Day Seven - 17/9/2012 - Cork

   Slept in very late, and got more groceries.  After an early dinner of chicken salad, walked over to the University City Cork (UCC) campus for the first time.  We crossed the walking bridge outside our building to get to Grenville Place, which leads to an abandoned building that evidently served as the private residence of George Boole, the inventor of Boolean geometry.  He is widely regarded to the father of computer science.  He was honored for his work by being appointed as the first professor of mathematics at UCC, then called Queen's College, Cork.  Professor has a different meaning in Europe than it does in the US.  A professor is a much more distinguished title given to very few lecturers at a University.  A professor is likely to be the head of their department, with dozens of publications.  We continued past the river to Mardyke walk, and walked west past the Mardyke arena and fields, the athletic facility owned by UCC.  The facility is massive, with an indoor pool and spa, and workout and activity rooms.  There are two main types of student groups at UCC, clubs and societies.  Clubs are sports, which range from the normal sports of football (soccer), American football, swimming, etc, to ultimate frisbee to traditional Irish sports, including hurling (like hockey with a baseball and no skates), camogie (women's hurling), Gaelic football (played with hands and feet), handball (with a wall and ball), and rounders (like baseball).  For reasons I have not yet discerned, the logo for UCC Clubs is a skull and crossbones, and shows up everywhere from sweatshirts to banners on the athletic field.  Societies are what would be called a club in the United States, and also vary widely.  There is a hot beverages appreciation club (which I plan on joining - each meeting has "biscuits" which are essentially cookies).
     Continuing down the road, we eventually came to the Western Gateway Building, which mirrored the modern architecture of many buildings at UCSD.  Around the building were a few small bridges across the River Lee which flows throughout the grounds of the entire campus.  As it was getting dark, we returned home without seeing the rest of the campus.
     On the return trip home, I noticed something very curious about the River Lee.  When we had left in the morning, the river had been very low, near the bottom of its bed, about a meter deep, but now, in the late afternoon, the river had risen to near the top of its channel, casting long reflections of the bridges that once had 3m of bare support poles.  This pattern of ebb and flow has continued itself for the past few days.