By October 5th, I was getting the hang of this whole Cork thing. That Monday, I went to fencing club for the first time. I was totally nervous - I hadn't picked up a blade since my foot surgery the previous November - and I KNEW that inevitably I'd do a million things wrong. Lucky for me, it was still early enough in the semester that tons of people were showing up, which meant that I was able to avoid doing any actual sword-work that day. Instead, after warm-up I did lots and lots of footwork and coordination drills. For me, this was excellent - a chance to get my feet advancing and retreating again without worrying about swords, and a chance to get back into the level of concentration that's supposed to be maintained in fencing. I did fairly well in the coordination and reflex drills and knew that I needed to work on my footwork (at least some things are consistent across sport-lines - I never wanted to move in tennis either!). It was lots of fun and best of all, one of the girls from my early start class was there, so I wasn't entirely alone!
Tuesday was supposed to be Chorale Society, but I had to skip it - having missed an IFSA dinner while on Inis Meaín, I definitely wanted to go to this one, since it would be my first opportunity to meet Maria, our new advisor. Unfortunately, I ran a little late and ended up sitting at the opposite end of the table. It was nice though - I sat with some of the IFSA kids who didn't do early start, who I had not yet had the opportunity to meet. I also sat with two of the early start girls I didn't see very often, so it was nice to catch up. I heard all about their adventures at Oktoberfest, which made me glad I hadn't gone, since they had been so excited about it and had had such a miserable experience.
On Thursday, I again had lunch with Hope - we had figured out that our schedules worked out really well for meeting up for lunch on Thursdays and it was a nice way for me to start my weekend.
Friday, I found myself again on campus, even though I didn't have class. I was meeting Janusz (and Cliona, though I didn't know that yet!) for coffee to talk about the Jewish Cultural Night and Jewish Cultural Festival that Iona (the chaplaincy on campus) was holding the following week. I had met Janusz at the Society Fair, but was nonetheless surprised to actually hear from him. We talked about ways for both Cliona and I to get involved (she was going to help organize and cook and I was going to teach a couple Israeli dances and maybe a song or two), but eventually we ended up talking about the Jewish community in Cork and community feeling towards Jews and Israel in Ireland. Now, it's important for me to mention that Janusz, who's from Poland, isn't Jewish, even though he was organizing both the Evening and the Festival and Cliona, who's actually from Cork, is planning on converting, and currently learning Hebrew. Technically, I was the only Jewish person there. Janusz plays klezmer music, which is how he got involved - he had actually started the festival the previous year and he told us about how he didn't know what would happen to it when he leaves, since what little Jewish community exists at UCC isn't very involved. Cliona and Janusz also talked about the bias they felt Irish media exhibited when discussing Israel - Janusz in particular compared it to coverage in Poland and the States, where they both considered media was more neutral. We ended up talking for a couple hours and I really enjoyed myself - I was definitely looking forward to the events.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Yom Kippur and the rest of that week
Monday I woke up, having decided that I would try to fast. Normally, it's not a big deal, but because I walk about a 5k on Mondays just going to and from classes PLUS set dance and step dance classes, I didn't want to faint or anything trying to fast. I wasn't comfortable skipping classes to go to services, so I decided to try to make 'it 'til at least I got home from classes, at which point, I could see how I was feeling. I made it through classes ok, though I was drinking water.
I went to closing services that night along with one of my flatmates. Again, we went up to the balcony and sat through services. It was really interesting - the man who at home would be the president of the synagogue (I don't know if he has an official title here) spoke during services about the future of their congregation - basically, that they didn't have one. He spoke of a day, not far in the future, when they would no longer have the money to turn on the lights, when they would no longer have even HHD services. What was so shocking to me was the way he spoke of this: as an inevitable fact, sad, but not something that could or even should be fought. I couldn't - and still can't - imagine the Jewish community back home being so accepting of this, but here in Cork, it was simply a sign of the times, of people moving on and leaving for better places. Since Yom Kippur, I've learned more about local opinion towards Jews, which in Ireland, is intimately connected to feelings on Israel. A lot of media attention here comes down in condemnation, at least to some extent of Israel, probably due to Ireland's awareness of its own history. What the man was basically saying was, how could they expect their children or grandchildren to remain in a community where they couldn't be among other Jews and live Jewishly? It seems obvious, but where I would expect people to stand up and fight for their right to stay, the Jews in Cork don't seem to feel a need to encourage the young people to come back - rather, they seemed to encourage them to go forth and live where there were greater opportunities. To me, the whole situation seemed very sad - as though I were witnessing the death of a community, which, I could have been.
Tuesday was the first meeting of Chorale Society, which many of my Copley Court friends and I were planning to get involved in. At rehearsal, we worked our way through 3 songs, one of which was a liturgical Latin piece and another of which was a choral arrangement of Lady Gaga's "Pokerface" - clearly, this was not a group run by Mr. Pressman! It was lots of fun, and we were all excited to be involved - the Christmas concerts in particular sounded like a blast!
Wednesday, I got home from classes and got a call about a movie party. I'm pretty much always game for movie parties and since it was still early, I figured I could go and still get to sleep at a reasonable hour. Of course, I had forgotten that when movie parties also involve having to choose a movie, they don't always start right away. Eventually, Across the Universe was chosen and everyone agreed NOT to sing through the whole thing (half the room was thrilled that the other half wouldn't be singing, the other half seemed somewhat put-out, but oh well), since I still hadn't seen it. We finally started watching the movie, which was truly beautiful, but seemed rather jumbled plot-wise. I got about part-way through before I realized I really should go back to my room and go to sleep. I still haven't seen the whole thing, so don't tell me what happens!
Thursday was sort of a landmark day for me. I had been hanging out almost exclusively with IFSA-Butler people up 'til now, but on Thursday, I went to lunch for the first time with Hope and Quinn, two of my flatmates. I can be kind of shy, to say the least, so it meant a lot that they asked me to come with them and seemed to really want me to go (Note that this was about 2 months ago and sounds rather ridiculous to me now, but that was then, this is now, etc.). I had a lot of fun and felt much less like the awkward youngest kid in the flat (which is only fair, since I'm not quite the youngest). Yay for flat bonding!
Friday, I had asked Kathryn to go with me to pick up my shoes for step class. She and Samm had gone together on Wednesday while I was in class. First, though, I had to print out my papers for Early Start that were due. Kathryn had classes Friday morning, so I was planning to go to campus to print out and turn in the papers while she was in class, so we could stop to pick up the shoes on the way home. As always when technology is involved, things didn't go quite to plan. I got to campus on time (having finished writing my papers that morning), but the first computer I tried to log in on didn't have a working mouse. Fine. I tried another computer, but it took me LITERALLY 20 minutes to log in and then wouldn't let me print out. I tried a third computer and it finally let me print. I was now running behind schedule and I had to find a stapler. I had forgotten that I would need to staple my pages after printing them out and, unfortunately, had left my mini-stapler (which usually lives in my purse specifically for occasions like these) in Los Angeles. I called Kathryn to explain why I was running a few minutes late - and naturally, her class had gotten out early. Lucky for me, it was a beautiful day and Kathryn was reading outside and in no rush. Relieved that for the moment nothing was irrevocably ruined, I dashed to the shop on campus and bought a mini-stapeler, stapled my papers, and dropped them off at Mary Breen's office. With the papers done, I had nothing to worry about related to Early Start until the final exam, which was still a couple weeks away. (In case you were wondering, one of the papers was an adaptation of my blog entries about Inis Meaín and the other was about the subversion of genre in two of the Irish films we watched in class.) It was all done, and I could finally go pick up my step shoes.
We got to the store without a problem. I wasn't sure which size I would need, so I tried on one size which seemed rather large to me and the salespeople. Unfortunately, they didn't have the next smaller size, but they said they could get it from another store if I would just wait 10 minutes, which I agreed to do, telling Kathryn that she didn't have to stay if she had things to do. She didn't so we just hung out looking at the other shoes in the store as we waited for the smaller size to arrive. When it did, of course, that size was too small, so I ended up getting the bigger size - which was the biggest size you could get and still pay the cheaper price for the smaller pair. Finally, a real benefit for being unfairly short - I saved 5 euros!
I went to closing services that night along with one of my flatmates. Again, we went up to the balcony and sat through services. It was really interesting - the man who at home would be the president of the synagogue (I don't know if he has an official title here) spoke during services about the future of their congregation - basically, that they didn't have one. He spoke of a day, not far in the future, when they would no longer have the money to turn on the lights, when they would no longer have even HHD services. What was so shocking to me was the way he spoke of this: as an inevitable fact, sad, but not something that could or even should be fought. I couldn't - and still can't - imagine the Jewish community back home being so accepting of this, but here in Cork, it was simply a sign of the times, of people moving on and leaving for better places. Since Yom Kippur, I've learned more about local opinion towards Jews, which in Ireland, is intimately connected to feelings on Israel. A lot of media attention here comes down in condemnation, at least to some extent of Israel, probably due to Ireland's awareness of its own history. What the man was basically saying was, how could they expect their children or grandchildren to remain in a community where they couldn't be among other Jews and live Jewishly? It seems obvious, but where I would expect people to stand up and fight for their right to stay, the Jews in Cork don't seem to feel a need to encourage the young people to come back - rather, they seemed to encourage them to go forth and live where there were greater opportunities. To me, the whole situation seemed very sad - as though I were witnessing the death of a community, which, I could have been.
Tuesday was the first meeting of Chorale Society, which many of my Copley Court friends and I were planning to get involved in. At rehearsal, we worked our way through 3 songs, one of which was a liturgical Latin piece and another of which was a choral arrangement of Lady Gaga's "Pokerface" - clearly, this was not a group run by Mr. Pressman! It was lots of fun, and we were all excited to be involved - the Christmas concerts in particular sounded like a blast!
Wednesday, I got home from classes and got a call about a movie party. I'm pretty much always game for movie parties and since it was still early, I figured I could go and still get to sleep at a reasonable hour. Of course, I had forgotten that when movie parties also involve having to choose a movie, they don't always start right away. Eventually, Across the Universe was chosen and everyone agreed NOT to sing through the whole thing (half the room was thrilled that the other half wouldn't be singing, the other half seemed somewhat put-out, but oh well), since I still hadn't seen it. We finally started watching the movie, which was truly beautiful, but seemed rather jumbled plot-wise. I got about part-way through before I realized I really should go back to my room and go to sleep. I still haven't seen the whole thing, so don't tell me what happens!
Thursday was sort of a landmark day for me. I had been hanging out almost exclusively with IFSA-Butler people up 'til now, but on Thursday, I went to lunch for the first time with Hope and Quinn, two of my flatmates. I can be kind of shy, to say the least, so it meant a lot that they asked me to come with them and seemed to really want me to go (Note that this was about 2 months ago and sounds rather ridiculous to me now, but that was then, this is now, etc.). I had a lot of fun and felt much less like the awkward youngest kid in the flat (which is only fair, since I'm not quite the youngest). Yay for flat bonding!
Friday, I had asked Kathryn to go with me to pick up my shoes for step class. She and Samm had gone together on Wednesday while I was in class. First, though, I had to print out my papers for Early Start that were due. Kathryn had classes Friday morning, so I was planning to go to campus to print out and turn in the papers while she was in class, so we could stop to pick up the shoes on the way home. As always when technology is involved, things didn't go quite to plan. I got to campus on time (having finished writing my papers that morning), but the first computer I tried to log in on didn't have a working mouse. Fine. I tried another computer, but it took me LITERALLY 20 minutes to log in and then wouldn't let me print out. I tried a third computer and it finally let me print. I was now running behind schedule and I had to find a stapler. I had forgotten that I would need to staple my pages after printing them out and, unfortunately, had left my mini-stapler (which usually lives in my purse specifically for occasions like these) in Los Angeles. I called Kathryn to explain why I was running a few minutes late - and naturally, her class had gotten out early. Lucky for me, it was a beautiful day and Kathryn was reading outside and in no rush. Relieved that for the moment nothing was irrevocably ruined, I dashed to the shop on campus and bought a mini-stapeler, stapled my papers, and dropped them off at Mary Breen's office. With the papers done, I had nothing to worry about related to Early Start until the final exam, which was still a couple weeks away. (In case you were wondering, one of the papers was an adaptation of my blog entries about Inis Meaín and the other was about the subversion of genre in two of the Irish films we watched in class.) It was all done, and I could finally go pick up my step shoes.
We got to the store without a problem. I wasn't sure which size I would need, so I tried on one size which seemed rather large to me and the salespeople. Unfortunately, they didn't have the next smaller size, but they said they could get it from another store if I would just wait 10 minutes, which I agreed to do, telling Kathryn that she didn't have to stay if she had things to do. She didn't so we just hung out looking at the other shoes in the store as we waited for the smaller size to arrive. When it did, of course, that size was too small, so I ended up getting the bigger size - which was the biggest size you could get and still pay the cheaper price for the smaller pair. Finally, a real benefit for being unfairly short - I saved 5 euros!
Monday, November 9, 2009
On my own...the weekend!
Thursday I had no class. That night, Iona was hosting Folk Music Night - basically, a group of people were meeting to go listen to music at An Spailpin Fanach (pronounced Ahn Shpallpeen Fahnak). Kathryn, Emma (one of my flatmates), and I all decided to walk to Iona to meet up with the group, rather than just meeting everyone at the pub (which was closer to Copley Court than Iona) because we wanted to meet people and we KNEW that if we just showed up, we'd end up hanging out amongst ourselves.
When we got to Iona, there were already about a dozen people there. We shmoozed for a few minutes and then began walking to the pub. I met another girl named Kathryn who seemed really nice, her friend Gina, and a guy named Tim. We all found seats together and talked through the first band's set. The second band was louder, which made it harder to talk. By then, the rest of our friends from Copley had shown up and gotten a table together. At the end of the second act, I was told that they were going to get ice cream. I love ice cream - it's nearly impossible for me to turn down, so I said goodbye to my new friends and left to go look for Eddie Rocket's.
We went in completely the wrong direction - Eddie Rocket's was only a block or two from where we were but we wandered all over until we finally got to the right place. (Eddie Rocket's is the European branch of Johnny Rocket's like TJ Maxx and TK Maxx.)Anyways, so the group of us all enjoyed our American experience and then finally headed home.
The next day, Friday, I also didn't have classes (but unlike Thursday, when I normally do have classes, Friday I truly have no classes). My Copley Court friends were planning a White Russian/Mule party, but then we heard that Culture Night was that night, so the party got pushed back. Culture Night is a Europe-wide project to make culture available to citizens for free. It sounded very cool and, I figured, even if it wasn't, I could always leave. A group of us left Copley Court. First we went to watch a book being made, but we couldn't get inside and not everyone was as willing to peep through windows and watch, so we went to the Butter Museum. Yes, you did read that correctly and no, I am not kidding. Cork has a museum all about butter because Cork, once upon a time, was the center of butter sales in Ireland and Ireland produces a lot of dairy. The butter market was a big deal back in the day and now there's a museum that you can visit for 5 euros normally - except on Culture Night it was free! Obviously, this was an opportunity not to be missed. From there, we checked out some dance classes (but didn't participate because they had already started) and went to look at one of the many beautiful churches in Cork - I think it was St. Anne's. At that point, most everyone left and Kathryn and I continued on to the Glucksman Gallery (on UCC's campus) where everything was '80s themed. We put on costumes and took pictures and looked at the art and danced around to the fantastically, awesomely bad music that made up much of the '80s. It was excellent fun, but we were getting tired and knew that if we didn't go home soon, there would be no mules or White Russians left to drink! We turned around and headed home.
Once we were back at Copley, I went to my apartment and made dinner quickly and brought my dinner up to the party apartment. I just barely made it back in time to get a drink and then we all hung out for a couple hours and goofed off. An excellent start to the weekend!
Since I went to sleep so late that night, I slept in the next day and did nothing more exciting than watch Shakespeare in Love with Sophie. :) Shakespeare is ALWAYS a good way to spend an evening, as far as I'm concerned.
Sunday was Kol Nidre and I nervously went to services by myself to the one synagogue in Cork. It's Orthodox but because there are so few Jews in Cork, they ship in people from Chabad in London and elsewhere so that they have a minyan (Jewish quorum - in Orthodoxy, there must be 10 Jewish men present). This means that rather than the services being Modern Orthodox, they were Chabad-style. I sat in the balcony with the other women, which was definitely a new experience for me. I knew going in that I'd be sitting apart, but I expected to be indignant on some level, and I was surprised when I wasn't. It was all so matter-of-fact, that there was nothing to get upset about, almost. Looking back, I'm still kind of confused about it, but I'm definitely glad that I experienced it.
The services were no longer than the services I was used to, which surprised me a little bit. After all, they were Orthodox - surely their services would be super-intense and long? They weren't though, and I quickly figured out why. The prayers were said super-fast (much like when certain cousins of mine read prayers!) and there was very little pause for music in the way that I was used to. The whole service was efficient - there were no English readings, there was no extraneous music - after all, there were no instruments and few people, so there was no way to produce the highly musical services with which I was brought up. It was definitely different and I was left feeling unsatisfied - there just wasn't enough awe for the Days of Awe for me. I wonder if that's because Orthodox Jews are simply more accustomed to praying and so the whole experience of praying was in some way demystified, in a way that it's not for more liberal denominations. Whatever the reason, I just didn't get the approach to praying that they used: it didn't work for me, but I was glad I went, because I really feel like I learned a lot. It was really interesting to hear some of the same nusach (the musical mode of a service) as used at home and made the whole experience feel a little less foreign.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Rest of Mom and Steph's Trip!
