What are the odds...?

Less than 5%. I have been alive for 21 years. The Phillies have gone to the World Series exactly once during those 21 years. So of course, the one year that I am away from the City of Brotherly Love, it decides to rub it in my face with a National League Pennant. So basically the city will be going crazy for the next two weeks and I'm stuck 3000 miles away. Anyone have frequent flier miles/$700 they wouldn't mind giving me so I can make the trip back?

In other news, I went to Dublin this past weekend. I must say, that is one wild city. Irish people by nature are just ridiculous, coupled with the fact that the average person probably started drinking at about 4 in the afternoon every day. The one major downside to Dublin is that everything is ridiculously expensive. A pint of beer averaged about $6, so needless to say, I didnt' drink nearly as much as I was intending to, although thats not to say that I didn't have my fair share of Guinness. On a whole, though, Dublin is a really cool city. Pretty much everything is within walking distance, which was nice. We did a lot of the usual touristy stuff, such as touring the Guinness factory. That was actually a really cool tour, which of course culminated with a "complimentary" pint at the roof-bar. I never realized this before, but the beer company Guinness and the Guinness Book of World Records are one in the same. Quite a unique diversification for a beer company, I must say. Some other highlights of the trip include touring a really old Irish jail where a lot of the Revolutionaries who helped shape the country as it is today were once imprisoned. We had the trashiest Irish family behind us through the entire tour, which added an interesting element. Definitely some inbreeding going on there. We took a bus tour of the country/mountains during one of the days. Got to see where Braveheart was filmed. Enough said. Oh, and one of the pubs we went to was called Porterhouse...it was essentially 4 stories of beer. All of the walls were lined with different types of beer, and they even had their own brews. A bluesy classic rock cover band was playing some quality tunes, which made for a good time. They sold a giant stein of beer for 10 Euro which consisted of about 3.5 pints of beer. It was a necessity and allowed me to look down and laugh at all of the beer drinkers with only a measly pint. So basically the weekend consisted of lots of drinking, walking, and sightseeing. Overall, a success.

My British Food and Wine class is awesome. We essentially go into class and listen to the dude talk for an hour, and then eat lots of cheese and drink wines. I've probably consumed over 30 different types of cheeses of the past 2 weeks, which I'm sure hasn't made things very pleasant for the rest of the kids due to some minor gas leaks. By the way, did you hear about the excavating explosions of 1948? They were due to some miner gas leaks.

We watched a movie on the BBC at 2 am last night starring Jet Li called "Bodyguard from Beijing" (in China) or "The Defender" (in US). Absolutely ridiculous. Look it up, as I assure you you'll be in for a treat.

The majority of the flat, including myself, attended a Football game on Saturday. What better way to pregame a football game than by doing a case race at noon? Needless to say, it was an interesting experience. The two teams playing was Fulham and Sunderland, with the resulting score being 0-0. This is exactly why I, and everyone else in America, will never really get soccer. 0-0? At least throw some penalty kicks in there to get some action going. I did have a footlong hotdog on a baguet in the stadium though. No potato roll, but it got the job done.

One thing that I love about these British Professors is that they are very liberal with their breaks during class. They seem to get genuinely upset if they don't give us a break every 45-60 minutes. And the breaks are usually at least 20 minutes to a half hour long. AND they generally go out and buy us food during the breaks. So basically there's nothing better than taking a class about Shakespeare complete with an hour-long intermission where we get to eat meat pies and jaffa cakes. By the way, we're meeting in the pub for that class this week. Be very jealous.

Thats enough for now. I'm going to try to be more diligent with updating...who knows how that will turn out.

Go Phils!!!

If the Phillies somehow make it to the World Series this year, I will be torn between being ecstatic and furious. Of course I will be happy that my team makes it to the championship, but the fact that they had to do it the one fall that I am in a baseball-less country will be quite frustrating. Who even understands Cricket anyways? The good news is that I am able to watch the games at various venues around the city. The bad news is that they start 5 hours late and there are approximately 17 people that give a damn in this city. Oh the sacrifices we make.

We toured Parliament this morning and it was very interesting...no George Clinton sightings though, unfortunately. My recent binge of watching the West Wing over the past few months has gotten me rather interested in politics, so learning about Britain's political system was pretty cool. I've also always been a sucker for history, and despite my love for Ben Franklin and the likes of America's brief historical context, the fact is that it is just that: brief. Britain has faced over a thousand years of turmoil, invasions, political upheaval, and bad teeth, so there's obviously a lot to take in, especially in a building like Parliament. I won't get into the nitty gritty, but their system is very in tradition, which in turn makes it seem rather flawed. Granted, they are getting away from the tradition of the monarchy and into more of a democracy, but I definitely see two main flaws through my limited understanding. The first is that the people don't directly elect the Prime Minister. Britain has a general election every 5 years (or sometime in between...they can just decide to have elections whenever, which is weird) where they people elect the members of the House of Commons; there are currently 646 members of the House, along with 2 political parties, the conservatives and the labor party. Whichever party ends up having at least 324 members, or the majority, for you disinclined math people out there ;-), is then considered to be the governing party. The head of whatever party is the governing party then automatically becomes Prime Minister. So essentially the people vote for the party, not the candidate, which doesn't makes sense to me, especially since he or she has the power to send Britain to war. The other main issue with the system is that they don't really have a good system of checks and balances. Their legislative, judicial, and executive "branches" all fall into Parliament, with certain people actually acting as all 3. So essentially there aren't any solid checks and balances. Sorry for the history/politics lesson, but I just feel like you all should be enlightened. At least I know Madison will enjoy it ;-)

Quick Heroes update: we successfully finished Season 1 and have moved onto Season 2. The only thing that sucks is that the shows that I have saved on my computer have French subtitles, so we never know what they're saying whenever they speak in Spanish or Japanese or whatever other random languages they use. Damn the man.

I have all of my trips abroad planned out and paid for, which is a relief. I'm going to Dublin on October 10th for a weekend. Definitely going to visit the Guinness Factory. Brilliant! Hooooray Beeeeer! Then, for our midterm week-long break (ha! you suckers at Drexel don't get this) we're going to Italy. We'll be there for 10 days, visiting Florance, Rome, Bologna, and Venice. The following weekend I will be going to Amsterdam for 5 days, where I'm meeting up with Jeremy, which should be sweet. And then for the weekend of November 21st I am going to Madrid to visit Kurt in Spain. Gonna see a Bull fight. Sweet. If any of you readers have ever been to these cities and have places for me to check out, let me know. I'm pretty much up for anything.

We learned about these things called Bear Gardens in my Shakespeare class. Basically, to warm up the crowds before plays back in Shakespearian days, they would chain a bear to the center of the stage and make it fight dogs. The people would make bets on how many dogs the bear would kill. Bears that were exceptionally awesome at killing dogs would essentially become celebrities, complete with names and retirements. As inhumane as this is, I have to admit that I would love to see this. As would Michael Vick, I'm sure. Oooo I did not just go there...

I'll leave you all on that thought: Bear Gardens.