economic crisis must be ressponsible of mistaken guide of governments policy which had made untill now.

If the government doesn't react for those protests, people are ready for other protests in near future.

Also, this weekend dublin bus are going to held a strike against the cut of drivers due to the economic crisis.

Apparentaly, we are now in a seriously tough days...

personally, mostly I spent my weekend, staying at home, studying, watching movie, and relaxed.

2/23 chinese restaurant

It was first time for me to visit a restaurant in Dublin to eat chinese lunch buffet €8.50. I went with Q and Joe. It was not bad, but we ate too mutch.

Jimmy Chung's
http://www.jimmychungs.com/

2/19 futsal at Trinity College

2/19 Shower



Taka asked me to join their Futsal game at Trinity Sports Centre.
It was good to play futsal with them, but we played about 40 minutes without no break, so I was little bit tired after the game.

2/20 Shiney, blue sky lovely day

After class, I went to Church to meet with other international students. Then I played futsal again with them. We played about an hour and half without almost no break... Too much? but good for my physical and mental health.

In the evening, I went out with Nilgun who is new student from France lives in same house to drink Guinness!

2/18 Speaking lecture

2/18 fine

In the afternoon, Julie gave us a lecture about speaking exam; what we have to be carefull, how does the examiners evaluates, and how can we prepate for it.

Main points will be Grammer and vocabulary, discourse management, interact with partner, pronunciation, and so on.

I personally suppose, important point is don't get nervous, speak naturally as u do in usual life.


I have to study hard for the exam but sometime I succumb to the temptation of taking a nap...

2/17 Solan-bushi!

2/17 fine

Today, I went to Japanese cultural event held by Japanese society students in Trinity college. The main event was performing a Japanese Traditional dancing call "Solanbushi", but not only that but also they introduced us Shodo, Origami, and Sado. I also took part in showing how to make crane in Origami to other countries students, i think i made at least 5?They also served Japanese Sake and plum wine.

I remembered Open House event which introduced Japanese Culture when I was in UBC. Canada.

It is a really good opportunity to introduce our culture and communicate with people from other countries.

Todays' language.

"I love you"

Wo Ai Ni (Chinese)
je t'aime (French)

2/16 Turkish!

2/16 fine

We had a writing test today which was hard for me to write and finish in the time. Anyway good news is that new student from Frunkfult, German call Annethe joined to our class. She only study for two weeks but her English seems very well.

After class, I met with Nazgul, Yersin from Kazakhstan and Bogdan from Ukrainian. Yersin knows some words in Turkish so he taught me.

Gun Aidyn（グン　アィドゥン） - good morning
Merhaba（メラバ） - Hello
Ne var, Ne yok？（ネバル、ネヨク） - what's new?
iyiyim（イーム） - fine
Ben Seni seviorum!（ベン　セィニ　セヴィオルン） - I love you
Sinin adin ne（セニン　アディン　ネ） - What's your name?
Benim adim（ベニィム　アドゥム） - My name is ～

Kazaf
ラフメットゥ - thank you

Actually, it's quite interesting to learn other languages!!

I watched the film "music and lyrics" which cast by Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. It reminded me that I love to watch the film which theme is based on music. It really made me happy and comfortable that I want to recommend you to watch it!!

"Karma Bar"

Not so crowd, comfortable to enjoy drinking and listen to music.

http://www.handelshoteltemplebar.com/bar.html

2/14 Asian Night

2/14 fine

I joined Asian Night at Karma Bar. There were many Japanese WH makers, but also other people such as Korean, Trinity college students, different countries and Irish as well. I met with Colin and Akiko who met in Australia and got married, now they lives in Dublin. It's interesting that two different person from different country meet at third country. It was such a great opportunity to meet with many new people from different places.

2/12～13 Wendy's party

2/12 fine later shower

Last friday we didn't have Nuala's class so today afternoon we had extra class for it.

After class, on my way home, Kyu and Jo asked me to join Wendy's party, so I followed with them and joined to the party. We took 83bus from city centre to Wendy's place. Wendy is doing Aupair at Irish family but her family is now on holiday to Austria for skiing, so she invited us for dinner. Actually, it was her birthday, I didn't know that though... They cooked Korean dishes, they were very nice but it was little bit hot for me. After a while Wendy's boyfriend Diggie and his friend John and also Brazilian girl Felnanda joined us. We drank beer, wine, vodka... It was too late to go back so I decided to stay there, then Chika after she finished her job involved us. We didn't had enough alcohol, so we went to a local bar. We had some drinks and enjoyed small dancing. I think I went to bed around 3am...

2/13 rain shower later sunny

I couldn't hear my alarm, but fortunately Chika woke me up so I could go to school. but I felt really sick today, so my brian was not working well. After class, I came back home and took a nap. I wanted to go out and meet with other friends but I stayed at home.

2/10～11 busy with...

2/10

Went to book store "Eason" to buy exrcise book for CAE exam, but there were several kinds of books like grammer, vocabularies, idioms, phrases... so I couldn't decide which one to buy, therefore eventually I didn't buy any of them instead I decided to concentrate much more to review the lessons what we did.

Way to improve each skills...

Reading: Just read as much as I can, Use exercise book at the school
Writing: Write as much as I can
Listening: Everyday listen to i-pod, watch movies, TV
Speaking: Speak as much as I can
Use of English:Use exercise book at the school

2/11

Send surprise CDs to my friends in Japan.

Watched at "I-SPY" which I borrowed from school, but actually I had seen it before...

Light bulb in my room run out.

2/9 what a disaster...

2/9 fine.