Tuesday, I woke up right on time so I had plenty of time to get ready, but I ended up going too slowly and had to run to the bus station - but I still got there first, so it was ok. Grabbed breakfast at the station with Mom and Steph and then we all got on the bus. I spent that ride showing off my pictures of Ireland so far. We got to Killarney in about an hour and a half and were picked up by the tour company. After a brief stop to pick up another party, we went to the tour company building and all got on the bus.
At this point, I'd love to tell you all about how much I learned about Kerry, but I think by now, you know me well enough to know that I have difficulty staying awake. Needless to say, it was a rather restful tour of the Ring of Kerry, broken by photo ops, a stop at a recreated famine-town, and a lunch stop. The only things I really remember from the tour are that the purple flowers everywhere were heather and the yellow ones were gorse, that shamrocks and four-leaved clovers are different, that the "luck of the Irish" is an American thing, and that the sheep have colored blotches on their fleece to mark ownership.
Once we got back to Killarney, Mom and Steph wanted to walk around for a while so we did - in the process, going in different locations of the same store (Quills, I think) 4 or 5 times. (Incidentally, I just saw one of the same stores in Cork, so now I really feel like it was a waste, but whatever lol.). Mom said we were working our way back to the bus station, but when Steph and I decided to ask someone where the bus station was, it turns out we had been moving away from the station, so we started walking back. We passed some lovely homes on the way and tons of B&Bs. We got back to the station with plenty of time to spare, so we looked at the hotel that was next door (it was VERY cool, lots of red and purple velvet, really interesting light fixtures, beautiful floral arrangements - I forget what it's called or I'd link to the website so you could see it) and walked around the mall that was attached to the bus station. Everything was closing, but we got there in time to grab some of the discount dried fruit that they were selling, which was very exciting.
Finally the bus was ready to leave. I think I fell asleep for the bus ride home. We decided to go to this vegetarian restaurant Cafe Paradiso for dinner, but when we got there and looked at the menu, nothing really appealed to me. I'm normally really easy (it's true, I'm not just saying that), but the menu there was really just not for me. By this point, Steph was feeling rather run down and thought she might be getting sick, so she decided to take a cab back to the hotel, where she could get soup and go to sleep. Mom and I ended up back at Liberty Cafe, ordering the same thing we had had the previous evening. We again arranged to speak a little later and then Mom took a cab back to the hotel and I walked home.
Looking at my schedule, I realized that I really had to be on campus Wednesday. Even though I only had one class, I had a meeting for the English department and the Club Fair, plus I wanted to try to register for the seminar. Regretfully, I told Mom that she and Steph would have to go to Kinsale without me - I had to go to school.
Next day, I got up and walked to meet Mom and Steph for breakfast at their hotel. I might not have been able to sightsee, but I could still see them for part of the day! Their hotel did a lovely buffet and then, with their stuff for the day in hand and my backpack on, we walked to campus, which they had not yet seen. I walked them around the main campus, showed them the President's garden, the quad, and the Student Center. The one thing I was most excited to show them was Honan Chapel, and, lucky for me, it was open when we went by. Needless to say, they both LOVED it. The sunlight streamed through the stained glass and everything just looked magical.
After the mini-tour, I said goodbye and went off to find my class, while Mom and Steph went off on their day trip. The building was easy enough to find, but the classroom was rather less so. I had plenty of time though, and found it in soon enough. I saw several people I knew, including Cara, who had been one of my housemates on Inis Meain. After class, I told her about going to register for the seminar class and she decided to go with me, but when we got to the right building, even though we had gotten there within 15 minutes of registration starting, there were already hundreds of people there. After spending about 15 minutes trying to figure out what we needed to do, we both decided to throw in the towel. I met some friends for lunch and then went to the English department meeting. It was very boring and I fell asleep, but Mary Breen was holding the meeting, so I didn't worry too much. When the meeting ended, I went up to her to ask about the seminar class and she said she'd look into it for me, and that I should check in with her on Friday.
With that hope in my mind, I went home to hang out and clean up. I was to meet Mom and Stephanie at this restaurant called Jacob's on the Mall for dinner and they said it was nice so I couldn't just go in my school clothes. I would like it noted that while I was a minute or two late for dinner, I would NOT have been if the restaurant were more clearly marked (the same thing happened when I tried to go again a month later, as you'll see whenever I get around to writing about that.). The restaurant was very cool: bright blue and red furniture with light brown bricks and white washed walls. Art hung from the walls and trees hung in planters suspended from the high ceilings. The food was delicious and we had lots of fun.
After dinner, we went to Clancy's, a local bar, to listen to some traditional music. Unfortunately, because there was a game on, the band didn't start on time and Steph decided to head back early. Mom and I shared an apple crumble-thing and listened to music for a while before becoming too tired. We said goodnight and goodbye and then Mom hopped in a cab and I walked home. They were to leave early the next morning so it was the final goodbye. It was a wonderful visit - I'm so glad they were able to come! - but now that they were gone, I would be really able to throw myself into life in Cork and student activities.
At this point, I'd love to tell you all about how much I learned about Kerry, but I think by now, you know me well enough to know that I have difficulty staying awake. Needless to say, it was a rather restful tour of the Ring of Kerry, broken by photo ops, a stop at a recreated famine-town, and a lunch stop. The only things I really remember from the tour are that the purple flowers everywhere were heather and the yellow ones were gorse, that shamrocks and four-leaved clovers are different, that the "luck of the Irish" is an American thing, and that the sheep have colored blotches on their fleece to mark ownership.
Once we got back to Killarney, Mom and Steph wanted to walk around for a while so we did - in the process, going in different locations of the same store (Quills, I think) 4 or 5 times. (Incidentally, I just saw one of the same stores in Cork, so now I really feel like it was a waste, but whatever lol.). Mom said we were working our way back to the bus station, but when Steph and I decided to ask someone where the bus station was, it turns out we had been moving away from the station, so we started walking back. We passed some lovely homes on the way and tons of B&Bs. We got back to the station with plenty of time to spare, so we looked at the hotel that was next door (it was VERY cool, lots of red and purple velvet, really interesting light fixtures, beautiful floral arrangements - I forget what it's called or I'd link to the website so you could see it) and walked around the mall that was attached to the bus station. Everything was closing, but we got there in time to grab some of the discount dried fruit that they were selling, which was very exciting.
Finally the bus was ready to leave. I think I fell asleep for the bus ride home. We decided to go to this vegetarian restaurant Cafe Paradiso for dinner, but when we got there and looked at the menu, nothing really appealed to me. I'm normally really easy (it's true, I'm not just saying that), but the menu there was really just not for me. By this point, Steph was feeling rather run down and thought she might be getting sick, so she decided to take a cab back to the hotel, where she could get soup and go to sleep. Mom and I ended up back at Liberty Cafe, ordering the same thing we had had the previous evening. We again arranged to speak a little later and then Mom took a cab back to the hotel and I walked home.
Looking at my schedule, I realized that I really had to be on campus Wednesday. Even though I only had one class, I had a meeting for the English department and the Club Fair, plus I wanted to try to register for the seminar. Regretfully, I told Mom that she and Steph would have to go to Kinsale without me - I had to go to school.
Next day, I got up and walked to meet Mom and Steph for breakfast at their hotel. I might not have been able to sightsee, but I could still see them for part of the day! Their hotel did a lovely buffet and then, with their stuff for the day in hand and my backpack on, we walked to campus, which they had not yet seen. I walked them around the main campus, showed them the President's garden, the quad, and the Student Center. The one thing I was most excited to show them was Honan Chapel, and, lucky for me, it was open when we went by. Needless to say, they both LOVED it. The sunlight streamed through the stained glass and everything just looked magical.
After the mini-tour, I said goodbye and went off to find my class, while Mom and Steph went off on their day trip. The building was easy enough to find, but the classroom was rather less so. I had plenty of time though, and found it in soon enough. I saw several people I knew, including Cara, who had been one of my housemates on Inis Meain. After class, I told her about going to register for the seminar class and she decided to go with me, but when we got to the right building, even though we had gotten there within 15 minutes of registration starting, there were already hundreds of people there. After spending about 15 minutes trying to figure out what we needed to do, we both decided to throw in the towel. I met some friends for lunch and then went to the English department meeting. It was very boring and I fell asleep, but Mary Breen was holding the meeting, so I didn't worry too much. When the meeting ended, I went up to her to ask about the seminar class and she said she'd look into it for me, and that I should check in with her on Friday.
With that hope in my mind, I went home to hang out and clean up. I was to meet Mom and Stephanie at this restaurant called Jacob's on the Mall for dinner and they said it was nice so I couldn't just go in my school clothes. I would like it noted that while I was a minute or two late for dinner, I would NOT have been if the restaurant were more clearly marked (the same thing happened when I tried to go again a month later, as you'll see whenever I get around to writing about that.). The restaurant was very cool: bright blue and red furniture with light brown bricks and white washed walls. Art hung from the walls and trees hung in planters suspended from the high ceilings. The food was delicious and we had lots of fun.
After dinner, we went to Clancy's, a local bar, to listen to some traditional music. Unfortunately, because there was a game on, the band didn't start on time and Steph decided to head back early. Mom and I shared an apple crumble-thing and listened to music for a while before becoming too tired. We said goodnight and goodbye and then Mom hopped in a cab and I walked home. They were to leave early the next morning so it was the final goodbye. It was a wonderful visit - I'm so glad they were able to come! - but now that they were gone, I would be really able to throw myself into life in Cork and student activities.
Details, details, details: Friday, Sept. 18th - Monday, Sept. 21st
Yes, I'm even further behind. I know. A regular blogger, I am not, but here it is - the LONG awaited update! Rather than making you wait longer for a giant update, here is a few days' worth while I work on the next bit!
September 18th, I got up and promptly began running late. Clearly, running behind is something of a chronic condition with me - one might even call it congenital, since I was actually born 5 days after my due date - but it was ok that I was late Friday, because there was really only one thing I had to do that day: go to the Academic Walkabout. Now, I really didn't know what the academic walkabout was, but my teacher Mary Breen recommended it very highly.
Turns out, the Academic Walkabout was a lot like the fair they have at IU during Welcome Week for the College of Arts and Sciences: little booths for each department where visiting students and new students can ask questions about classes and expectations. Useful, but not something that took up very much time. After 45 minutes, I'd talked to everyone there that I needed to, asked all the questions I had come up with, and was very ready to leave - the room was packed and hectic and I just wanted to go back to sleep (surprise, surprise).
I spent the rest of that day and part of Saturday working on figuring out my schedule for the semester. This was a harder task than expected because the class schedules work so differently here than they do at home. Whereas at home you might have an English class 10-10:50 MWF and a history class TuTh 2:15-3:30, here in Ireland, just you might have a class start at 2:00 on Monday and the same class again on Tuesday at 4:00. There is no consistency in the timing of classes or even of the classrooms, which makes keeping track of what class you have next or where that class is being held rather more complicated than it is at home. (My friends and my own confusion about our schedules continued far later into the semester than it would at home too - just this past week, I almost texted Sophie to ask whether our class started at 12 or 1 before remembering that she had texted me with the EXACT SAME QUESTION last week and I had known the answer then so I should know it now - 1 o'clock.) As far as I knew, I was allowed to take 30 UCC credits (equal to about 15 IU credits) and that academic class was worth 5 credits, but what to take?? I am somewhat notorious for getting overly excited when planning out my semester schedule, so I was very serious in making my decisions.
The first thing I did was pull up an Excel spreadsheet template I made when I started college with all the class times and days plotted out. Each semester I save a copy as Fall (or Spring) 2009 (or whatever year is is). As I select classes, I plug them into my sheet to check for overlaps and commute problems. Given the randomness of the class times here, this was super-important and helped me spot all kinds of potential problems in my schedule.
Eventually, my class schedule was semi-decided. I registered online for my two classes in the music school. I was very excited about them - a couple of my friends were also going to be taking them and apart from that, they just sounded like fun. Who wouldn't want to take Irish Step Dancing (think Riverdance for complete beginners) and Irish Set Dancing (basically Irish square dancing)?? I was also going to take Celtic Literature through the Celtic Civilization dept. (looking at the major myth and saga cycles in Irish tradition), Literatures in Modern Ireland (with part of the class focusing on the development of the Irish theatre and part looking at stories and things - I think, we haven't gotten to that part yet!), and European Imperialism 1450-1750 (guess what that's about?). I really wanted to take a seminar called Fallen Angels: Depictions of Satan in Text and Art, but I wasn't sure if I was allowed to yet, so I picked a different class that I could take in case the seminar didn't work out. I was really hoping for the seminar though, because the class size for seminars is never more than 15 people and the class itself is worth two classes, so if I couldn't take it, I'd be under 30 credits even with the other class I'd picked.
There was nothing else I could do though, since it was the weekend and offices were closed so Sunday I put aside all my scheduling craziness to join everyone in town (literally all of Cork) in cheering on "our" team in the GAA finals against Kerry. My friends and I, all in our Cork red and white, left Copley Court around 1:30 to find a pub where we could all sit down and watch the game. Our first few attempts were unsuccessful, but eventually we made it to Art McBrides, which was still fairly empty, since the game didn't start 'til around 3:30. Now, before coming to Cork, the one pub I had decided I HAD to go to was called the Thirsty Scholar. Upon arriving in Cork, I learned that the Thirsty Scholar had unfortunately been renamed Art McBrides(I still don't know why). We grabbed a table big enough for all of us (I think we were 8 that day) and settled in with our pints. Shortly before the game started, we made a run to pick up sandwiches, but besides that, we all watched the game the whole time. All except for me - because even though it was noisy in the pub, what with the Cork supporters cheering on our boys and the Kerry invaders cheering on their team, I fell asleep at the pub.
Despite our earnest cheering, the Kerry supporters overpowered us, as did their team. With the game over, we split up. Some went back home while others of us decided to check out the céilidh (pronounced KAY-lee) that was supposed to take place. A céilidh is basically a set dance/traditional music extravaganza-thing. After waiting around for about 40 minutes in the cold, only to learn that it wasn't going to start for another 40 minutes however, we called it a day and went home. School started the next day and we didn't want to be late!!
Monday morning, I woke up, got dressed and dashed off to Literature in Modern Ireland. I got off to a great start: I wasn't late, I knew where the building was, and Sophie was in my first class. Less great was the fact that the instructor didn't show up and after half an hour, we all left. This turned out to be a VERY good thing because although I left right away to get to step dancing, I only got there with ten minutes to spare. Here is a map of Cork with my route to school from Copley Court and from school to the music school where the dance classes are held back-to-back: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Ireland+(Copley+Court+Student+Village)&daddr=Donovan+Rd+to:122+Sunday%27s+Well+Rd,+Cork,+Ireland+(St.+Vincents)&hl=en&geocode=FWnbFwMdLs9-_yGA6E5Qga2IzQ%3BFe_TFwMdHnd-_w%3BFZXsFwMdPnN-_yG3FFTBB7VuPA&mra=pr&dirflg=w&sll=51.896754,-8.48917&sspn=0.015333,0.045447&ie=UTF8&ll=51.896754,-8.475523&spn=0.015333,0.045447&z=15. The map won't show my actual route to the music school because it doesn't have the walking path and walking bridge that I take on it, but the distance traveled is equivalent. Suffice to say, it's a twenty minute walk that I have 5 minutes to do every Monday. Except for that first Monday, I have been 15 minutes late every week. Luckily, Peggy, who teaches both dance classes, also offers an optional 1-hour class after set dancing (which is immediately after step dancing) for going over material. She said that as long as I stay for that (which my friends and I all do anyways because we need the help!), she doesn't mind my being late.
Anyways, so I muddled my way to the music building, found the classroom and we immediately began dancing. No easing us in for Peggy! We all decided that as long as Peggy can dance and teach dance for three hours, we should be able to dance for three hours. She is a little old woman (easily in her late 70s and probably older) who always wears the same dress made out of royal blue fabric with green gemstones depicted in the fabric. She's adorable and we all love her to bits - we just wish she'd teach slower!
Step dancing was unlike anything I remember doing (although I'm assured by my family that I did take tap at one point and I vaguely remember being told to put my tap shoes on outside so I didn't scratch the floors inside), but set dancing was much easier going. Where step dancing is all about placement and finesse, set dancing is all about having fun and just getting the basic steps right - a welcome break between our first hour of step dancing and our extra class, usually step dancing too.
From dance, I walked back to campus to meet Sophie for lunch before my next class, European Imperialism.... Finally, a normal first day of class: we got handed reading lists, went over expectations, and summarized the material that we were to learn. Best of all, we were let out early - something I normally object to (if I am paying for an hour of class, I want to be taught for an hour, not 40 minutes!), but since I was still feeling grubby from dance, I wasn't going to complain!!
