Three years in Galway

Justa few days ago marked the anniversary of my arrival in Galway. I arrive in a storm on a long weekend, with no access to the internet, no idea how to get about the city and no friends or friends-to-be yet. I didn't even realise that daylight-savings had changed so I was living in the wrong time zone for at least two days. Three years on things are much better - instead of a perpetual storm the sky is clear, though it is suddenly freezing cold. There are fallen leave everywhere to stomp on. Though that means there are no leaves left on the trees so it is better to look down than up.

 

Right now it is halloween weekend and the streets are packed both day and night, with children and families during the day and drunk people from mid-afternoon onwards. Right now outside my window they are singing 'wonderwall'. Sometimes I wonder if they would perhaps say less if they realised we could hear them so clearly. 

Today I took the day off work but I should probably try to get back to it tomorrow, seeing as I am planning on coming back so soon. I have the writing well underway but some of the practical work is not done yet. The most likely scenario is that by mid-December I will have the practical work done and a draft of the thesis finished (except perhaps the discussion because that is the hardest bit). When I come back I will first take a break and then finish writing on a part-time basis, and hand in from far away. Sometime next year I will come back for the exam so I think I will arrange it so that I go from summer to summer - it has only be autumn here for a couple of months and I am already so sick of this dreary cold. So fingers crossed that Invercargill has a real summer again this year. On top of the fingers that are crossed for me finishing the PhD without having a nervous breakdown.

Now I am getting tired of the group singing out in the lane so I think it's time for bed. I did housework today (that's how exciting my days off are) so I have clean sheets to snuggle into. I have unplugged the doorbell so that no drunk people pushing the intercom buttons wake me up. Plus the noisy neighbours were given a good telling off by their landlord so they have gotten extremely quiet. So it's definitely time for me to go and get a good sleep. But first I have to change my clocks because daylight savings just ended, like right this minute, and I don't want to be in the wrong time zone again!