I suppose everyone all over the world must be shocked about the bushfires in Australia...
That's really unbelievable disaster, which might be the worst natural disaster in Australia.

At least 173 people have been killed and dozens more people are believed to be missing as south Australia's deadliest bushfires rage on.

Once natural disasters such as bushfires, earthquakes, Tsunami, typhoon and etc occured, we human-being have no way to escape from it...

I would like to pray for the victims of the disaster.

2/7～8 Phoenix Park

2/7 sunny day

Today, it was a lovely sunny day. so I went to The Phoenix Park (Irish: Páirc an Fhionn-Uisce) which is the largest enclosed urban public park in Europe located 3 km to the north west of Dublin city centre in Ireland. It measures 712 hectares (1,760 acres), with a walled circumference of 16 km that contains large areas of grassland and tree-lined avenues. The park has been home to a herd of wild Fallow deer since the seventeenth century. The name is a corruption of the Irish fionn uisce meaning "clear water."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Park

Fortunately, my house is walk distance to the park, so I walked about two hours. It was really comfortable to walk in the park, that I could refresh myself.

2/8 freezing day...

Surprisingly, when I woke up, outside was covered with snow. Last night was must be very cold. I stayed home and do some stuffs.

2/4～6 Soccer in Trinity College

2/4 still snowing

Nothing much today.

2/5 same as yesterday

I went to Public library in ILAC and also went to EASON in O'conolley street.

2/6 sunny day :D

According to the paper, WINTER 2009 is shaping up to be the coldest winter at Dublin in 18 years. What a timing I came to Dublin haha.

But the most impressed article from today's paper was that Galway-born ultra distance runner call Richard Donovan has become the first person on the planet to complete the ultimate endurance test which run seven marathons on seven continents in a staggering five days, nine hours and eight minutes.

His route was Nova Antarctia,Capetown,Dubai,London,Toronto,Santiago, and Sydney which temperatures ranging from -20℃ to 32℃.

It's incredible! I can't belive what he did!

That reminds me, Japanese comedian Kanpei Hazama is challegening round-the-world by running and a sailing boat, I wonder where he is now??

Regarding myself, today Nuala couldn't come to school, so we didn't have second class. After class, I joined soccer game at Trinity College. Met with Ivan from Argentina. It was bit cold but as long as fine weather , never mind.

2/3 continuous heavy snow...

snow snow snow...

Before mentioning about the weather, when I woke up today, I was shocked about what I did...
Yesterday, I was reading book by holding pen, then when I woke up pen was in my bed without the cap...

Oh,my goodness,,, as u can imagine, color of the pen was stained to the sheet of the bed. What a stupid I am... Nothing can do in the morning so I just left the home...

Same as yesterday, snow covered the ground, but transpotations were seems to be working so I went to school.

According to the The Irish Times,

“This was probably the worst recent congestion seen in the greater Dublin area. Thousands of motorists were stranded both inside and outside the city. The fact that it was caused by a light dusting of snow shows just how ill-prepared the city is for adverse weather conditions. In spite of repeated weather warnings, the city authorities were clearly unable to cope."
※quoted from The Irish Times03/2/09

In other words, lack of the preparation for the snowing condition was revealed.

Unfotunately, according to the forecast, freezing weather would be last for couple more days..

By the way, tonight I talked with host mother about the serious social problems in Japan, such as serious crime, chid abuse, murder of relative, and so on. She told me that these days broadcasts are full of bad news in Ireland as well; that's why she's not buying newspaper anymore. b/c she can't do nothing about the situation and just read about it, it's just makes you annoying.

In my opinion, people are getting selfish, they don't care much about the others. Talking example about people who don't pay fee of school-provided lunch. Usually we have school-provided lunch in primary school. Of course we pay for it, but recently some of parents doesn't pay for it. I don't understand what they are doing. It's totally beyond on my mind.

Anyway, I just have to do what I can do as possible as I can.

2/2 heavy snow...

heavy snow

In the morning when I went outside, snow had covered the ground. I had looked at the forecast, so I had known it's gonna be cold, but I didn't imagine that it's gonna be a much serious day...

After class, I came back to home about 4:00. After I arrived at home, snowfall started again. I was wondering about the transportations.

As I imagined, host mother came back to home late at quater to 8:00. She told me that it took about 2hours to came back from the shopping centre where usually takes about 15minutes drive. Heavy snows has brought to a standstill at road. She told me that this is unusual situation to happen, so the city and people were not used to it. Because of that, roads were dangerous, transportations were stopped.

Then I heard that in London, situation was worse. Some people was brought to a standstill at the airport.

In the weekend I heard that there were much snow in Vancouver where doesn't used to be snow that much. It shows that these freezing climate change covers all over the world...

*extras*

"Alles Gute zum Geburtstag! "
"Happy birthday" in German.

-Singer
Soul of Irland @ Laura Izibor

2/1 relax time

very cold day...

I woke up at 1PM, what a lazy sleeper I am...well, I just spent my day for relax.

Hopefully I can be a witty person.

1/31 too much?!

foggy,bit rain

Got back to my home at 12:00, ate some brunch, did some homeworks, then went out for drinking Guinness again!!

Get together with Japanese, Korean, French, and Italian. I met with Etsuko from Tokyo for first time.

Oh, while I have a great opportunity to meet with people from different countries, I determined to learn other lunguages such as French,German and Spanish.

Well, of course I have to study English hard, but I will learn other languages for fun.

From Youtube I found a insult phrase in French, which used by Asuka in Japanese famous anime "Evangelion."

"Comme tes con! C'est de les foutres en l'air!"

well, I hope it's not a useful phrase...