After class (which my flatmate Teddy was also in), I walked home, anxious to take a shower and clean up before meeting my mom and her best friend Stephanie, who were arriving in Cork that day to visit for a few days. Mere moments after walking in the door, my cell phone rang. It was my mom, telling me to come over to their hotel. There was just one problem - I was sweaty and gross, had just gotten home, and their hotel was right by campus!! I did NOT want to walk all the way back up the hill to campus either sweaty as I was or after showering. After I explained the situation to them, my mom and Stephanie decided to walk to town where I would meet them after quickly cleaning up.
Naturally, rather than meeting them where I was supposed to, I ran a little bit late and met up with them right near my building. They were carrying a shopping bag full of goodies for me (dried apricots, Throat Coat, my favorite kind of cough drops, and other anti-sickness things), so I suggested going by my flat to drop off my stuff, so they could see where I was living. Both were pleasantly surprised by how nice our building is and neither were surprised by the.... disorder of my room, shall we say?
From there, I took them all over City Centre. We went to the English Market and to Tesco's (the regular market). We walked up and down the little streets, browsed at the boutiques and had a lovely time, but I was getting hungry. The concierge at their hotel had told them about a restaurant on Washington St. called Liberty Grill that was supposed to be good, so we went there for dinner. Steph got a salad off the menu, mom got a salad that she ordered specially, and I got chicken - and everything was delicious. Mom was so excited about the salad dressing that came with her special salad that she asked for, and received, the recipe.
After dinner, we split up, still unsure quite what we'd be doing the next day. Mom and Steph walked back to their hotel to discuss options with the concierge and I went home. After giving them some time to work everything out, I called them and we decided to go on a Ring of Kerry tour the next day. Although I hate skipping class, they were only going to be in Cork for a little while and I wanted to make the most of it. We agreed to meet at the bus station the next morning to catch the bus to Killarney, where the tour began. We had a big day ahead of us!
September 18th, I got up and promptly began running late. Clearly, running behind is something of a chronic condition with me - one might even call it congenital, since I was actually born 5 days after my due date - but it was ok that I was late Friday, because there was really only one thing I had to do that day: go to the Academic Walkabout. Now, I really didn't know what the academic walkabout was, but my teacher Mary Breen recommended it very highly.
Turns out, the Academic Walkabout was a lot like the fair they have at IU during Welcome Week for the College of Arts and Sciences: little booths for each department where visiting students and new students can ask questions about classes and expectations. Useful, but not something that took up very much time. After 45 minutes, I'd talked to everyone there that I needed to, asked all the questions I had come up with, and was very ready to leave - the room was packed and hectic and I just wanted to go back to sleep (surprise, surprise).
I spent the rest of that day and part of Saturday working on figuring out my schedule for the semester. This was a harder task than expected because the class schedules work so differently here than they do at home. Whereas at home you might have an English class 10-10:50 MWF and a history class TuTh 2:15-3:30, here in Ireland, just you might have a class start at 2:00 on Monday and the same class again on Tuesday at 4:00. There is no consistency in the timing of classes or even of the classrooms, which makes keeping track of what class you have next or where that class is being held rather more complicated than it is at home. (My friends and my own confusion about our schedules continued far later into the semester than it would at home too - just this past week, I almost texted Sophie to ask whether our class started at 12 or 1 before remembering that she had texted me with the EXACT SAME QUESTION last week and I had known the answer then so I should know it now - 1 o'clock.) As far as I knew, I was allowed to take 30 UCC credits (equal to about 15 IU credits) and that academic class was worth 5 credits, but what to take?? I am somewhat notorious for getting overly excited when planning out my semester schedule, so I was very serious in making my decisions.
The first thing I did was pull up an Excel spreadsheet template I made when I started college with all the class times and days plotted out. Each semester I save a copy as Fall (or Spring) 2009 (or whatever year is is). As I select classes, I plug them into my sheet to check for overlaps and commute problems. Given the randomness of the class times here, this was super-important and helped me spot all kinds of potential problems in my schedule.
Eventually, my class schedule was semi-decided. I registered online for my two classes in the music school. I was very excited about them - a couple of my friends were also going to be taking them and apart from that, they just sounded like fun. Who wouldn't want to take Irish Step Dancing (think Riverdance for complete beginners) and Irish Set Dancing (basically Irish square dancing)?? I was also going to take Celtic Literature through the Celtic Civilization dept. (looking at the major myth and saga cycles in Irish tradition), Literatures in Modern Ireland (with part of the class focusing on the development of the Irish theatre and part looking at stories and things - I think, we haven't gotten to that part yet!), and European Imperialism 1450-1750 (guess what that's about?). I really wanted to take a seminar called Fallen Angels: Depictions of Satan in Text and Art, but I wasn't sure if I was allowed to yet, so I picked a different class that I could take in case the seminar didn't work out. I was really hoping for the seminar though, because the class size for seminars is never more than 15 people and the class itself is worth two classes, so if I couldn't take it, I'd be under 30 credits even with the other class I'd picked.
There was nothing else I could do though, since it was the weekend and offices were closed so Sunday I put aside all my scheduling craziness to join everyone in town (literally all of Cork) in cheering on "our" team in the GAA finals against Kerry. My friends and I, all in our Cork red and white, left Copley Court around 1:30 to find a pub where we could all sit down and watch the game. Our first few attempts were unsuccessful, but eventually we made it to Art McBrides, which was still fairly empty, since the game didn't start 'til around 3:30. Now, before coming to Cork, the one pub I had decided I HAD to go to was called the Thirsty Scholar. Upon arriving in Cork, I learned that the Thirsty Scholar had unfortunately been renamed Art McBrides(I still don't know why). We grabbed a table big enough for all of us (I think we were 8 that day) and settled in with our pints. Shortly before the game started, we made a run to pick up sandwiches, but besides that, we all watched the game the whole time. All except for me - because even though it was noisy in the pub, what with the Cork supporters cheering on our boys and the Kerry invaders cheering on their team, I fell asleep at the pub.
Despite our earnest cheering, the Kerry supporters overpowered us, as did their team. With the game over, we split up. Some went back home while others of us decided to check out the céilidh (pronounced KAY-lee) that was supposed to take place. A céilidh is basically a set dance/traditional music extravaganza-thing. After waiting around for about 40 minutes in the cold, only to learn that it wasn't going to start for another 40 minutes however, we called it a day and went home. School started the next day and we didn't want to be late!!
Monday morning, I woke up, got dressed and dashed off to Literature in Modern Ireland. I got off to a great start: I wasn't late, I knew where the building was, and Sophie was in my first class. Less great was the fact that the instructor didn't show up and after half an hour, we all left. This turned out to be a VERY good thing because although I left right away to get to step dancing, I only got there with ten minutes to spare. Here is a map of Cork with my route to school from Copley Court and from school to the music school where the dance classes are held back-to-back: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Ireland+(Copley+Court+Student+Village)&daddr=Donovan+Rd+to:122+Sunday%27s+Well+Rd,+Cork,+Ireland+(St.+Vincents)&hl=en&geocode=FWnbFwMdLs9-_yGA6E5Qga2IzQ%3BFe_TFwMdHnd-_w%3BFZXsFwMdPnN-_yG3FFTBB7VuPA&mra=pr&dirflg=w&sll=51.896754,-8.48917&sspn=0.015333,0.045447&ie=UTF8&ll=51.896754,-8.475523&spn=0.015333,0.045447&z=15. The map won't show my actual route to the music school because it doesn't have the walking path and walking bridge that I take on it, but the distance traveled is equivalent. Suffice to say, it's a twenty minute walk that I have 5 minutes to do every Monday. Except for that first Monday, I have been 15 minutes late every week. Luckily, Peggy, who teaches both dance classes, also offers an optional 1-hour class after set dancing (which is immediately after step dancing) for going over material. She said that as long as I stay for that (which my friends and I all do anyways because we need the help!), she doesn't mind my being late.
Anyways, so I muddled my way to the music building, found the classroom and we immediately began dancing. No easing us in for Peggy! We all decided that as long as Peggy can dance and teach dance for three hours, we should be able to dance for three hours. She is a little old woman (easily in her late 70s and probably older) who always wears the same dress made out of royal blue fabric with green gemstones depicted in the fabric. She's adorable and we all love her to bits - we just wish she'd teach slower!
Step dancing was unlike anything I remember doing (although I'm assured by my family that I did take tap at one point and I vaguely remember being told to put my tap shoes on outside so I didn't scratch the floors inside), but set dancing was much easier going. Where step dancing is all about placement and finesse, set dancing is all about having fun and just getting the basic steps right - a welcome break between our first hour of step dancing and our extra class, usually step dancing too.
From dance, I walked back to campus to meet Sophie for lunch before my next class, European Imperialism.... Finally, a normal first day of class: we got handed reading lists, went over expectations, and summarized the material that we were to learn. Best of all, we were let out early - something I normally object to (if I am paying for an hour of class, I want to be taught for an hour, not 40 minutes!), but since I was still feeling grubby from dance, I wasn't going to complain!!
After class (which my flatmate Teddy was also in), I walked home, anxious to take a shower and clean up before meeting my mom and her best friend Stephanie, who were arriving in Cork that day to visit for a few days. Mere moments after walking in the door, my cell phone rang. It was my mom, telling me to come over to their hotel. There was just one problem - I was sweaty and gross, had just gotten home, and their hotel was right by campus!! I did NOT want to walk all the way back up the hill to campus either sweaty as I was or after showering. After I explained the situation to them, my mom and Stephanie decided to walk to town where I would meet them after quickly cleaning up.
Naturally, rather than meeting them where I was supposed to, I ran a little bit late and met up with them right near my building. They were carrying a shopping bag full of goodies for me (dried apricots, Throat Coat, my favorite kind of cough drops, and other anti-sickness things), so I suggested going by my flat to drop off my stuff, so they could see where I was living. Both were pleasantly surprised by how nice our building is and neither were surprised by the.... disorder of my room, shall we say?
From there, I took them all over City Centre. We went to the English Market and to Tesco's (the regular market). We walked up and down the little streets, browsed at the boutiques and had a lovely time, but I was getting hungry. The concierge at their hotel had told them about a restaurant on Washington St. called Liberty Grill that was supposed to be good, so we went there for dinner. Steph got a salad off the menu, mom got a salad that she ordered specially, and I got chicken - and everything was delicious. Mom was so excited about the salad dressing that came with her special salad that she asked for, and received, the recipe.
After dinner, we split up, still unsure quite what we'd be doing the next day. Mom and Steph walked back to their hotel to discuss options with the concierge and I went home. After giving them some time to work everything out, I called them and we decided to go on a Ring of Kerry tour the next day. Although I hate skipping class, they were only going to be in Cork for a little while and I wanted to make the most of it. We agreed to meet at the bus station the next morning to catch the bus to Killarney, where the tour began. We had a big day ahead of us!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
September 16th, continued...
Sophie, Elle and I continued to walk. I was falling behind and looking at every little thing that caught my attention. This is fairly typical of me when I walk - if I'm not running late somewhere, chances are I'm not moving very quickly because I'm stopping to examine whatever has caught my attention. Anyways, I guess I fell into an unconscious pattern because I started humming and then found myself singing - at which point Elle turned around to ask if I was in fact singing. She seemed rather bemused, but I always sing when I walk - particularly if I'm alone. Walking around campus in Bloomington or to temple at home, I'm almost always found with my iPod on, singing along. Like talking with my hands, it's something I don't really notice when I'm doing it.
Eventually, our little train ended up by the shore. We found a pseudo staircase to take us down to the beach and descended. Sophie waded into the water, since she was wearing her rainboots. I hung back. The ocean and I, well, we're not exactly best buddies. I think it's a combination of being knocked over by waves too many times as a child and unpleasant memories of being covered in sand after a day at the beach. I was perfectly content to just take pictures of Sophie playing in the little waves and Elle looking for seashells. It was a beautiful beach: all rocks, but smooth, not jagged like back home, just shelves of limestone, I think. The water was clear and genuinely blue, the sun was shining, and I don't think any of us could quite believe that we were in Ireland, land of rain and clouds.
After hanging out there for a while, we continued to meander on the coast, drawing ever closer to the illusive windmills. We clambered over rocks and boulders for what felt like forever - though we ALL agreed that we'd rather climb over rocks than have to avoid the rather giant piles of manure we'd dealt with on the paths earlier that day. Once we reached the windmills, we all agreed that we wanted to head back. We'd walked all day and were just wiped out. The problem was, since we were no longer on a path, we didn't have an obvious route to get back to town. The windmills were in a pasture of their own, but we were reluctant to walk through it, since we weren't sure how safe that would be. We just had to keep on walking 'til we found a path.
About 15 minutes later, we saw a man playing with his dog - and the road where he'd parked his car! Surely the road the car had taken would get us back to a place we'd recognize enough to find our way home. We set off. After a while, we heard voices behind us. Sound on the island travels really far - if a dog barked, we had no way of knowing if it was the dog down the street or clear across the island. There was just no noise - too few cars to produce much sound pollution and nothing else that would. Ever the sucker and too curious for my own good, I turned around. Two girls were behind us, waving. Naturally, I couldn't tell who they were, but Elle could. The girls were from our class, but they weren't exactly our favorite people. It would have been rude to keep walking and ignore them, so we stopped and waited for them to catch up with us. As our enlarged group continued to walk, they told us about their experience so far and we told them how much we were enjoying ourselves - how Moira was so sweet and the house was lovely, etc.
Eventually, we came to a fork in the road. A hill stood between us and a clear view of the rest of the island, so we didn't know which way to go. My contribution to the decision making consisted solely of a rather lame allusion along the lines of, two roads diverged, and I took the one less traveled. Unfortunately, as Sophie said, neither looked particularly well-traveled. After all, it's not like there's a lot of traffic there! Sophie wanted to go the smaller pathway and the other girls wanted to go on the paved road. I was feeling pretty well-oriented and thought that the paved road would take us closer to where we wanted to be - and I was tired enough by then to just want to get back and take a little nap before dinner - but I didn't like the idea of Sophie going on the other way alone. Clearly Minnesinger trips had instilled in me the value of traveling with a buddy. She insisted she'd be fine, though, and told me I should go the other way, if I wanted, so I gave her my cell phone to have so that she could call Elle when she got back or if she needed to reach us or anything and then we split up.
We walked for maybe another 20 minutes before coming to the main road, at which point Elle and I left the other two girls to make their way to the house they were staying at while we went back to Moira's. Once back, I made use of the slightly sketchy shower downstairs and promptly pulled on pjs and fell asleep after only reading a few pages of Tarry Flynn.
Dinner that night was roast lamb with boiled potatoes and steamed carrots and soup, plus the ever-present brown bread, butter and jam. Knowing what I knew about the chickens, I couldn't help but think about the sheep we'd seen earlier, but oddly enough, this didn't disturb me as much as I thought it would. The sheep I had seen were outdoors in their pastures, soaking in the sunshine and generally living a pretty good life. It seemed to me that it was a more honorable way to eat meat than simply to buy it at the supermarket, without giving a thought to how it got there or where it came from.
After dinner, we all departed for the pub. Our last night on the island, we were determined to go out and meet locals - but that just didn't happen. Instead, our class showed up in bits and pieces and mixed and mingled with each other, to the consternation of everyone else at the pub who was trying to watch the soccer game on tv. Oh well. I think we all had a good time - we played random drinking games and card games and eventually we all went home and fell asleep. After walking all day, I don't think there was a single one of us who wasn't exhausted.
The next morning, there seemed to be a feeling of some urgency among the seven of us in our house. We had to see everything - we were leaving that afternoon, so we were running out of time. Straightaway after breakfast, we headed over to the knitwear factory, but the shop wasn't closed. Inis Meaín, we had heard, was famous for it's woven products and we all wanted a souvenir. Since it wouldn't open for several hours, we decided to go see the fort. The other four girls had been told at the general store that the only way to get there was to go through the pastures so over the fence we went.
When we got to the fort, we encountered a small problem. We couldn't see anyway in, besides the rather scary looking almost-staircase. We tried walking around the fort, but we couldn't get all the way around before the path dropped off. Up the staircase appeared to be the only way in from where we were. We went up carefully one by one. At the top of the stairs, we had to climb a small wall to get to the top of the fort. It wasn't exactly safe (not exactly dangerous either, don't worry, anyone), but we didn't have any problems and we did manage to get in the fort, which was all that really mattered to us at the time. Once inside, we could see the actual entrance on the opposite side of the fort. We just sat around in the sun (the weather was beautiful that day) and explored the fort (which looked more like an amphitheater than anything else). When we decided to head back, we went out the real exit in the company of an older Irish gentleman who had arrived at the fort some time after us. He too was visiting Inis Meaín for the first time. We wandered back to Moira's.
At that point, the 7 of us split back up again, This time, Sophie stayed at the house to hang out, Elle, Margaret and I went back to the factory, and the other three girls wandered off. We got there a few minutes too early, but shortly afterwards, a woman arrived and opened the shop. Everything there was beautiful, but very expensive (if you want to look for yourselves, this is their website: http://www.inismeain.ie/en/knitting/products.html ). Everything was soft and warm. The fabric colors were all rich and earthy. We wandered around, finally noticing three boxes on the floor. The boxes contained the mistakes: articles of clothing that were in some way defective. I have enough shoppers in my family to know what that means - discounts. Sure enough, I found two hats that were perfectly fine for my purposes, one of which I bought (green) and the other, Margaret bought (grey). A bargain to be proud of: €5 instead of €25!
