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.