So the French test is done. I had to go all the way out to Blackrock on the Dublin bus, which always manages to make me sea sick. For Toronto people, that’d be like UofT getting you to go to their Scarborough campus to write a test... at 10 am. But I did see a bit of the ocean for the first time here, so that’s something. The UCD Business School campus felt like a country estate (it may have been at one time) and I wandered around, having characteristically (even when I don’t know where I’m going!) arrived an hour early, realizing that this test was one of the most important I will have ever written; if I pass, my Masters is completed and I can move on with my life. If I ‘fail’ a third time, I am definitely not returning to UofT (at least in the fall) to spend seven thousand more dollars on the privilege of writing it again, and I don’t know what I’ll do with my life. Either way, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, so that’s just how it is I guess. The test went fine. I wrote it in a giant exam room with two other students writing their own things, and at the very beginning I heard the girl behind me burst into tears. It sounds bitchy, but I honestly thought ‘At least that’s not me!’
I paid my tutor for her troubles the day before. This is how inconvenient my finances have been this week; I get paid on Friday, but my rent is due Thursday (to come out of my Irish bank account automatically). I knew that the one would come before the other, although not how maddeningly close they would get, so I deliberately saved my rent money for this month for the last four weeks, and scrimped and saved wherever I could (I have ate A LOT of Starbucks Paninis, which I get four three euro at work). Then, the day before I went to write the test, UCD emails me to tell me I have to pay them with a bank draft, when I had thought I could just bring my credit card. They love bank drafts over here. Correct if I’m wrong, but I had barely heard of them back in Canada. I got my parents to put money in my Canadian bank account so I could pay my tutor on our last session, and then I planned to go to my Irish bank, get a bank draft, and transfer some money from my Canadian account to my Irish one so the landlords can get the proper amount of money.
Getting back to my room, I couldn’t find my Scotia bank card. It wasn’t anywhere in my wallet or my bag and I started to shake out all my pairs of pants. The last place I had seen it was when I used it that very morning to take out money for the bank machine to pay my tutor. I couldn’t have been stupid enough to leave it in the machine... could I? I ran back to the bank and asked them if anyone had retrieved it. Of course not. The only other place it could be would be if I had dropped it at the cafe I met my tutor at, so I quickly walked to the Moda, which is half an hour from my house. They hadn’t seen it either. I phoned my Dad long distance on my mobile on the walk home. How could I be so scatter brained to lose my Canadian debit card on exactly the week that I needed it! I am not a grown up yet!
I tore apart my room again when I got home. Finally, gave up and phoned the Scotia bank hotline (they had just opened, as it was just 9.00am in Canada), cancelled my card and asked them to send my parents a new one, which would probably take a week. If that wasn’t enough, all the time on hold to Canada used up all my mobile minutes and my phone ran out of credit. So I had to wait around until my parents came on skype. Just as I went to call them, I inadvertently nudged my mouse pad a little and saw a bit of bright red poking out from under it. The skype was ‘ringing’ as I lifted up the mouse pad: NO. I. DID. NOT. As my Mom said hi, I lifted up my ‘lost’ Scotia bank card.
“I don’t understand! I do not remember taking it out or holding it at my desk this morning at all!”
“At least you found it!”
“Too late, though! It’s too late now! I’m such a dumbass.”
After I wrote the test, I treated myself to some fish and chips and sat by the canal for awhile, then went back and had a deep nap. There had been plans to go to a party with Siobhan, but that fell through, so instead I bought a book about Amsterdam (I couldn’t find one for awhile, as I was looking under ‘H’ for Holland, not ‘N’ for the Netherlands) and sat beside the Liffey by O’Connel bridge reading it. I’m trying to get excited for a new city, but fears about the French test kept creeping in. The worst moment, having been disappointed before, will be opening that email which holds my fate. But nothing to do about it now.
I felt the need for some escapism, so I went to see ‘The Proposal’ with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. I love how romantic comedies have gotten to the point where they are so clichés of themselves but still unconsciously so. Mr. Reynolds is dreamy though, and I almost clapped in the theatre when I discovered Betty White played his grandmother. Still, took the Luas home feeling a bit depressed. Really, I should be spending celebratory nights of freedom with friends. I am really regretting not having a group here yet, and I don’t know how to acquire one. Now that the French test is out of the way I will have free time, but I still don’t know how. For the moment, though, I will concern myself with learning about Amsterdam, figuring out what museums slash gay bars to go to, and a location to meet up with Jen and Stu the first time that we all can find without getting lost.
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