We got back in time for lunch. Egg salad, jam and butter, brown bread and white bread, leftover chicken... I don't even remember all that was on the lunch table that day! Our last chocolate tea cake was carefully cut into seven pieces and eaten. We lingered over our last cup of tea. No one really wanted to leave - although i'm sure I wasn't alone in feeling that if we had stayed much longer, I would have gone stir crazy from lack of activities. We packed up our stuff and walked back to the pier, caught the ferry and got back on the bus. After dropping off some of the class, who had decided to spend the weekend in Galway, the bus continued, stopping only for a brief dinner in Dublin before finally dropping us off back in Cork late that night. I was tired, but glad to be home.
Eventually, our little train ended up by the shore. We found a pseudo staircase to take us down to the beach and descended. Sophie waded into the water, since she was wearing her rainboots. I hung back. The ocean and I, well, we're not exactly best buddies. I think it's a combination of being knocked over by waves too many times as a child and unpleasant memories of being covered in sand after a day at the beach. I was perfectly content to just take pictures of Sophie playing in the little waves and Elle looking for seashells. It was a beautiful beach: all rocks, but smooth, not jagged like back home, just shelves of limestone, I think. The water was clear and genuinely blue, the sun was shining, and I don't think any of us could quite believe that we were in Ireland, land of rain and clouds.
After hanging out there for a while, we continued to meander on the coast, drawing ever closer to the illusive windmills. We clambered over rocks and boulders for what felt like forever - though we ALL agreed that we'd rather climb over rocks than have to avoid the rather giant piles of manure we'd dealt with on the paths earlier that day. Once we reached the windmills, we all agreed that we wanted to head back. We'd walked all day and were just wiped out. The problem was, since we were no longer on a path, we didn't have an obvious route to get back to town. The windmills were in a pasture of their own, but we were reluctant to walk through it, since we weren't sure how safe that would be. We just had to keep on walking 'til we found a path.
About 15 minutes later, we saw a man playing with his dog - and the road where he'd parked his car! Surely the road the car had taken would get us back to a place we'd recognize enough to find our way home. We set off. After a while, we heard voices behind us. Sound on the island travels really far - if a dog barked, we had no way of knowing if it was the dog down the street or clear across the island. There was just no noise - too few cars to produce much sound pollution and nothing else that would. Ever the sucker and too curious for my own good, I turned around. Two girls were behind us, waving. Naturally, I couldn't tell who they were, but Elle could. The girls were from our class, but they weren't exactly our favorite people. It would have been rude to keep walking and ignore them, so we stopped and waited for them to catch up with us. As our enlarged group continued to walk, they told us about their experience so far and we told them how much we were enjoying ourselves - how Moira was so sweet and the house was lovely, etc.
Eventually, we came to a fork in the road. A hill stood between us and a clear view of the rest of the island, so we didn't know which way to go. My contribution to the decision making consisted solely of a rather lame allusion along the lines of, two roads diverged, and I took the one less traveled. Unfortunately, as Sophie said, neither looked particularly well-traveled. After all, it's not like there's a lot of traffic there! Sophie wanted to go the smaller pathway and the other girls wanted to go on the paved road. I was feeling pretty well-oriented and thought that the paved road would take us closer to where we wanted to be - and I was tired enough by then to just want to get back and take a little nap before dinner - but I didn't like the idea of Sophie going on the other way alone. Clearly Minnesinger trips had instilled in me the value of traveling with a buddy. She insisted she'd be fine, though, and told me I should go the other way, if I wanted, so I gave her my cell phone to have so that she could call Elle when she got back or if she needed to reach us or anything and then we split up.
We walked for maybe another 20 minutes before coming to the main road, at which point Elle and I left the other two girls to make their way to the house they were staying at while we went back to Moira's. Once back, I made use of the slightly sketchy shower downstairs and promptly pulled on pjs and fell asleep after only reading a few pages of Tarry Flynn.
Dinner that night was roast lamb with boiled potatoes and steamed carrots and soup, plus the ever-present brown bread, butter and jam. Knowing what I knew about the chickens, I couldn't help but think about the sheep we'd seen earlier, but oddly enough, this didn't disturb me as much as I thought it would. The sheep I had seen were outdoors in their pastures, soaking in the sunshine and generally living a pretty good life. It seemed to me that it was a more honorable way to eat meat than simply to buy it at the supermarket, without giving a thought to how it got there or where it came from.
After dinner, we all departed for the pub. Our last night on the island, we were determined to go out and meet locals - but that just didn't happen. Instead, our class showed up in bits and pieces and mixed and mingled with each other, to the consternation of everyone else at the pub who was trying to watch the soccer game on tv. Oh well. I think we all had a good time - we played random drinking games and card games and eventually we all went home and fell asleep. After walking all day, I don't think there was a single one of us who wasn't exhausted.
The next morning, there seemed to be a feeling of some urgency among the seven of us in our house. We had to see everything - we were leaving that afternoon, so we were running out of time. Straightaway after breakfast, we headed over to the knitwear factory, but the shop wasn't closed. Inis Meaín, we had heard, was famous for it's woven products and we all wanted a souvenir. Since it wouldn't open for several hours, we decided to go see the fort. The other four girls had been told at the general store that the only way to get there was to go through the pastures so over the fence we went.
When we got to the fort, we encountered a small problem. We couldn't see anyway in, besides the rather scary looking almost-staircase. We tried walking around the fort, but we couldn't get all the way around before the path dropped off. Up the staircase appeared to be the only way in from where we were. We went up carefully one by one. At the top of the stairs, we had to climb a small wall to get to the top of the fort. It wasn't exactly safe (not exactly dangerous either, don't worry, anyone), but we didn't have any problems and we did manage to get in the fort, which was all that really mattered to us at the time. Once inside, we could see the actual entrance on the opposite side of the fort. We just sat around in the sun (the weather was beautiful that day) and explored the fort (which looked more like an amphitheater than anything else). When we decided to head back, we went out the real exit in the company of an older Irish gentleman who had arrived at the fort some time after us. He too was visiting Inis Meaín for the first time. We wandered back to Moira's.
At that point, the 7 of us split back up again, This time, Sophie stayed at the house to hang out, Elle, Margaret and I went back to the factory, and the other three girls wandered off. We got there a few minutes too early, but shortly afterwards, a woman arrived and opened the shop. Everything there was beautiful, but very expensive (if you want to look for yourselves, this is their website: http://www.inismeain.ie/en/knitting/products.html ). Everything was soft and warm. The fabric colors were all rich and earthy. We wandered around, finally noticing three boxes on the floor. The boxes contained the mistakes: articles of clothing that were in some way defective. I have enough shoppers in my family to know what that means - discounts. Sure enough, I found two hats that were perfectly fine for my purposes, one of which I bought (green) and the other, Margaret bought (grey). A bargain to be proud of: €5 instead of €25!
We got back in time for lunch. Egg salad, jam and butter, brown bread and white bread, leftover chicken... I don't even remember all that was on the lunch table that day! Our last chocolate tea cake was carefully cut into seven pieces and eaten. We lingered over our last cup of tea. No one really wanted to leave - although i'm sure I wasn't alone in feeling that if we had stayed much longer, I would have gone stir crazy from lack of activities. We packed up our stuff and walked back to the pier, caught the ferry and got back on the bus. After dropping off some of the class, who had decided to spend the weekend in Galway, the bus continued, stopping only for a brief dinner in Dublin before finally dropping us off back in Cork late that night. I was tired, but glad to be home.
Monday, September 28, 2009
September 16th - ???
Elle, my roommate in Dublin, and I were once again sharing a room. She already knew I was NOT a morning person - not really an awake person in general! - so when I woke up and sat without moving for a good 5 minutes afterwards, she just ignored me. Once dressed, we went downstairs to breakfast. Again brown bread with butter and jam, tea and water were on the table. Moira was bringing out one plate at a time, filled with each of our specifications: 1 egg, 2 sausages or 2 eggs, no sausages (mine), 2 eggs, 2 sausages, etc. Unfortunately, my plate was forgotten, which ended up working out, because one of the girls said she didn't want her eggs since, in addition to the bread, eggs and sausages, Moira had also prepared a full plate of bacon, which, like everything else, she fully expected us to finish. We all were drinking a ton of tea, which meant that before leaving to go explore, turns had to be take at the bathroom the 6 girls staying upstairs shared.
For those of you who haven't experienced the wonders of Irish plumbing, allow me to fill you in. Flushing a toilet is no easy matter - many of the handles/buttons/whatever are stiff and difficult to depress. Furthermore, some toilets, like the one at Moira's, won't flush until the tank has refilled itself from the last flushing. Like the other eccentricities about Moira's home (I will say that both Elle and I were glad that we had ended up in the only room without either a picture of the Virgin Mary or Jesus looking down at us, since we're both Jewish. Sophie ended up in a room with a holographic Jesus and it definitely creeped her and us out when we went to see it.), we quickly accepted this and moved on.
At breakfast, everyone had expressed a desire to walk around the whole island, a task which Mary had said would take 2.5 hours. Knowing Mary, we asked her daughter, who was on the trip with us, who said it would more likely take 4+ hours. (In case I haven't mentioned this yet, Mary is what Jacob would call a "beast." She works out twice a day every day. Barely a week before we left she'd been out on a bike ride of "about 20km" when she was hit by a car and fractured 3 ribs. Needless to say, she was not allowed to carry her backpack, but she insisted on walking with us to Moira's house so we wouldn't get lost. Remember, uphill, 30 minutes, 3 fractured ribs.) The 7 girls split up into two groups. I went with Sophie and Elle. We didn't have time to circumnavigate the island before lunch, so we just picked a direction and started walking.
First, we went to the chapel, which was right across the road from Moira's. It was very small, but charming: whitewashed walls with stained glass windows and wooden pews. In the courtyard outside was a little outbuilding with a thatched roof. We had learned from Mary that all the buildings on island used to be thatched but that it had no longer been feasible or worthwhile to have to re-thatch all the roofs every 5-6 years so they had switched to slate.
From the chapel, we continued on the road, which eventually led us up the hill to the "top" of the island. We saw cows and sheep and even a horse who tried to eat my jacket, but more than anything else, we saw lots and lots of stone walls. Inis Meaín in completely covered in these walls, which give the illusion of the island being a giant patchwork quilt. The walls were built by famine relief projects, much in the same way that schools in LA were build during the Great Depression. we picked a path to follow, which eventually led us (after slipping through some gaps in the walls) to where we could see the three windmills. Wandering around, we found a mini-Stonehenge, amazing views and lots of black and white dogs. The only dog we saw while we were there that wasn't black and white, in fact, was Moira's little beagle-mix, who was white and brown. On our way back to the house, one of the dogs we passed decided to adopt us. Although I didn't see it, Sophie said that the owner popped their head out, saw us and the dog, and went back in their house.
The dog, which we named Dog in a stroke of creativity, refused to stay at his house. We all tried to convince him. We tried to lead him back home more than once, but to no avail. Like it or not, Dog was coming with us. Now, the very idea that a dog could follow us home is nearly foreign. Dogs aren't allowed off-leash without their owners and even with their owners are almost always kept on leash out of fear of lawsuits or who-knows-what. This is NOT the case in Ireland. Almost every dog I've seen has been off-leash and on Inis Meain particularly, it's not like the dogs could wander too far from home - there simply wasn't enough space! Anyways, so now Dog was following us home, but Dog was a fairly doggy dog and so when we passed another house with a black and white dog, Dog tried to go over and make friends. The other dog clearly wasn't as friendly as Dog, who got seriously growled at for his attempt at friendliness. After that incident, the three of us definitely made an effort to keep Dog from irritating any of the other neighborhood canines.
With Dog following us, we continued on towards the house, but now we had a problem. What were we to do with Dog when we got to Moira's? She already had a dog of her own and none of us could really describe where Dog lived, because even though Sophie had seen someone, we had no real way of knowing if that was Dog's house or if he'd been out wandering the island before we came across him. Luckily, just as we arrived at Moira's, a car pulled up. The driver, a woman, leaned out and said something along the lines of, so there he is! She then drove the car away, as the three of us looked at each other confused. Since she hadn't seemed worried and hadn't even opened the car door to let Dog in, we left Dog outside the front gate, assuming he could find his own way home and that his owner at least knew approximately where he'd be if he didn't turn up. We went inside and washed up, then headed to the table to meet up with the other group.
After only two meals, we each had "our" seat no longer questioned the mismatched silverware, mugs, and dishes. We knew that the napkins were either on top of the cabinet behind my chair or in the first drawer and that I had somehow gotten myself elected tea-pourer and cake-cutter (thanks to my early training carefully dividing dessert between Jacob and me). Lunch consisted of brown bread and white bread, jam and butter, leftover chicken, smoked salmon (!!! - I love Ireland!), and cream cheese, plus tea and another of the chocolate tea cakes (We had had one at dinner the night before, hence the cake-cutting job. Mom, you should be proud. :P ). Again, we all ate as much as we could and still could not satisfy our host, who could not believe that we STILL hadn't finished the chickens. Immediately prior to lunch, I had seen that right across the way was a large chicken coop, which probably had housed the chickens we were eating.
After lunch came the inevitable line at the bathroom and then Sophie, Elle and I ventured out again. Our first stop was at the general store on the island. My camera had died that morning and I needed batteries, everyone wanted postcards - and we all wanted junk food. Why this sudden urge for a candy bar, I have no idea, probably because it wasn't immediately available. Regardless, we were all craving our own particular weaknesses - soda, chocolate, chips, whatever.
From there, we continued to wander in that direction. We quickly came to a gate that looked like the connecting passages behind it led to one of the forts on the island. We wanted to go investigate, but weren't keen to get in trouble for trespassing on someone's pastures, so we continued on our way. The road we were on eventually devolved into a path between two walls. Like all the roads there, it wound its way around, so we were all taken aback when we rounded a corner to find ourselves suddenly confronted by half a dozen goats staring straight at us. We burst out laughing. It was so completely unexpected and strange that we simply couldn't help ourselves.
Once we had recovered, we continued on our way. I fell further back, mainly because I'd get distracted by this flower or that blackberry bush or decide I had to take a picture of the goats one more time, etc. I can be... easily distracted, to say the least. In fact, I've been so distracted that it's past my bedtime, so I will write more tomorrow! Goodnight!
For those of you who haven't experienced the wonders of Irish plumbing, allow me to fill you in. Flushing a toilet is no easy matter - many of the handles/buttons/whatever are stiff and difficult to depress. Furthermore, some toilets, like the one at Moira's, won't flush until the tank has refilled itself from the last flushing. Like the other eccentricities about Moira's home (I will say that both Elle and I were glad that we had ended up in the only room without either a picture of the Virgin Mary or Jesus looking down at us, since we're both Jewish. Sophie ended up in a room with a holographic Jesus and it definitely creeped her and us out when we went to see it.), we quickly accepted this and moved on.
At breakfast, everyone had expressed a desire to walk around the whole island, a task which Mary had said would take 2.5 hours. Knowing Mary, we asked her daughter, who was on the trip with us, who said it would more likely take 4+ hours. (In case I haven't mentioned this yet, Mary is what Jacob would call a "beast." She works out twice a day every day. Barely a week before we left she'd been out on a bike ride of "about 20km" when she was hit by a car and fractured 3 ribs. Needless to say, she was not allowed to carry her backpack, but she insisted on walking with us to Moira's house so we wouldn't get lost. Remember, uphill, 30 minutes, 3 fractured ribs.) The 7 girls split up into two groups. I went with Sophie and Elle. We didn't have time to circumnavigate the island before lunch, so we just picked a direction and started walking.
First, we went to the chapel, which was right across the road from Moira's. It was very small, but charming: whitewashed walls with stained glass windows and wooden pews. In the courtyard outside was a little outbuilding with a thatched roof. We had learned from Mary that all the buildings on island used to be thatched but that it had no longer been feasible or worthwhile to have to re-thatch all the roofs every 5-6 years so they had switched to slate.
From the chapel, we continued on the road, which eventually led us up the hill to the "top" of the island. We saw cows and sheep and even a horse who tried to eat my jacket, but more than anything else, we saw lots and lots of stone walls. Inis Meaín in completely covered in these walls, which give the illusion of the island being a giant patchwork quilt. The walls were built by famine relief projects, much in the same way that schools in LA were build during the Great Depression. we picked a path to follow, which eventually led us (after slipping through some gaps in the walls) to where we could see the three windmills. Wandering around, we found a mini-Stonehenge, amazing views and lots of black and white dogs. The only dog we saw while we were there that wasn't black and white, in fact, was Moira's little beagle-mix, who was white and brown. On our way back to the house, one of the dogs we passed decided to adopt us. Although I didn't see it, Sophie said that the owner popped their head out, saw us and the dog, and went back in their house.
