Early Examination

It is May already. I wonder when that happened. The days here are rather nice right now, a bit chill, with always the threat of a shower, but of late I’ve found it easy to walk myself to the gym at 10 each morning without becoming hypothermic.

Along the Lee small, white flowers bloom and the leaves give a beautiful green canopy and at low tide I can smell the ocean in the dredges of the riverbed. Two white swans have taken up residence in a length of the river between my apartment and the Mardyke Bridge, their white plumage standing out against the swampy brown of the water.

There are no classes anymore, just exams. A month of stressed students and packed study areas. I have never seen such a collective body of silence as I find crammed into the Q+3 of the library on the rare days when I can grab myself a window seat there. The exams are fairly straightforward; only two essays, 90-minuets, and with a choice of topics so varied I cannot imagine what it would take to fail. My own exams are spaced rather nicely; one tomorrow, one the 20th and one the 27th. After that, well, I don’t like to think about after that. After that I will be leaving this place, but I’m not ready to think about that yet.

Most afternoons are spent in the O’Rahlly Building café with a crowd of now all-too-familiar faces; Maria and Melina, (the Spanish girls), Shane, Niall and Martin (the English lit boys), Debbie and Anne, Heather, Alba, Frank, Ian, and many people who I greet, but with names I can’t remember. Pub crawls still happen at regular intervals, and sometimes just old-fashioned house parties. My free evenings are mostly occupied with reading literary criticisms and tapping away at my keyboard.

For now my only worry is enjoying this last month on the emerald isle without prematurely mourning it. There is time to sit in the warming sun still and hear Shane quip some latin quote, or listen to Melina and Maria chatting away in quick Spanish. To hear more and more about old Irish men in local pubs, jokes about potatoes, or ridicule Joyce.

Or to just listen to the rain.