Getting into the spirit

Can you tell it's the end of term by the way my posts are dwindling?

Despite the fact that I'm slammed as hell before my trip home for fieldwork and, well, an excuse to GO HOME!!!, I've decided to do a very un-me thing: schedule nonacademic trips.

In one week, we're off to Prague for four days of bone-chilling adventures as we shiver our way through the ancient city and attempt to decipher menus. I thought about learning a few Czech phrases, but that was before I realized "Good morning" takes several seconds to say and contains approximately one vowel.

A four day trip wouldn't crunch my workload too badly...but then, some girlfriends and I spontaneously decided to go to Ireland today, and before I could change my mind, we booked tickets for four days in the beginning of April. I'm figuring at that point, I'll only be three weeks away from going home, which means three weeks before I have to have my proverbial refuse together in order have my pilot study fully planned and turn in work equivalent to 40% of my grade. Hence, I'll need to guzzle all of the Guinness I can acquire anyway, so I might as well go straight to the source.

There's a tiny little voice in my head right now screaming, "What the hell were you thinking???" But then I think, when am I ever going to be able to fly to Ireland again for $80? So why am I worried?

The way I see it, if I flunk out because I actually decided to see something of Europe beyond the Cambridge Bubble (residents' words, not mine), then it was probably worth it. Heh...heh...right, guys? All of us are going stir-crazy from being trapped here for so long anyway (particularly my med student friends in their fifth year of enduring small town oddities). A break will be good for me, after all. One more weekend of enduring screeching undergrads clad in "I can see *all* of your underwear" miniskirs or dodging herds of lumbering tourists trying to photograph an authentic Cambridge student, and I may start acting like an Ugly American.