The dog, which we named Dog in a stroke of creativity, refused to stay at his house. We all tried to convince him. We tried to lead him back home more than once, but to no avail. Like it or not, Dog was coming with us. Now, the very idea that a dog could follow us home is nearly foreign. Dogs aren't allowed off-leash without their owners and even with their owners are almost always kept on leash out of fear of lawsuits or who-knows-what. This is NOT the case in Ireland. Almost every dog I've seen has been off-leash and on Inis Meain particularly, it's not like the dogs could wander too far from home - there simply wasn't enough space! Anyways, so now Dog was following us home, but Dog was a fairly doggy dog and so when we passed another house with a black and white dog, Dog tried to go over and make friends. The other dog clearly wasn't as friendly as Dog, who got seriously growled at for his attempt at friendliness. After that incident, the three of us definitely made an effort to keep Dog from irritating any of the other neighborhood canines.
With Dog following us, we continued on towards the house, but now we had a problem. What were we to do with Dog when we got to Moira's? She already had a dog of her own and none of us could really describe where Dog lived, because even though Sophie had seen someone, we had no real way of knowing if that was Dog's house or if he'd been out wandering the island before we came across him. Luckily, just as we arrived at Moira's, a car pulled up. The driver, a woman, leaned out and said something along the lines of, so there he is! She then drove the car away, as the three of us looked at each other confused. Since she hadn't seemed worried and hadn't even opened the car door to let Dog in, we left Dog outside the front gate, assuming he could find his own way home and that his owner at least knew approximately where he'd be if he didn't turn up. We went inside and washed up, then headed to the table to meet up with the other group.
After only two meals, we each had "our" seat no longer questioned the mismatched silverware, mugs, and dishes. We knew that the napkins were either on top of the cabinet behind my chair or in the first drawer and that I had somehow gotten myself elected tea-pourer and cake-cutter (thanks to my early training carefully dividing dessert between Jacob and me). Lunch consisted of brown bread and white bread, jam and butter, leftover chicken, smoked salmon (!!! - I love Ireland!), and cream cheese, plus tea and another of the chocolate tea cakes (We had had one at dinner the night before, hence the cake-cutting job. Mom, you should be proud. :P ). Again, we all ate as much as we could and still could not satisfy our host, who could not believe that we STILL hadn't finished the chickens. Immediately prior to lunch, I had seen that right across the way was a large chicken coop, which probably had housed the chickens we were eating.
After lunch came the inevitable line at the bathroom and then Sophie, Elle and I ventured out again. Our first stop was at the general store on the island. My camera had died that morning and I needed batteries, everyone wanted postcards - and we all wanted junk food. Why this sudden urge for a candy bar, I have no idea, probably because it wasn't immediately available. Regardless, we were all craving our own particular weaknesses - soda, chocolate, chips, whatever.
From there, we continued to wander in that direction. We quickly came to a gate that looked like the connecting passages behind it led to one of the forts on the island. We wanted to go investigate, but weren't keen to get in trouble for trespassing on someone's pastures, so we continued on our way. The road we were on eventually devolved into a path between two walls. Like all the roads there, it wound its way around, so we were all taken aback when we rounded a corner to find ourselves suddenly confronted by half a dozen goats staring straight at us. We burst out laughing. It was so completely unexpected and strange that we simply couldn't help ourselves.
Once we had recovered, we continued on our way. I fell further back, mainly because I'd get distracted by this flower or that blackberry bush or decide I had to take a picture of the goats one more time, etc. I can be... easily distracted, to say the least. In fact, I've been so distracted that it's past my bedtime, so I will write more tomorrow! Goodnight!
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Another Big Update!! September 5th - September 15th
Once again, I have fallen grievously behind, which I truly apologize for. This appears to happen regularly - but it's only because there's so much going on here that I can't remember to keep up with this! On with the update!
Disclaimer: If I'm a few days off on some of this, please forgive me. My note-taking has been behind too, so I'm going off my memory.
Nothing so exciting happened until the following Monday, Sept. 7th. That week, my class was going to be doing two mini-units. The first was to be on Irish mythology, so I was REALLY excited. I love mythology so I couldn't wait for class. I was also going to be attempting a different strategy with my Provigil, to try to stay awake more regularly. Instead of taking half a tablet first thing in the morning and the other half later, I was going to take the full tablet in the morning and see how that worked.
Monday morning, we got to class to find that the woman who was supposed to be teaching us about mythology had sent a replacement, Brent Miles to teach us instead. The lecture was fascinating. (This is going to be really nerdy, so be warned. Feel free to skip ahead past the details of the lecture.) First, he talked about the evolution of the Irish language, which was consistently evolving significantly ahead of English. Where Middle Irish wasn't spoken after 1200, Middle English continued until several centuries later. Irish remained the dominant language until the time of the famine, at which point Ireland became English-speaking due, in part, to the mass immigrations to Britain and America.
Next, we learned that Ireland was never conquered by Rome, unlike the Continental Celts, who were swallowed up by the Roman Empire. The Celts were traditionally warriors, known for their mobility and aristocracy. Their Celtic Empire was a major military power and the Continental Celts sacked Rome and Delphi at various times, but Rome eventually overpowered them. Apparently no one knows how they got to Ireland, but there is little evidence of an invasion, although there were people living in Ireland prior to the Celts. Celtic society was made up of 3 classes: Druids, warriors with horses and peasants/slaves. The romanticized view today of Celts as fierce warriors comes from Rome, who liked to paint their conquered opponents as brave and tough, to make themselves look that much more impressive for defeating them. In Ireland, the Celts had no such romantic view of themselves which produced a cultural consistency in how they viewed themselves.
After covering some basic background information on different types of Irish sagas (there are 20 different story lines), we learned about the structure of the sagas. There are 4 major saga cycles, told in named manuscripts (like The Book of the Dun Cow) dating back as early as the 12th century. Lots of them depict stories related to cattle because cows were the main form of currency and conveyed power and honor.
We learned about individual stories, which was lots of fun, but I was particularly interested by the concepts illustrated by the story. I had never heard about the idea of the heroic biography, which basically says that all heroes have certain things happen to them which defines them as heroes. These include things like
Anyways, class that day was great. Lots of fun stories and I came up with a ridiculous theory about the Hulk being a direct descendent of the mythology of Cú Chulainn by way of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (Involving the Ossian cycle, James Macpherson and Robert Louis Stevenson. Suffice to say that it's slightly more believable than my grand theory about Hamlet being an allegory for the Tudors.) Apparently, this is a brand-new idea that had never been brought to Brent Miles' attention before. At least I'm creative, if totally in outer space.
The next day of class was also awesome. Exciting topics that day included:
When class ended Friday, I was in shock and near tears. Not because of the movie, but because I had managed something extraordinary: I had stayed awake in class all week. I still don't remember the last time that happened. It was a breakthrough - I e-mailed my doctor and called both my parents, I was so excited.
That night, 3 of my flatmates and I went out. The first place we went was a really metropolitan bar called the Newport. The lower level was pretty standard but upstairs 3 birthday parties were being held. It was a really cool space and the projected graphics on the ceiling were really cool. From there, we went to a bar called Clancy's where I had lunch after Blarney. They have live music there at night and that night a rather bad band was covering some really good music - singing poorly and off-rhythm. We all thought it was karaoke when we first got there, in fact, before learning that no, this was actually a hired act - and in a town with GOOD music, I have no idea how those guys got the gig, but that's another story.
That weekend was fairly uneventful. Sophie, Bridget and I watched Sweet Home Alabama Saturday night (No one hit me, but I definitely got laughed at for my... involvement in the film.) and I went grocery shopping at some point, but it was generally low-key.
In class on Monday, Mary went over details of our trip to Inis Meaín. I was assigned to the house in town, along with 6 other girls. The rest of the class was divided into the house on the hill and the house by the beach. Our house had the luxury of being near the one and only pub on the island, we were told.
That night, our class went to see a play called Stones in His Pocket. It was entirely acted by two men, each of whom played at least 4 roles. The play was about the effect of a film production on the inhabitants and passers-through (including the film crew) of a small Irish town. The two main characters were a local guy whose cousin commits suicide over the course of the film's production and a guy who just closed his video rental store in the town he's from and is now traveling around aimlessly. It was really impressive the way they crafted each character's physicality and voice - each were totally separate entities. The set was really simple and the costumes were basic with minor changes depending on which character the actors were portraying at any given moment.
The next day, I woke up and packed my backpack for Inis Meaín. I didn't want to bring too much because we were just going to be walking around the island all day and there was nothing to dress up for. Sophie and I walked over to the bus, where we found people who didn't pack quite as lightly (much to their regret later, as you'll see!). Our road trip started with a stop at Coole Park, home of Lady Gregory, a major patron of the arts. She played hostess for people like George Bernard Shaw and the Yeats brothers. We walked around the grounds and saw the autograph tree, which everyone who came to visit signed. We were supposed to have lunch there but unbeknown to Mary, the snack shop was closed.
Instead, we stopped for lunch in Galway before heading to the docks to catch the ferry. We'd been told that in past years, the trip over to the island had been VERY rough, so we should definitely take some anti-motion sickness meds, but when we got there, the water was almost entirely still. The trip over was made easily. On the island, we learned that while 2 of houses were being picked up, our house had to walk from the dock to our host's house. We were hungry and tired from a long journey and now we had to walk uphill with our stuff. Needless to say, we were less than enthused.
Half an hour, we got to the house where we quickly were placed in rooms and sat down to dinner. Moira, our host, was a lovely lady who has appeared 3 times in National Geographic. She's that lady, you know? - the perfect stereotype of an Irish grandma. I honestly don't think we ever finished the food at any of the meals she had for us while we stayed with her. Our first night, we had brown bread with butter and jam, 2 roasted chickens (for 7 girls, but still) and chips (homemade fries). It felt like a feast.
After dinner, some of us went to the pub (where we learned that just because there's only one pub on the island and the island is in many ways a relic of a time long past, drinks were no cheaper than in Cork) for a little while, but we were all wiped out and went to sleep.
Disclaimer: If I'm a few days off on some of this, please forgive me. My note-taking has been behind too, so I'm going off my memory.
Nothing so exciting happened until the following Monday, Sept. 7th. That week, my class was going to be doing two mini-units. The first was to be on Irish mythology, so I was REALLY excited. I love mythology so I couldn't wait for class. I was also going to be attempting a different strategy with my Provigil, to try to stay awake more regularly. Instead of taking half a tablet first thing in the morning and the other half later, I was going to take the full tablet in the morning and see how that worked.
Monday morning, we got to class to find that the woman who was supposed to be teaching us about mythology had sent a replacement, Brent Miles to teach us instead. The lecture was fascinating. (This is going to be really nerdy, so be warned. Feel free to skip ahead past the details of the lecture.) First, he talked about the evolution of the Irish language, which was consistently evolving significantly ahead of English. Where Middle Irish wasn't spoken after 1200, Middle English continued until several centuries later. Irish remained the dominant language until the time of the famine, at which point Ireland became English-speaking due, in part, to the mass immigrations to Britain and America.
Next, we learned that Ireland was never conquered by Rome, unlike the Continental Celts, who were swallowed up by the Roman Empire. The Celts were traditionally warriors, known for their mobility and aristocracy. Their Celtic Empire was a major military power and the Continental Celts sacked Rome and Delphi at various times, but Rome eventually overpowered them. Apparently no one knows how they got to Ireland, but there is little evidence of an invasion, although there were people living in Ireland prior to the Celts. Celtic society was made up of 3 classes: Druids, warriors with horses and peasants/slaves. The romanticized view today of Celts as fierce warriors comes from Rome, who liked to paint their conquered opponents as brave and tough, to make themselves look that much more impressive for defeating them. In Ireland, the Celts had no such romantic view of themselves which produced a cultural consistency in how they viewed themselves.
After covering some basic background information on different types of Irish sagas (there are 20 different story lines), we learned about the structure of the sagas. There are 4 major saga cycles, told in named manuscripts (like The Book of the Dun Cow) dating back as early as the 12th century. Lots of them depict stories related to cattle because cows were the main form of currency and conveyed power and honor.
We learned about individual stories, which was lots of fun, but I was particularly interested by the concepts illustrated by the story. I had never heard about the idea of the heroic biography, which basically says that all heroes have certain things happen to them which defines them as heroes. These include things like
- The mother being a virgin and the father being a god/animal/god disguised as an animal/related to the mother.
- A miraculous birth/childhood.
- Leaving home
- Defeating a monster
- Going to the underworld/realm of the dead
- Miraculous death
Anyways, class that day was great. Lots of fun stories and I came up with a ridiculous theory about the Hulk being a direct descendent of the mythology of Cú Chulainn by way of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (Involving the Ossian cycle, James Macpherson and Robert Louis Stevenson. Suffice to say that it's slightly more believable than my grand theory about Hamlet being an allegory for the Tudors.) Apparently, this is a brand-new idea that had never been brought to Brent Miles' attention before. At least I'm creative, if totally in outer space.
The next day of class was also awesome. Exciting topics that day included:
- The changing populations of Ireland: who inhabited it, what they contributed to society, and who conquered them. To the Irish, they were the descendents of the Sons of Míl Easpáine. They did not consider themselves Celts - this is a modern idea that dates to the 18th century.
- The love triangle-plot has a rich history in Ireland and might have inspired the more famous incarnations including King Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot and King Mark-Isolde-Tristan.
- Women in Irish myths were frequently allegories for Ireland itself and not characters in their own right.
When class ended Friday, I was in shock and near tears. Not because of the movie, but because I had managed something extraordinary: I had stayed awake in class all week. I still don't remember the last time that happened. It was a breakthrough - I e-mailed my doctor and called both my parents, I was so excited.
That night, 3 of my flatmates and I went out. The first place we went was a really metropolitan bar called the Newport. The lower level was pretty standard but upstairs 3 birthday parties were being held. It was a really cool space and the projected graphics on the ceiling were really cool. From there, we went to a bar called Clancy's where I had lunch after Blarney. They have live music there at night and that night a rather bad band was covering some really good music - singing poorly and off-rhythm. We all thought it was karaoke when we first got there, in fact, before learning that no, this was actually a hired act - and in a town with GOOD music, I have no idea how those guys got the gig, but that's another story.
That weekend was fairly uneventful. Sophie, Bridget and I watched Sweet Home Alabama Saturday night (No one hit me, but I definitely got laughed at for my... involvement in the film.) and I went grocery shopping at some point, but it was generally low-key.
In class on Monday, Mary went over details of our trip to Inis Meaín. I was assigned to the house in town, along with 6 other girls. The rest of the class was divided into the house on the hill and the house by the beach. Our house had the luxury of being near the one and only pub on the island, we were told.
That night, our class went to see a play called Stones in His Pocket. It was entirely acted by two men, each of whom played at least 4 roles. The play was about the effect of a film production on the inhabitants and passers-through (including the film crew) of a small Irish town. The two main characters were a local guy whose cousin commits suicide over the course of the film's production and a guy who just closed his video rental store in the town he's from and is now traveling around aimlessly. It was really impressive the way they crafted each character's physicality and voice - each were totally separate entities. The set was really simple and the costumes were basic with minor changes depending on which character the actors were portraying at any given moment.
The next day, I woke up and packed my backpack for Inis Meaín. I didn't want to bring too much because we were just going to be walking around the island all day and there was nothing to dress up for. Sophie and I walked over to the bus, where we found people who didn't pack quite as lightly (much to their regret later, as you'll see!). Our road trip started with a stop at Coole Park, home of Lady Gregory, a major patron of the arts. She played hostess for people like George Bernard Shaw and the Yeats brothers. We walked around the grounds and saw the autograph tree, which everyone who came to visit signed. We were supposed to have lunch there but unbeknown to Mary, the snack shop was closed.
Instead, we stopped for lunch in Galway before heading to the docks to catch the ferry. We'd been told that in past years, the trip over to the island had been VERY rough, so we should definitely take some anti-motion sickness meds, but when we got there, the water was almost entirely still. The trip over was made easily. On the island, we learned that while 2 of houses were being picked up, our house had to walk from the dock to our host's house. We were hungry and tired from a long journey and now we had to walk uphill with our stuff. Needless to say, we were less than enthused.
Half an hour, we got to the house where we quickly were placed in rooms and sat down to dinner. Moira, our host, was a lovely lady who has appeared 3 times in National Geographic. She's that lady, you know? - the perfect stereotype of an Irish grandma. I honestly don't think we ever finished the food at any of the meals she had for us while we stayed with her. Our first night, we had brown bread with butter and jam, 2 roasted chickens (for 7 girls, but still) and chips (homemade fries). It felt like a feast.
After dinner, some of us went to the pub (where we learned that just because there's only one pub on the island and the island is in many ways a relic of a time long past, drinks were no cheaper than in Cork) for a little while, but we were all wiped out and went to sleep.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Rushing Ahead - From August 21st to September 4th, 2009
I'm sure by now, everyone has cottoned on to the fact that this blog is frighteningly far behind. In this entry, I'm going to try to quickly cover everything that's happened up to this past Friday night. It's a marathon-blog post, so consider yourselves warned!
The day after we got to Cork was the official UCC Early Start Orientation. I had seen the agenda, which seemed to indicate that we'd be done by 4. It didn't sound too bad. All of the IFSA-Butler girls planned to walk together, stopping first at the nearby smoothie place to grab breakfast, before continuing on to campus. Mary, one of the girls, invited her 3 flatmates to walk with us, so Java and Juice was nearly overflowing between the 11 of us, plus the other customers, who were uniformly told to pay later, since the two women working just didn't have time to deal with their payments. Clearly, they enjoyed a pretty regular clientele. By the time all of us had gotten our smoothies, coffees, scones, and whatever else people got, we were beginning to worry about having enough time to get on campus. Luckily, Mary and Bridget led us fairly efficiently to campus where we quickly found the auditorium in which we were supposed to be.
