Library Party... (and random pictures)

Before I continue reporting about my tours and trips, I just wanted to illustrate why this blog is so absolutely not up to date. Let me state a fact: I'm in Ireland for my Erasmus semester. And no, officially, Erasmus semesters do not consist of pub crawls, parties, and travelling only. They are for studying. In theory. In reality, that means: you cannot completely ignore the studying part of it. You can try to minimize it, you can postpone it, you can achieve mastership in the skill of procrastination - but in the end, you have to do your assignments.
I mean, you could also fail everything, but that's not exactly my goal. I want to pass my courses so that I get the credits for them at my home university and don't need to do the dumb intercultural courses they offer instead.
Yeah, and actually, there's no way of forgetting the University of Mannheim (and the courses I should do for them), because they are pretty present at Maynooth University. Anyone remembers my first short post about Mannheim in Maynooth? (Yeah, it's in German, I'm sorry, but it's mostly about the picture.)
Well, seems like they have more than one of these posters... (It's not the same, because the first one was in German.)

Study Abroad Fair, November 12th. Yeah, Mannheim is promoting like hell...

So, well, the basic message is: I have to study from time to time. Since I found out that I cannot really study at home - too many people in the house - I'm spending looots of time in the library. Probably more than I would in Mannheim (the last exam period doesn't really count, that was an emergency). So it already happened that I had to spend full days in the library. Going to the library was the only reason for me to walk around the annoying field. Which actually offered a nice view last week or so.

Yep, it was rather cold at some point in November.

And, no, I don't feel touristy for taking pictures of a field. :-P

Oh, and speaking of nice views: with the proper light, the campus can also look a bit magical. And I'm not only talking  about the South Campus part that you can see when googling the university, but also about the library part.

Okay, admittedly, I felt rather stupid when taking pictures in front of the library.

The glass box on the right is our library.

And since you cannot really see the library on the last picture, here a proper pic of the glass box in which you can spend whole days (they even have a Starbucks inside...):

Taken in September, when I checked out the campus for the first time.

Taken today, I swear! There was actually more sunshine today than in September xD

Fun Fact: In Irish, the name of the university seems to be Ollscoil Mhá Nuad.

During the week, it can be a hassle to find a free computer in this building. But at the weekend, the library appears to be abandoned. Especially on Sundays. Due to deadlines coming closer, I was already forced to spend more than one Sunday there. If you arrive there around 10 a.m., when they open, it looks like this:

Or like this (another Sunday, same time, one level higher):

Slightly scary, isn't it?

My thought when I took the last picture was that you could record some sort of horror film in there. I mean, it's so empty, it's frightening...! xD
I think, on weekends, there are almost no Irish students in the library, because they spend their weekends at home. So, the internationals have the library for themselves and can do their own library party. Okay, to be honest, we really study. But there is at least something that motivates us (except the approaching deadlines, of course). And that is...

... the lunch break!
Phoenix is closed at the weekends, so we had to find an alternative. This alternative is called Coffee Mill, and they serve amazing all-day breakfast and lots of other stuff! And I'm going to post all the food pictures I have now, because I worked hard to deserve this food!

Almost too much to fit in the picture... xD

Anyone hungry now? :-P

I'm almost looking forward to the next Library Sunday...

If you're confused about the time I published this post: I actually typed this at one of the university's computers. Unlike Facebook, the blogger website is not blocked here. :-D