June 24

Today I decided I needed to get out and enjoy myself. We have less than a week before we leave. Part of me wants to stay, and continue exploring the world. Another part of me longs for home, and those things familiar and comforting. The opera workshop class was having a small scale performance at a little café downtown. It was cute—the café and the performance. I got there late because I had gone with the Bellarmine boys to get some groceries at the Billa before heading over to the café. I felt bad, but it was scorching hot inside. I was satisfied to stand in the doorway and attempt to take pictures in the poor lighting. If I put the flash on, the pictures did not look right. But without the flash the pictures would be blurred. After the show, I sat outside with the guys and talked a bit. We were waiting for someone that was supposed to meet them and go out for dinner. Nobody bothered telling me that was the plan. If I had known I would have bowed out politely. I even asked at one point if it was okay for me to tag along for the night. I wanted to be out and about, but I didn’t want to be alone. Ben said it was fine, so I went along.

We waited about ½ an hour or so before deciding the dude either forgot or had not been able to follow Ben’s poor directions. We walked to a cute little Italian restaurant, and took a seat outside at the cloth-covered tables. We began to order, and the dude we were waiting for—Danny—walked up to our table. Danny’s British, has a wonderful accent, and works at the group’s favorite hangout spot: O’Malley’s. It was amazing he found us. Both parties had given up on the other. He took a seat and we ordered and had a grand old time. The guys told jokes, and I laughed. I did not have any jokes to tell, nor am I good at delivering them. And so I was content to listen. Some jokes were silly; some jokes were odd; some picked on the intelligence of the listener. Those jokes are my favorite: the times “the joke’s on you.”

We stayed late, and finally left around 10 or 11. We headed over to O’Malley’s to “finish the night out properly.” We arrived back at the school rather late, I picked a rose from the vine on the wall of the computer lab. I had wanted to pick one from Day 1. I finally did, but the petals fell off too easily. I picked another, this time handling it very carefully. It hangs from a rubber band wrapped around a thumbtack in my bulletin board over my desk. There it will dry out, only to be thrown out the day I leave. There is no way I can take it with me, no matter how much I would like to—one souvenir that must stay.