What followed was a series of introductions from each of the Early Start programs. Since we were all registered for different programs, we paid pretty close attention. I know many of us were totally frustrated - only getting to take one option seemed utterly unfair, when the Music program or the Archaeology program sounded SO cool! The Literatures in Ireland instructor seemed very nice, so at least I didn't regret signing up for the program I had chosen. I was disappointed, however, that we weren't reading the "big" Irish authors. In the overview of the course, Mary Breen hadn't mentioned George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Yeats, Samuel Beckett... in fact, she hadn't mentioned anyone or any book I'd heard of. What was the point of studying in Ireland if I wasn't going to get to study the important people?! (It took me a little while, but eventually I realized that the point of going to Ireland was studying the parts of Ireland I couldn't study back home. I know for a fact that IU offers a class on Joyce. This duh moment made me feel much better and since the class has been going on for 2.5 weeks, I can tell you that I am now thrilled we're not reading the obvious choices, because I'm being exposed to new, unknown - to me, at least - stuff that I would never get to study at home. Yay for study abroad!!)
Aside from the Early Start overviews, we learned about other pertinent classes that we would be able to take during the regular semester. The French department offered two classes - one on French films for non-French speakers and one French speaking class for absolute beginners only - which, we were told, was the easiest class in the world to pass, so we should all take it if we've never taken French before. Never before had I heard a French class described as "the easiest" anything, but since I wasn't eligible, I tried not to be too jealous of the lucky people who would get to learn French in such a stress-free way, so unlike my own painstaking and painful experience! The Irish department told us about Irish Civilization classes that might interest us. There was one in particular on Irish Mythology that sounded amazing, which I'm going to try to take. Mary Breen, my Early Start instructor, had mentioned that we would be doing a short unit on Irish mythology (more on that later!!) as part of the class, so I would get a preview before having to schedule for the semester. We were told about an Intro to Irish class that also sounded wonderful, but I worried (and still am worried) that if I couldn't get to the point where I was reliably staying awake in class, it would be a complete repeat of my Hebrew class last fall - a near-waste of time for me, the class and the instructor. (Please, keep your fingers crossed - I have a week and a half to get my strategy for staying awake totally worked out before the semester starts and I really want to take Irish!) Someone from the library came and spoke to us, as did someone from the Geography department, but neither were particularly interesting for me, so I was relieved when we were released for our lunch break. A big group of us went to lunch together, but we were a little late getting back, so we didn't all get seats together when we got back for the afternoon portion.
In the afternoon, we heard about the clubs and societies offered at UCC (I want to do Fencing Club, Canoe Club, Choral Society and Medieval/Rennaissance Society - but I'm remaining open-minded!), student health and counselling (in particular the measures UCC was taking to deal with the threat of swine flu), registration with the Gardai (the Irish police force/immigration), working in Ireland, and some other less interesting issues. Following that catch-all section, one of the VPs of the Students Union spoke to us about the Student Union, we heard from club and society organizers, the Chaplaincy, and the IT people. We were supposed to get a talk from a Garda officer, but he didn't show up. Apparently, he has NEVER actually spoken, but he's supposed to every year. Oh well.
Then we learned that instead of having the rest of the day free, the Student Union had planned all kinds of activities for late into the evening. First, a tour of the campus. Now, it's important for me to say that I adore IU. I think it's an utterly gorgeous campus, I love the people there, and I have loved most of my classes. Knowing this (and knowing that many of you have either visited or seen pictures of IU), when I say that UCC is even more charming, know that I am not in any way maligning my university, which I do love. It's just that UCC is unnaturally beautiful and manages to combine the park-y feeling of IU with the utterly ordered garden-y + castle-y feeling of Oxford or Trinity. The buildings range from the original Quadrangle building (The Quadrangle has only 3 sides because they ran out of money before they could build the 4th. Also, only graduates of the university are allowed to walk through the Quadrangle, because if you haven't graduated yet, you'll curse/jinx yourself and either fail all your classes or not graduate. The same is true of the school crest which is located at the entrance of the Quadrangle building - which has a real name, I just don't remember it.) which dates from 1840s to buildings only a few years old. For a virtual tour of campus see here: http://www.ucc.ie/en/AboutUCCandCork/VirtualCampusTour/. The President's Garden is beautiful, bridges on campus cross over the Lee (which is just more impressive than the Jordan, sorry) and, like at IU, there are trees everywhere. Needless to say, the tour was greatly appreciated, although we really stuck to the center of campus, which I had already seen.
After the tour, we schmoozed and had cookies, tea and coffee in the Student Union building, which is really nice and supposedly always has tea in it, but I haven't been back to check and see. At that point, the party was beginning to split up. Some of the girls in our little group decided to go home and relax while the rest of us continued on to the next event - a free showing (with free Coke and popcorn) of I Love You, Beth Cooper, which I had actually read the summer before but had heard made a rather bad movie. I went in with low expectations, as did everyone else, and we were all pleasantly surprised to find it rather amusing. I thought it made a better film than book. From there, we went to a bar for karaoke, pool and bowling. Bowling filled up super-quick and I can't play pool to save my life, but I was with a group of girls who sing, so we all made our way to the karaoke pods and proceeded to sing all kinds of music of the singalong variety ("Summer Lovin'" from Grease, "Build Me Up Buttercup," and the Spice Girls all made our playlist as did "Livin' On A Prayer," the Backstreet Boys, and a bunch of other songs. It was very much a nostalgic thing for us - lots of 90s music, which I realize barely counts as nostalgia, but it's the music of our childhoods and we had fun.). We left after awhile, totally wiped out, although the evening continued with a trip to a nightclub, and actually managed to make it home without getting lost. Major accomplishment.
That weekend was fairly low-key. Saturday was a massive grocery shopping day involving a trip to the English Market (like the Farmer's Market back home or the Covered Market in Oxford) and two trips to Tesco's (the Irish equivalent of Pavilion's, Ralph's, or Kroger's) because we simply couldn't fit everything in our backpacks or carry it all. (Incidentally, Ireland charges for plastic bags in order to discourage their usage, so almost everyone carries around tote bags, heavy-duty plastic bags, or the little roller carts for their groceries. Very eco-friendly.)
Finally having food of our own to prepare, we began a tradition that has continued: communal dinners. Everyone who decides to go brings their dinner (or tea, or snack, or just themselves if they've already eaten or whatever) to Sophie's flat (which is still empty of roommates today) and we all have dinner together and then sit around and chat. These dinners frequently last from 6 'til 9 or 10, at which point someone says they have homework or whatever and the party breaks up. It's really nice - and I lucked out because Sophie lives down the hall from me, making it a much shorter trip for me and my dishes than the girls on the 5th floor.
Sunday was an absolutely lazy day. I sat around and read pretty much the whole day - I think it rained, but I'm not sure. Sounds like a safe bet though, because it rains almost every day at least part of the time. That night, we again gathered for dinner and ended up watching a made-for-tv movie on Coco Chanel, during which I fell asleep. When I woke up, my throat was totally sore, but I figured I had just fallen asleep with my mouth open or something. The fact that I had only been asleep for a little while (maybe 15 minutes?), made it somewhat strange, but I was exhausted and didn't really question my explanation. We left Sophie's and I went to sleep, knowing that we were leaving Copley Court early the next morning for our first day of school!
I woke up with my throat still very sore, which I again dismissed and met a bunch of people for the walk to campus. Because classes were meeting at different times, we were leaving particularly early so that Bridget, whose class met the earliest, would get there on time. Once on campus, I had half an hour to kill so I went to the International Students Office with a couple of other people to try to get my student number, which I hadn't printed out. Problem solved, I went to class, which consisted of the ever-boring, ever-present Syllabus Day. Mary Breen went over every page of our 11-page course outline and I honestly don't remember now if I stayed awake or not. I have a feeling I nodded off at some point. The big news of Syllabus Day was the fact that we'd get a half-hour break each day in the middle of class (which was supposed to go from 9:30-12:30 but in fact ended at noon almost every day), which I knew would help me stay awake. We talked about the field trips we would be taking, including the one that would be happening immediately after class that day: a historical tour of Cork (which was billed as a literary tour of Cork, but wasn't) and lunch at a local restaurant. Yay for free lunch - we were all getting sick of how expensive food in Ireland was. The tour was really interesting. Among the highlights:
I went to bed early and woke up feeling utterly horrible and unable to go to school. I stayed home and slept. The next day, I felt worse - and that was without the ibuprofen messing me up! In all, I missed class Tuesday-Friday. The student health center didn't do walk-ins and had no available appointments until the following Monday, when I called them on Tuesday and I had NO intention of still being sick on Monday. At that point, I was a little concerned - was it possible that I had managed to get swine flu? It sounded absurd. I didn't know anyone who was sick and I didn't seem to fit the symptoms - although I had plenty of symptoms of my own! I felt so weak I could barely leave my room, my throat was insanely sore, my head hurt and I was vacillating between freezing and overheated. All I did was read, drink 7-Up and tea, and sleep - lots and lots of sleep, since I was both tired from being sick and because I wasn't taking my anti-sleep meds. I think my new friends thought I was dying - and I, beyond melodramatic in my misery, was sure of it. (They were absolutely wonderful - brought me 7-Up, Tylenol, a card, and told me if I needed anything I should just ask - and at that point, I had known them barely a week, since I had spent half the time stuck in my room!)
I called Suzy, IFSA-Butler's contact in Cork, who told us that if we had medical questions we should feel free to call since her husband was a doctor and could probably tell us what to do. Unfortunately, her husband said that I should stay put and wait it out, since it didn't sound like swine flu, but I clearly wasn't well enough to go to class. By Thursday, when I was still sick as ever, both Suzy and her husband told me to go to the after-hours clinic. At that point, I was beginning to seriously consider the fact that I might have swine flu (and all the kosher puns that could be gleaned from the possibility), although when the taxi picked me up to take me, I assured the driver that I didn't have swine flu, since I was a little afraid he wouldn't take me if he thought I had it.
The SouthDoc clinic was a 10-minute ride away and I got there 20 minutes early for my appointment. I sat in the chair nervously twiddling my thumbs (Yes, I actually do literally twiddle my thumbs sometimes.) with nothing to do but try not to scare the other people in the waiting room. I had forgotten to bring a book, that's how sick I was.
Finally it was my turn. The doctor I saw was very nice - and imagine my relief upon learning that I didn't have any kind of flu, let alone swine flu! I had acute (or severe, I forget which word he used - I was pretty out of it) tonsilitis, easily treated with antibiotics. I'm still utterly befuddled by the fact that I had to go to Ireland to GET tonisilitis, but it could have been much worse. By Friday morning, having only taken one dose, I already felt better. By Saturday, I was going stir-crazy, having barely spent any time outside my room since coming home Monday and now feeling well enough to be out and about.
Finally, it was Sunday. I'd been on the antibiotics for long enough that I was "no longer contagious" and I was free to be around people. My friends had planned on going to Blarney and I decided to go with them, telling myself that if I got tired, I would sit while they wandered around. We met up that morning and took the bus to Blarney. The truth is that I hadn't really wanted to go to Blarney, but by then I would have gone to the South Pole if it meant I didn't have to stay in my room by myself. Blarney Castle is right in town, and utterly beautiful. I cannot begin to explain how green everything was and the castle was much more intact than I had expected. We walked all through it and then it was time to kiss the Blarney Stone. I knew it was traditional, but I really didn't have any interest in doing it - but suddenly I was there, and totally inspired.
If you haven't been to Blarney Castle, let me explain how one goes about kissing the Blarney Stone. There are two men who stand there, one of whom takes your picture (which is available for purchase along with a certificate for 10 euros at the gift shop) and one who holds your legs as you lie down on your back and dangle off the wall to kiss this stone. I could barely reach it - and if there hadn't been someone holding on to me, there's no way I could have done it because you're truly hanging off the very top of the castle and I had to lean back and over so far that I think I would have fallen. It's intense stuff - and before you get to go, you're waiting in line and looking at the people ahead of you, realizing that you're going to be kissing the same thing they all just kissed and am I really sure I want to do that? (Ironically, it didn't even occur to me that any of them could have been sick - although now that I'm no longer caught up in the moment I definitely wonder how many people develop colds or whatever after visiting Blarney.) Afterwards, we wandered around the various walks and visited the witch's rock, the fairy circle, Blarney House and walked around the lake. The area near the witch's rock was like a magical glen - I would LOVE to stage a performance of Midsummer Night's Dream there because it's just the perfect spot. Lots of little nooks and bridges and almost twilight-like because the trees overhead blocked out the sun so well. I was fading fast, but since I had no plans to return to Blarney, I didn't want to miss anything - plus it was raining on and off, so there really wasn't anywhere for me to sit. We headed back around 2-3 and decided to have a late lunch, since we hadn't really had breakfast and were starving. The rest of the afternoon was spent catching up on schoolwork, since I had missed practically the entire first week of class.
Monday morning, I was ready to go to class. I had missed two field trips while sick (one to a play about J.M. Synge and one to Barryscourt Castle (of Barry's Tea, THE brand of tea in Ireland) and Fota House) and 3 days of lecture. Naturally, for all my excitement, I fell asleep in class, so I had to talk to Mary Breen about not just missing class (which she understood completely and was entirely sympathetic and easygoing) but about my sleep disorder, a talk I had really hoped I wouldn't have to have anymore. Again, she was very understanding, which I appreciated so much, since I had already been worried about missing so much class.
Tuesday-Thursday were rather uneventful. I stayed awake two of the days and fell asleep the other one. One of the days we watched a movie adaptation of one of the books we were studying, The Last September. The movie's really interesting, particularly in light of the book, so if you're interested, I recommend checking it out. Maggie Smith is a total snob in it, but the movie does some really interesting things with reflected images and point of view and the use of music is really thoughtful as well. There are lots of changes from the book, which took us all aback because the changes were pretty significant, but the movie will still give you a pretty good impression of Anglo-Irish society during the "troubles" at the beginning of the 20th century.
Friday we had a field trip to the ruins of Bowen's Court, the family home of Elizabeth Bowen, the author of The Last September. There's really nothing to see there, which was really startling, even though we had been warned. In fact, even though we were at Bowen's home, what we saw there was much more reminiscent of the messages of the other book we had read so far Tarry Flynn, by Patrick Kavanagh (which talks about how Tarry finds beauty in the mundane rather than the extraordinary). It was just fields - muddy, with the hay mown, leaving just 5-inch long pieces sticking up to push into our shoes, socks and pants. There was little evidence that there had once been a grand country manor on the property. We didn't really have anything to do there, just the view to take in, pictures to take and the graveyard where Bowen and her understanding husband were buried next to each other to see.
After lunch, which we had over an hour after we were supposed to, we took the bus back to Cork and hung out for a while. Several classes were on trips that either got back that day or left that day and would continue over the weekend, so there were only three of us who went to the pub that night. (I had a pint of cider - still can't drink beer, but I've got 3.5 months to either learn or not.) We were there for a couple hours and then decided to head back home. Along the way, we all got hungry, since I hadn't eaten much for dinner and Sophie and Kathryn had had early dinners, so we stopped on the way home at our favorite restaurant (the cheapest and most convenient place in town, bar none) Valentino's to pick up a late meal. We brought our burgers back to Sophie's flat and ate and spent another couple hours just yakking before finally going back to our rooms. It was so normal - no different than making a late-night run to Steak 'n' Shake at school or whatever - so it was that night that I really felt like I lived here, although I don't think I realized it at the time.
Almost caught up now! Hope you made it all the way through - I'll try not to fall so far behind in the future.
The day after we got to Cork was the official UCC Early Start Orientation. I had seen the agenda, which seemed to indicate that we'd be done by 4. It didn't sound too bad. All of the IFSA-Butler girls planned to walk together, stopping first at the nearby smoothie place to grab breakfast, before continuing on to campus. Mary, one of the girls, invited her 3 flatmates to walk with us, so Java and Juice was nearly overflowing between the 11 of us, plus the other customers, who were uniformly told to pay later, since the two women working just didn't have time to deal with their payments. Clearly, they enjoyed a pretty regular clientele. By the time all of us had gotten our smoothies, coffees, scones, and whatever else people got, we were beginning to worry about having enough time to get on campus. Luckily, Mary and Bridget led us fairly efficiently to campus where we quickly found the auditorium in which we were supposed to be.
What followed was a series of introductions from each of the Early Start programs. Since we were all registered for different programs, we paid pretty close attention. I know many of us were totally frustrated - only getting to take one option seemed utterly unfair, when the Music program or the Archaeology program sounded SO cool! The Literatures in Ireland instructor seemed very nice, so at least I didn't regret signing up for the program I had chosen. I was disappointed, however, that we weren't reading the "big" Irish authors. In the overview of the course, Mary Breen hadn't mentioned George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Yeats, Samuel Beckett... in fact, she hadn't mentioned anyone or any book I'd heard of. What was the point of studying in Ireland if I wasn't going to get to study the important people?! (It took me a little while, but eventually I realized that the point of going to Ireland was studying the parts of Ireland I couldn't study back home. I know for a fact that IU offers a class on Joyce. This duh moment made me feel much better and since the class has been going on for 2.5 weeks, I can tell you that I am now thrilled we're not reading the obvious choices, because I'm being exposed to new, unknown - to me, at least - stuff that I would never get to study at home. Yay for study abroad!!)
