Tuesday(02/17/2009):
On Tuesday I finally made my way to a Knights of Columbanus meeting. I ended up taking a bus this time, as their Grand Knight Seamus had suggested, so I didn't end up getting lost again. I ended up finding Bru Columbanus (their meeting place) with no trouble this time, as I now understood that the hospital that Seamus had mentioned in his initial directions was the UCC Hospital in far West Cork, and not the general Cork hospital in far East Cork. So being in the right section of the city helped a lot. Bru Columbanus is a pretty interesting place to begin with. It's a three story building, that has around 50 rooms in it that are all fully furnished and functional for indefinite living. See Bru Columbanus is a sort of hostel, which is run, maintained, and paid for by the Cork Knights of Columbanus and whatever donations they receive, where anyone who lives more then 25 miles away from the UCC Hospital, and has a relative in the hospital can stay for €10 for as long as they need. Whether it be a day, a month, a year, or till the world ends. When I made my way up to the conference room of Bru Columbanus on the third floor, I was greeted by Seamus, and a man who immediately told me to call him "Pat" as soon as I called him Sir. "I haven't got the money to be called Sir" he told me. They were incredibly hospitable and eager to have me, and as the other members of the council showed up, I could somewhat understand why they seemed surprised by my presence. There were only about 8 council members that showed up that night, including myself, and I was easily the youngest person there by about 45 years. So needless to say the KOC council of Cork is not as young and thriving as the Knights of Columbus Illini Council 2782, and we most likely won't be having any paintball outings/bonding time with the Limerick Council (Illini Council guys, if you don't destroy Notre Dame I don't know if I can return to the U of I, but I'm incredibly jealous of how much of a good time you'll all have.) The meeting was also a little less interesting then the U of I council meetings generally are, as the majority of it was discussing where would be the best places to put crucifixes in Bru Columbanus. So I felt very proud of Illini Council 2782 as we are very active in the community at the U of I and really do some good work, so props to our great leadership and Grand Knight, Mr. Schallcross. That being said, I was also very impressed with the Cork Council as we took a section of our time at the end of the meeting to read the Gospel reading from that day's Mass and pray a decade of the Rosary before we left. So it was good to get a dosage of Catholic fraternal fellowship, that I'd been missing for the last three months.
Friday(02/20/2009):
Shawn and I had both been missing BWW pretty bad, so we decided to have a wing night on Friday. We went to the English Market and found that one of the butchers stands there was selling 20 wings, that were already marinated in spicy BBQ sauce, for €2.00. So we decided that we'd just buy 100 wings for €10.00! After we picked them up I went to the Mardyke Gym to go rock climbing for a while to get some exercise. We then promptly got out the cooking pans and found that we could only stuff 24 wings on each of them. So we each took a pan, put our 24 wings on them, stuck them in the oven for 50 minutes, turning them once, and then presto! we had beautiful, delicious, hot, fantastic BBQ wings! We heaped them on our plates, stuck the other 52 in the freezer, grabbed lots of paper towels and a beer each and dug in. Giorgio seemed to be both horrified and amazed by the sight of us with each of us having a huge pile of wings that we were eagerly digging into. He ended up getting his video camera and taking pictures of us digging in. He may find it weird to eat 24 chicken wings at once, but Shawn and I find his mayonnaise sandwiches odd too.
Saturday(02/21/2009):
Saturday evening Giovanni, Margherita, Eugenio, and I went to go see Munster play Edinburgh at Musgrave Park. It was really quite exciting, as it was my first real rugby game that I'd ever been to and it was a professional one with two of the best teams! We showed up pretty early, and were able to see the Munster players drive their really expensive cars into the arena. We walked in and were given complimentary Munster flags, which was pretty neat and made our way towards our seats in the South end of the stadium. 
I was amazed though, as the players just walked right thorugh the crowds once they got out of their cars to the locker rooms. You could walk right up to them and ask them for their autograph (Giovanni got one) and talk to them, and these guys are the equivalent to of NFL football stars! There were a lot of kids at the game too. They were all running around with their Munster jerseys with autographs of their favorite players on the back trying to get pictures with them and everything, which was kinda cool to see. Oh, also the stadium had its own bar, and you could bring your beer or whatever you got with you into the stadium. 
Security was ridiculously lax. They didn't even search Margherita's backpack. The stadium was also kinda "small" as the seats were basically just about 10 rows of concrete steps where you would stand, so you were at most, about 40 feet from the pitch, and you could see the players warming up right in front of you.
I was amazed though, as the players just walked right thorugh the crowds once they got out of their cars to the locker rooms. You could walk right up to them and ask them for their autograph (Giovanni got one) and talk to them, and these guys are the equivalent to of NFL football stars! There were a lot of kids at the game too. They were all running around with their Munster jerseys with autographs of their favorite players on the back trying to get pictures with them and everything, which was kinda cool to see. Oh, also the stadium had its own bar, and you could bring your beer or whatever you got with you into the stadium. Security was ridiculously lax. They didn't even search Margherita's backpack. The stadium was also kinda "small" as the seats were basically just about 10 rows of concrete steps where you would stand, so you were at most, about 40 feet from the pitch, and you could see the players warming up right in front of you. The weather was really pretty nice too! It wasn't raining and it was only a little windy and in the upper 30's. Munster ended up beating Edinburgh 28 t0 14, but it was a really exciting match. 
All of the players were in incredibly good shape, and crazy strong, even the wings looked like they were bulging with muscle. 
After the game everyone stormed the field, so Giovanni and I joined 8,000 Irish in running onto the field, waving our Musnter flags, taking pictures, and yelling. It was epic. 
After we got back to South Mall, I video chatted with Eric and Alisha, which was great as I hadn't seen them in a long time! Eric then picked up his computer and carried it around with the Skype video chat still open so I could see Brian, Scott, Nick, Will, Ryan, and everyone else who was down at dinner which was great! (It was so good to see you all, Newman!) So I had a pretty good Saturday.
All of the players were in incredibly good shape, and crazy strong, even the wings looked like they were bulging with muscle. 
After the game everyone stormed the field, so Giovanni and I joined 8,000 Irish in running onto the field, waving our Musnter flags, taking pictures, and yelling. It was epic. 
After we got back to South Mall, I video chatted with Eric and Alisha, which was great as I hadn't seen them in a long time! Eric then picked up his computer and carried it around with the Skype video chat still open so I could see Brian, Scott, Nick, Will, Ryan, and everyone else who was down at dinner which was great! (It was so good to see you all, Newman!) So I had a pretty good Saturday.Sunday(02/22/2009):
Today I've just slept in, done homework, done some music swapping with Shawn, wrote the weekly blog, and now am doing homework and waiting to watch the Oscars online.
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