Driving through Minnesota

Sunday, 28th August

Today I woke up in Duluth. Megan kindly made me and her friend, Michael, some breakfast. Michael had offered to drive me to Brainerd as he was visiting his family there. Me and Michael had an interesting chat along the way, with topics such as religion (by the way he is a seminarian in Rome), Rome, travelling, economics, politics. I also got to see lots of trees and lakes on the way (typical Northern Minnesota). He dropped me in Starbucks in Brainerd and I stayed there for about 2 hours. It was perfect. They had free wifi and it was very quiet so I could put all my bags in a corner easily. I was happy to be in Brainerd because of the film 'fargo'. It is one of my favourite films and was mostly set here. The accents of the staff in Starbucks weren't have as funny as the characters in the film. (for those who haven't seeing the film, here's a clip - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-XEHwUBubk&feature=related). However I didn't see the famous Paul Bunyan statue as they moved it.

I arranged to meet Eric in Starbucks as he was making his way down to St. John's University for the start of semester. It was great to see Eric again. He had the apparently famous purple van. Only the way, we passed the train above. We arrived in St. John's University at around 5pm. I helped Eric move his stuff to his new room and met his housemates.

The atmosphere was so different from UCC, mainly because almost all students live of campus. There are two campuses, a men's one, St. John's University (next to a male monastery) and women's, College of St. Benedict (next to a female Benedictine abbey). All the guys live in St. John's and all the girls in St. Ben's (although classes take place on both campuses). They are 8 miles apart. It is also a very small school (4000 students between the two campuses) so you are constantly running into people you know. Even I, who only knows about 10 people there, often bumped into people I know while wandering around. The monasteries are actually on the campus, which is interesting and the monks eat in the same place as the students (which is why, I think, the food is pretty good in St. John's).

We ate in the reef at 7pm. It's a lot nicer that the main rest and is all you can eat. This is a good thing if you are hungry but there is no option of just taking one thing from the menu. The cost for guests is $10.75, which is a little steep. But Eric was able to use his card to get me in. Hanna kindly organised a little party with all the Irish crew in her apartment. It was nice to see everyone again. Some of us went to Sal's (the local 'party pub') afterwards. It was a dingy pub/bad nightclub. I ordered Killian's Irish Red out of curiosity (it wasn't too bad). I met some people who studied in Galway last year, who wanted me to sing 'The Wild Rover' with them. I politely declined.