Aside from the Early Start overviews, we learned about other pertinent classes that we would be able to take during the regular semester. The French department offered two classes - one on French films for non-French speakers and one French speaking class for absolute beginners only - which, we were told, was the easiest class in the world to pass, so we should all take it if we've never taken French before. Never before had I heard a French class described as "the easiest" anything, but since I wasn't eligible, I tried not to be too jealous of the lucky people who would get to learn French in such a stress-free way, so unlike my own painstaking and painful experience! The Irish department told us about Irish Civilization classes that might interest us. There was one in particular on Irish Mythology that sounded amazing, which I'm going to try to take. Mary Breen, my Early Start instructor, had mentioned that we would be doing a short unit on Irish mythology (more on that later!!) as part of the class, so I would get a preview before having to schedule for the semester. We were told about an Intro to Irish class that also sounded wonderful, but I worried (and still am worried) that if I couldn't get to the point where I was reliably staying awake in class, it would be a complete repeat of my Hebrew class last fall - a near-waste of time for me, the class and the instructor. (Please, keep your fingers crossed - I have a week and a half to get my strategy for staying awake totally worked out before the semester starts and I really want to take Irish!) Someone from the library came and spoke to us, as did someone from the Geography department, but neither were particularly interesting for me, so I was relieved when we were released for our lunch break. A big group of us went to lunch together, but we were a little late getting back, so we didn't all get seats together when we got back for the afternoon portion.
In the afternoon, we heard about the clubs and societies offered at UCC (I want to do Fencing Club, Canoe Club, Choral Society and Medieval/Rennaissance Society - but I'm remaining open-minded!), student health and counselling (in particular the measures UCC was taking to deal with the threat of swine flu), registration with the Gardai (the Irish police force/immigration), working in Ireland, and some other less interesting issues. Following that catch-all section, one of the VPs of the Students Union spoke to us about the Student Union, we heard from club and society organizers, the Chaplaincy, and the IT people. We were supposed to get a talk from a Garda officer, but he didn't show up. Apparently, he has NEVER actually spoken, but he's supposed to every year. Oh well.
Then we learned that instead of having the rest of the day free, the Student Union had planned all kinds of activities for late into the evening. First, a tour of the campus. Now, it's important for me to say that I adore IU. I think it's an utterly gorgeous campus, I love the people there, and I have loved most of my classes. Knowing this (and knowing that many of you have either visited or seen pictures of IU), when I say that UCC is even more charming, know that I am not in any way maligning my university, which I do love. It's just that UCC is unnaturally beautiful and manages to combine the park-y feeling of IU with the utterly ordered garden-y + castle-y feeling of Oxford or Trinity. The buildings range from the original Quadrangle building (The Quadrangle has only 3 sides because they ran out of money before they could build the 4th. Also, only graduates of the university are allowed to walk through the Quadrangle, because if you haven't graduated yet, you'll curse/jinx yourself and either fail all your classes or not graduate. The same is true of the school crest which is located at the entrance of the Quadrangle building - which has a real name, I just don't remember it.) which dates from 1840s to buildings only a few years old. For a virtual tour of campus see here: http://www.ucc.ie/en/AboutUCCandCork/VirtualCampusTour/. The President's Garden is beautiful, bridges on campus cross over the Lee (which is just more impressive than the Jordan, sorry) and, like at IU, there are trees everywhere. Needless to say, the tour was greatly appreciated, although we really stuck to the center of campus, which I had already seen.
After the tour, we schmoozed and had cookies, tea and coffee in the Student Union building, which is really nice and supposedly always has tea in it, but I haven't been back to check and see. At that point, the party was beginning to split up. Some of the girls in our little group decided to go home and relax while the rest of us continued on to the next event - a free showing (with free Coke and popcorn) of I Love You, Beth Cooper, which I had actually read the summer before but had heard made a rather bad movie. I went in with low expectations, as did everyone else, and we were all pleasantly surprised to find it rather amusing. I thought it made a better film than book. From there, we went to a bar for karaoke, pool and bowling. Bowling filled up super-quick and I can't play pool to save my life, but I was with a group of girls who sing, so we all made our way to the karaoke pods and proceeded to sing all kinds of music of the singalong variety ("Summer Lovin'" from Grease, "Build Me Up Buttercup," and the Spice Girls all made our playlist as did "Livin' On A Prayer," the Backstreet Boys, and a bunch of other songs. It was very much a nostalgic thing for us - lots of 90s music, which I realize barely counts as nostalgia, but it's the music of our childhoods and we had fun.). We left after awhile, totally wiped out, although the evening continued with a trip to a nightclub, and actually managed to make it home without getting lost. Major accomplishment.
That weekend was fairly low-key. Saturday was a massive grocery shopping day involving a trip to the English Market (like the Farmer's Market back home or the Covered Market in Oxford) and two trips to Tesco's (the Irish equivalent of Pavilion's, Ralph's, or Kroger's) because we simply couldn't fit everything in our backpacks or carry it all. (Incidentally, Ireland charges for plastic bags in order to discourage their usage, so almost everyone carries around tote bags, heavy-duty plastic bags, or the little roller carts for their groceries. Very eco-friendly.)
Finally having food of our own to prepare, we began a tradition that has continued: communal dinners. Everyone who decides to go brings their dinner (or tea, or snack, or just themselves if they've already eaten or whatever) to Sophie's flat (which is still empty of roommates today) and we all have dinner together and then sit around and chat. These dinners frequently last from 6 'til 9 or 10, at which point someone says they have homework or whatever and the party breaks up. It's really nice - and I lucked out because Sophie lives down the hall from me, making it a much shorter trip for me and my dishes than the girls on the 5th floor.
Sunday was an absolutely lazy day. I sat around and read pretty much the whole day - I think it rained, but I'm not sure. Sounds like a safe bet though, because it rains almost every day at least part of the time. That night, we again gathered for dinner and ended up watching a made-for-tv movie on Coco Chanel, during which I fell asleep. When I woke up, my throat was totally sore, but I figured I had just fallen asleep with my mouth open or something. The fact that I had only been asleep for a little while (maybe 15 minutes?), made it somewhat strange, but I was exhausted and didn't really question my explanation. We left Sophie's and I went to sleep, knowing that we were leaving Copley Court early the next morning for our first day of school!
I woke up with my throat still very sore, which I again dismissed and met a bunch of people for the walk to campus. Because classes were meeting at different times, we were leaving particularly early so that Bridget, whose class met the earliest, would get there on time. Once on campus, I had half an hour to kill so I went to the International Students Office with a couple of other people to try to get my student number, which I hadn't printed out. Problem solved, I went to class, which consisted of the ever-boring, ever-present Syllabus Day. Mary Breen went over every page of our 11-page course outline and I honestly don't remember now if I stayed awake or not. I have a feeling I nodded off at some point. The big news of Syllabus Day was the fact that we'd get a half-hour break each day in the middle of class (which was supposed to go from 9:30-12:30 but in fact ended at noon almost every day), which I knew would help me stay awake. We talked about the field trips we would be taking, including the one that would be happening immediately after class that day: a historical tour of Cork (which was billed as a literary tour of Cork, but wasn't) and lunch at a local restaurant. Yay for free lunch - we were all getting sick of how expensive food in Ireland was. The tour was really interesting. Among the highlights:
- St. Finbarr's - The site of the original monastery in Cork, frequently pillaged by Vikings, who would travel down the river. The monastery and Finbarr redates Christianity - and I still don't really understand why St. Finbarr became a saint, because he wasn't a Christian monk, but apparently that's pretty common. Now, it's a dramatic Gothic cathedral.
- The ruins of the old English fort, now a Gardai station. After the English left, the Irish moved into the old English buildings. Our tour guide blamed this appropriation for Ireland's lagging behind in development for so long.
- The Beamish brewery, where we learned that Beamish and Murphy's were to merge. A stone placed at the entrance of the brewery used to hold the heads of criminals after they'd been cut off.
- Evidence that Cork was once a series of islands located between the North and South channels of the River Lee - our tour guide called Cork the Venice of Ireland, but many of the channels were covered over, leaving the windy streets of Cork as the only indication of Cork's former self.
I went to bed early and woke up feeling utterly horrible and unable to go to school. I stayed home and slept. The next day, I felt worse - and that was without the ibuprofen messing me up! In all, I missed class Tuesday-Friday. The student health center didn't do walk-ins and had no available appointments until the following Monday, when I called them on Tuesday and I had NO intention of still being sick on Monday. At that point, I was a little concerned - was it possible that I had managed to get swine flu? It sounded absurd. I didn't know anyone who was sick and I didn't seem to fit the symptoms - although I had plenty of symptoms of my own! I felt so weak I could barely leave my room, my throat was insanely sore, my head hurt and I was vacillating between freezing and overheated. All I did was read, drink 7-Up and tea, and sleep - lots and lots of sleep, since I was both tired from being sick and because I wasn't taking my anti-sleep meds. I think my new friends thought I was dying - and I, beyond melodramatic in my misery, was sure of it. (They were absolutely wonderful - brought me 7-Up, Tylenol, a card, and told me if I needed anything I should just ask - and at that point, I had known them barely a week, since I had spent half the time stuck in my room!)
I called Suzy, IFSA-Butler's contact in Cork, who told us that if we had medical questions we should feel free to call since her husband was a doctor and could probably tell us what to do. Unfortunately, her husband said that I should stay put and wait it out, since it didn't sound like swine flu, but I clearly wasn't well enough to go to class. By Thursday, when I was still sick as ever, both Suzy and her husband told me to go to the after-hours clinic. At that point, I was beginning to seriously consider the fact that I might have swine flu (and all the kosher puns that could be gleaned from the possibility), although when the taxi picked me up to take me, I assured the driver that I didn't have swine flu, since I was a little afraid he wouldn't take me if he thought I had it.
The SouthDoc clinic was a 10-minute ride away and I got there 20 minutes early for my appointment. I sat in the chair nervously twiddling my thumbs (Yes, I actually do literally twiddle my thumbs sometimes.) with nothing to do but try not to scare the other people in the waiting room. I had forgotten to bring a book, that's how sick I was.
Finally it was my turn. The doctor I saw was very nice - and imagine my relief upon learning that I didn't have any kind of flu, let alone swine flu! I had acute (or severe, I forget which word he used - I was pretty out of it) tonsilitis, easily treated with antibiotics. I'm still utterly befuddled by the fact that I had to go to Ireland to GET tonisilitis, but it could have been much worse. By Friday morning, having only taken one dose, I already felt better. By Saturday, I was going stir-crazy, having barely spent any time outside my room since coming home Monday and now feeling well enough to be out and about.
Finally, it was Sunday. I'd been on the antibiotics for long enough that I was "no longer contagious" and I was free to be around people. My friends had planned on going to Blarney and I decided to go with them, telling myself that if I got tired, I would sit while they wandered around. We met up that morning and took the bus to Blarney. The truth is that I hadn't really wanted to go to Blarney, but by then I would have gone to the South Pole if it meant I didn't have to stay in my room by myself. Blarney Castle is right in town, and utterly beautiful. I cannot begin to explain how green everything was and the castle was much more intact than I had expected. We walked all through it and then it was time to kiss the Blarney Stone. I knew it was traditional, but I really didn't have any interest in doing it - but suddenly I was there, and totally inspired.
If you haven't been to Blarney Castle, let me explain how one goes about kissing the Blarney Stone. There are two men who stand there, one of whom takes your picture (which is available for purchase along with a certificate for 10 euros at the gift shop) and one who holds your legs as you lie down on your back and dangle off the wall to kiss this stone. I could barely reach it - and if there hadn't been someone holding on to me, there's no way I could have done it because you're truly hanging off the very top of the castle and I had to lean back and over so far that I think I would have fallen. It's intense stuff - and before you get to go, you're waiting in line and looking at the people ahead of you, realizing that you're going to be kissing the same thing they all just kissed and am I really sure I want to do that? (Ironically, it didn't even occur to me that any of them could have been sick - although now that I'm no longer caught up in the moment I definitely wonder how many people develop colds or whatever after visiting Blarney.) Afterwards, we wandered around the various walks and visited the witch's rock, the fairy circle, Blarney House and walked around the lake. The area near the witch's rock was like a magical glen - I would LOVE to stage a performance of Midsummer Night's Dream there because it's just the perfect spot. Lots of little nooks and bridges and almost twilight-like because the trees overhead blocked out the sun so well. I was fading fast, but since I had no plans to return to Blarney, I didn't want to miss anything - plus it was raining on and off, so there really wasn't anywhere for me to sit. We headed back around 2-3 and decided to have a late lunch, since we hadn't really had breakfast and were starving. The rest of the afternoon was spent catching up on schoolwork, since I had missed practically the entire first week of class.
Monday morning, I was ready to go to class. I had missed two field trips while sick (one to a play about J.M. Synge and one to Barryscourt Castle (of Barry's Tea, THE brand of tea in Ireland) and Fota House) and 3 days of lecture. Naturally, for all my excitement, I fell asleep in class, so I had to talk to Mary Breen about not just missing class (which she understood completely and was entirely sympathetic and easygoing) but about my sleep disorder, a talk I had really hoped I wouldn't have to have anymore. Again, she was very understanding, which I appreciated so much, since I had already been worried about missing so much class.
Tuesday-Thursday were rather uneventful. I stayed awake two of the days and fell asleep the other one. One of the days we watched a movie adaptation of one of the books we were studying, The Last September. The movie's really interesting, particularly in light of the book, so if you're interested, I recommend checking it out. Maggie Smith is a total snob in it, but the movie does some really interesting things with reflected images and point of view and the use of music is really thoughtful as well. There are lots of changes from the book, which took us all aback because the changes were pretty significant, but the movie will still give you a pretty good impression of Anglo-Irish society during the "troubles" at the beginning of the 20th century.
Friday we had a field trip to the ruins of Bowen's Court, the family home of Elizabeth Bowen, the author of The Last September. There's really nothing to see there, which was really startling, even though we had been warned. In fact, even though we were at Bowen's home, what we saw there was much more reminiscent of the messages of the other book we had read so far Tarry Flynn, by Patrick Kavanagh (which talks about how Tarry finds beauty in the mundane rather than the extraordinary). It was just fields - muddy, with the hay mown, leaving just 5-inch long pieces sticking up to push into our shoes, socks and pants. There was little evidence that there had once been a grand country manor on the property. We didn't really have anything to do there, just the view to take in, pictures to take and the graveyard where Bowen and her understanding husband were buried next to each other to see.
After lunch, which we had over an hour after we were supposed to, we took the bus back to Cork and hung out for a while. Several classes were on trips that either got back that day or left that day and would continue over the weekend, so there were only three of us who went to the pub that night. (I had a pint of cider - still can't drink beer, but I've got 3.5 months to either learn or not.) We were there for a couple hours and then decided to head back home. Along the way, we all got hungry, since I hadn't eaten much for dinner and Sophie and Kathryn had had early dinners, so we stopped on the way home at our favorite restaurant (the cheapest and most convenient place in town, bar none) Valentino's to pick up a late meal. We brought our burgers back to Sophie's flat and ate and spent another couple hours just yakking before finally going back to our rooms. It was so normal - no different than making a late-night run to Steak 'n' Shake at school or whatever - so it was that night that I really felt like I lived here, although I don't think I realized it at the time.
Almost caught up now! Hope you made it all the way through - I'll try not to fall so far behind in the future.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Train to Cork - 1st Day in Cork!
Finally the day had arrived. We were going to our new homes - but first we had to sort out the cell phone situation and take the train to get there. The cell phones were fairly easy - Tim and Geoff had gone and purchased the phones and loaded them up for us, so all we had to do was reimburse them. I am the proud owner of a little red and black Samsung phone. Then we had to get us and our stuff to the train station.
Easier said than done - between us 8 girls and all our luggage (I was among the "light packers" and I had a large suitcase and my backpack), Geoff, Suzy and Suzy's dog, a car and 3 taxis were required to caravan us to the station and once we got on the train, we had to get our luggage into the overhead compartments. A challenge for anyone with the amount of luggage we all had, but there was another difficulty in my case. I am, in case you hadn't noticed, on the shorter side. With someone helping me, I could easily lift the suitcase, but not quite as high as it needed to go - with the result, that I nearly took the head off these two very polite gentleman who were unfortunate enough to be sitting under the shelf I was trying to fill with my bag. Horribly embarrassed, I apologized over and over again and offered to buy them whatever they wanted off the snack cart, but they waved me off, thanking me for offering - and laughing at me a little too, I think.
I was completely mortified - I hid my head in my book (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) for I don't even know how long. People got on the train and off the train. Some of the girls fell asleep, others talked quietly or listened to their iPods. At a certain point, the older man (the one whose finger was injured in the tumbling suitcase mess) was left by his younger companion and we began talking. He was absolutely lovely. We chatted about his travels in the US, the wedding he would be attending soon, his book and then - !!! - I got my first Gaelic lesson.
My Gaelige dictionary so far:
Go rabh maith agat - Thank you
Le do thoil - please
Slán - Goodbye
Sláinte - Cheers
and
(phonetically) eoi - goodnight
And yes I remember how to say them. So exciting! Karen, the representative from UCC who came and spoke to us told us about an Intro to Gaelic class that's offered and I really want to take it - but I can't if my sleep meds aren't keeping me awake in class. I'm so glad I have this month to attend class and see how I do before the semester actually starts - it will make picking the classes I take over the semester much easier if I know I can (or can't) stay awake. I don't want a repeat of what happened when I tried to take Hebrew last fall.
Once the train arrived in Cork, our group waited 'til everyone in our car had exited before we tried to move our luggage. We had learned our lesson! After loading us and our stuff into cabs, we rode over to Copley Court, our home for the next four months. I was staying in an apartment with at least 5 other people, I knew, but none of them were IFSA people. After getting my key, I let myself into my apartment on what we'd call the 3rd floor, but is the 2nd here. 4 of my flatmates were already moved in and I met two right away. I learned that there were going to be 7 of us, 5 girls and 2 guys. We each had our own bathroom and bedroom, which was VERY exciting. My room is yellow with yellow curtains and a view of Cork. It's lovely and very cheerful. After dropping my stuff and locating my contracts, I went back downstairs to meet up with the rest of the group. We were all going to walk into town together. Geoff showed us how to get to city centre and then the group split up. The bar-hoppers from the night before went off together and the rest of us went with Geoff to UCC, which I really appreciated, since we were going to campus so I could talk to Karen about my sleep disorder. Geoff took us to campus (not the most direct route, but he's from Dublin, so it's not his fault, really) where I was to meet Karen. She was running a little late so we looked around and admired the Ogham stones. Once she arrived, we briefly spoke and then Geoff basically said see you in a few weeks and left. We walked around a little bit longer and bought ethernet cables and other absolute essentials and then decided we were starving and had to eat NOW. Since most of us hadn't had much of a lunch, unless you'd bought something on the train, we were all hungry.
Our token "local" Mary, whose mother is from Cork, led us to this delicious Italian place where we all happily ate dinner, before deciding to head home and unpack. At that point, I had absolutely no sense of Cork, beyond a pretty campus and a confusing city centre, but I'd learn. Since we had our official UCC Early Start orientation the next day, I didn't stay up very late. After chatting some more with my flatmates and meeting the 3 I hadn't yet met, I unpacked and turned in, exhausted and excited for everything to really start!
Easier said than done - between us 8 girls and all our luggage (I was among the "light packers" and I had a large suitcase and my backpack), Geoff, Suzy and Suzy's dog, a car and 3 taxis were required to caravan us to the station and once we got on the train, we had to get our luggage into the overhead compartments. A challenge for anyone with the amount of luggage we all had, but there was another difficulty in my case. I am, in case you hadn't noticed, on the shorter side. With someone helping me, I could easily lift the suitcase, but not quite as high as it needed to go - with the result, that I nearly took the head off these two very polite gentleman who were unfortunate enough to be sitting under the shelf I was trying to fill with my bag. Horribly embarrassed, I apologized over and over again and offered to buy them whatever they wanted off the snack cart, but they waved me off, thanking me for offering - and laughing at me a little too, I think.
I was completely mortified - I hid my head in my book (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) for I don't even know how long. People got on the train and off the train. Some of the girls fell asleep, others talked quietly or listened to their iPods. At a certain point, the older man (the one whose finger was injured in the tumbling suitcase mess) was left by his younger companion and we began talking. He was absolutely lovely. We chatted about his travels in the US, the wedding he would be attending soon, his book and then - !!! - I got my first Gaelic lesson.
My Gaelige dictionary so far:
Go rabh maith agat - Thank you
Le do thoil - please
Slán - Goodbye
Sláinte - Cheers
and
(phonetically) eoi - goodnight
And yes I remember how to say them. So exciting! Karen, the representative from UCC who came and spoke to us told us about an Intro to Gaelic class that's offered and I really want to take it - but I can't if my sleep meds aren't keeping me awake in class. I'm so glad I have this month to attend class and see how I do before the semester actually starts - it will make picking the classes I take over the semester much easier if I know I can (or can't) stay awake. I don't want a repeat of what happened when I tried to take Hebrew last fall.
Once the train arrived in Cork, our group waited 'til everyone in our car had exited before we tried to move our luggage. We had learned our lesson! After loading us and our stuff into cabs, we rode over to Copley Court, our home for the next four months. I was staying in an apartment with at least 5 other people, I knew, but none of them were IFSA people. After getting my key, I let myself into my apartment on what we'd call the 3rd floor, but is the 2nd here. 4 of my flatmates were already moved in and I met two right away. I learned that there were going to be 7 of us, 5 girls and 2 guys. We each had our own bathroom and bedroom, which was VERY exciting. My room is yellow with yellow curtains and a view of Cork. It's lovely and very cheerful. After dropping my stuff and locating my contracts, I went back downstairs to meet up with the rest of the group. We were all going to walk into town together. Geoff showed us how to get to city centre and then the group split up. The bar-hoppers from the night before went off together and the rest of us went with Geoff to UCC, which I really appreciated, since we were going to campus so I could talk to Karen about my sleep disorder. Geoff took us to campus (not the most direct route, but he's from Dublin, so it's not his fault, really) where I was to meet Karen. She was running a little late so we looked around and admired the Ogham stones. Once she arrived, we briefly spoke and then Geoff basically said see you in a few weeks and left. We walked around a little bit longer and bought ethernet cables and other absolute essentials and then decided we were starving and had to eat NOW. Since most of us hadn't had much of a lunch, unless you'd bought something on the train, we were all hungry.
Our token "local" Mary, whose mother is from Cork, led us to this delicious Italian place where we all happily ate dinner, before deciding to head home and unpack. At that point, I had absolutely no sense of Cork, beyond a pretty campus and a confusing city centre, but I'd learn. Since we had our official UCC Early Start orientation the next day, I didn't stay up very late. After chatting some more with my flatmates and meeting the 3 I hadn't yet met, I unpacked and turned in, exhausted and excited for everything to really start!
Orientation Day 2 - Let loose in Dublin!
Our day began the same as the previous day. Geoff picked the 8 of us up from breakfast and took us on the bus to the office for our next series of discussions. Our first topic was Academics - the differences between the American and Irish education systems. We talked about grading scales, teaching styles and had a rather intense discussion on the use of "I" in essays and different styles of citations. Yes, it was lots of fun. Yes, I got a little too excited during the Great "I" Debate, but really, it's an important and fairly controversial issue and I have strong opinions about it which I won't go into here because, frankly, I don't think anyone really cares what I think about this particular topic. ANYWAYS, we talked about school stuff for a while and then had a break during which part of the group went for coffee and I and most of the group went on a walk and ended up buying postcards. Don't get overly excited - I did not buy any since I left my purse in the office and therefore you won't be getting a postcard quite yet. Sorry - I promise I will work on that.
We reconvened and began our second session entitled Ireland Today, but really it was a free-for-all that continued until we left to go for lunch. At this point, I went up to Tim to talk to him about my sleep disorder and what I need to do to work with professors and make them aware of my situation. This made both Tim and Geoff excited because it was a legitimate excuse for them to do stuff - I think Geoff has visions of getting paged on the emergency beeper because someone got lost in Cork or something. This was a legitimate concern and something they could actually help with, so they were both rather pleased with me, although I don't think Tim knows my name - I'm probably just Sleep Disorder Girl, but that's fine - I don't think Tim knows anyone's name, so at least I have an identifying feature!
Lunch was delicious. If you're ever in Dublin near Merrion Square, I highly recommend stopping by Angel Park Eatery for a bite.
After lunch, we had a guest speaker come and talk to us about the consequences of a poor decision he made while drunk. Very cheery lecture - part of the requisite scaring us all into good behavior. (Since I'm writing this over a week later, I can tell you that the tale didn't discourage the people that probably needed discouraging and therefore was fairly ineffectual since the rest of us don't need scaring.) Following that, we discussed with Tim and Geoff our collective need for cell phones, which they were going to procure for the 6 of us who wanted to get them as a group and then we were free to do as we wished!
Collectively, we had decided to go to to Kilmainham (pronounced kill-MEN-um) Jail and then to the Guinness Storehouse for dinner and then to split up, as we chose. Geoff and Chris, our guest speaker, took us on the bus to the right neighborhood. It was in a part of Dublin we hadn't been to yet and we were told not to linger too long there. Apparently it's not the best part of Dublin, but we had no problems. While we waited in line for admittance, a man who was with the group ahead of us turned around and asked if we were American. He too was from the US and had been traveling with a group of students from Russia. He was really interesting - he had been in the army and had then learned a half-dozen languages (among them, Russian and German, if I remember correctly) and had actually studied for a while at IU - along with a bunch of other places. In the course of talking to him we learned that he taught at West Point, though he hadn't "been smart enough to study there." He was really interesting, but once his group went in, we lost track of him entirely, which was fine because we were busy learning about Irish politics in the museum before our tour of Kilmainham began.
Kilmainham was fascinating and I cannot recommend it enough. It's a wonderful example of Victorian-era reforms and we learned a lot about the political history of Ireland while we were there, since Kilmainham became famous as a prison for political prisoners. Really interesting, but very scary. I understand that they truly intended the inmates to repent their crimes, but the idea of the panopticon seem more likely to induce feelings of paranoia then repentance - or at least I felt that would be my own reaction. (The panopticon was constructed around the idea that someone (in theory, G-d/Justice and government/jailers) was always watching your every move, so any transgression would be seen. It was supposed to dissuade criminals from acting.)
From there, we decided we definitely needed something lighter - and a drink! - so the Guinness Storehouse seemed the perfect next stop. Our group broke up with half of us going through quickly to get to the free beer at the end, while the rest of us learned in great detail all about the stout-brewing process. From that, I learned the following fascinating facts:
After hanging out in the Observatory Bar for awhile, we were exhausted and starving so we took the bus back to the Temple Bar/Grafton St. area and walked around looking for a place where the 8 of us could all have dinner together. By the time we found a restaurant, we were so excited I think we nearly started crying. This is what happens when you don't feed people for hours and then give them beer. Not recommended. After dinner, we split up. 3 girls went pub-hopping, two girls went back to the hotel, and two other girls and I wandered around for awhile, just people-watching and sight-seeing. The Grafton St. area is pretty happening, so there was lots going on, but after an hour or so of that, we were wiped and hopped on the bus to get back.
We'd been doing really well. No one had gotten lost yet, no calamities, nothing had been broken.... clearly something had to give. (**Nobody needs to worry, this is more humorous than scary. Everyone stay calm! :) ) We got off the bus and crossed the street towards the hotel. Two guys were following us further back, but they weren't bothering us, so I assumed they were guests too. We went into the hotel and past the key card part and they followed after us. We got in the elevator and they did too. One of the girls noticed they were carrying beer cans and appeared to be drunk. I had walked in the elevator first and pushed our floor button, but when the guys walked in, they just pressed the already-lit button. We arrived at our floor and they got out. We stayed in the elevator and pushed the 4th floor button and got out on the next floor. After a quick discussion where we basically decided to go hang out in the basement bar for awhile until they left (we were slightly concerned they were waiting for us on the third floor), we rode the elevator down and hung out for awhile. After some time had passed, we decided it would be safe to go back upstairs. No one was hanging around the floor, although we hadn't seen the guys leave. We knocked on the door of the girls who had headed back first, but they hadn't seen anything which cracked us up, for some reason. After saying goodnight, we all went to our respective rooms. We were taking the train to Cork tomorrow - finally we could unpack and really settle in!!
We reconvened and began our second session entitled Ireland Today, but really it was a free-for-all that continued until we left to go for lunch. At this point, I went up to Tim to talk to him about my sleep disorder and what I need to do to work with professors and make them aware of my situation. This made both Tim and Geoff excited because it was a legitimate excuse for them to do stuff - I think Geoff has visions of getting paged on the emergency beeper because someone got lost in Cork or something. This was a legitimate concern and something they could actually help with, so they were both rather pleased with me, although I don't think Tim knows my name - I'm probably just Sleep Disorder Girl, but that's fine - I don't think Tim knows anyone's name, so at least I have an identifying feature!
Lunch was delicious. If you're ever in Dublin near Merrion Square, I highly recommend stopping by Angel Park Eatery for a bite.
After lunch, we had a guest speaker come and talk to us about the consequences of a poor decision he made while drunk. Very cheery lecture - part of the requisite scaring us all into good behavior. (Since I'm writing this over a week later, I can tell you that the tale didn't discourage the people that probably needed discouraging and therefore was fairly ineffectual since the rest of us don't need scaring.) Following that, we discussed with Tim and Geoff our collective need for cell phones, which they were going to procure for the 6 of us who wanted to get them as a group and then we were free to do as we wished!
Collectively, we had decided to go to to Kilmainham (pronounced kill-MEN-um) Jail and then to the Guinness Storehouse for dinner and then to split up, as we chose. Geoff and Chris, our guest speaker, took us on the bus to the right neighborhood. It was in a part of Dublin we hadn't been to yet and we were told not to linger too long there. Apparently it's not the best part of Dublin, but we had no problems. While we waited in line for admittance, a man who was with the group ahead of us turned around and asked if we were American. He too was from the US and had been traveling with a group of students from Russia. He was really interesting - he had been in the army and had then learned a half-dozen languages (among them, Russian and German, if I remember correctly) and had actually studied for a while at IU - along with a bunch of other places. In the course of talking to him we learned that he taught at West Point, though he hadn't "been smart enough to study there." He was really interesting, but once his group went in, we lost track of him entirely, which was fine because we were busy learning about Irish politics in the museum before our tour of Kilmainham began.
Kilmainham was fascinating and I cannot recommend it enough. It's a wonderful example of Victorian-era reforms and we learned a lot about the political history of Ireland while we were there, since Kilmainham became famous as a prison for political prisoners. Really interesting, but very scary. I understand that they truly intended the inmates to repent their crimes, but the idea of the panopticon seem more likely to induce feelings of paranoia then repentance - or at least I felt that would be my own reaction. (The panopticon was constructed around the idea that someone (in theory, G-d/Justice and government/jailers) was always watching your every move, so any transgression would be seen. It was supposed to dissuade criminals from acting.)
From there, we decided we definitely needed something lighter - and a drink! - so the Guinness Storehouse seemed the perfect next stop. Our group broke up with half of us going through quickly to get to the free beer at the end, while the rest of us learned in great detail all about the stout-brewing process. From that, I learned the following fascinating facts:
- A pure water supply is super important in the brewing process and to malign the purity of a brewer's water supply is a major insult.
- Guinness employs master brewers who taste test all the beer.
- Guinness claims to have created the first stout. I later learned that Beamish (or was it Murphy's?) supposedly was brewing its stout several decades earlier, so go figure.
- The yeast that is used today is the descendents of the yeast that Mr. Guinness first used.
- A supply of yeast is kept locked up in a safe in the event that something happens and this yeast would be used to rapidly build up the stock again. Wouldn't want Guinness to have to use non-regulation yeast, would you?
- Roasted barley tastes similar to a coffee bean. Not my favorite flavor, but not horrible.
- Hops plants grow really tall. I forget quite how tall, but I think it was easily over 6'.
After hanging out in the Observatory Bar for awhile, we were exhausted and starving so we took the bus back to the Temple Bar/Grafton St. area and walked around looking for a place where the 8 of us could all have dinner together. By the time we found a restaurant, we were so excited I think we nearly started crying. This is what happens when you don't feed people for hours and then give them beer. Not recommended. After dinner, we split up. 3 girls went pub-hopping, two girls went back to the hotel, and two other girls and I wandered around for awhile, just people-watching and sight-seeing. The Grafton St. area is pretty happening, so there was lots going on, but after an hour or so of that, we were wiped and hopped on the bus to get back.
We'd been doing really well. No one had gotten lost yet, no calamities, nothing had been broken.... clearly something had to give. (**Nobody needs to worry, this is more humorous than scary. Everyone stay calm! :) ) We got off the bus and crossed the street towards the hotel. Two guys were following us further back, but they weren't bothering us, so I assumed they were guests too. We went into the hotel and past the key card part and they followed after us. We got in the elevator and they did too. One of the girls noticed they were carrying beer cans and appeared to be drunk. I had walked in the elevator first and pushed our floor button, but when the guys walked in, they just pressed the already-lit button. We arrived at our floor and they got out. We stayed in the elevator and pushed the 4th floor button and got out on the next floor. After a quick discussion where we basically decided to go hang out in the basement bar for awhile until they left (we were slightly concerned they were waiting for us on the third floor), we rode the elevator down and hung out for awhile. After some time had passed, we decided it would be safe to go back upstairs. No one was hanging around the floor, although we hadn't seen the guys leave. We knocked on the door of the girls who had headed back first, but they hadn't seen anything which cracked us up, for some reason. After saying goodnight, we all went to our respective rooms. We were taking the train to Cork tomorrow - finally we could unpack and really settle in!!
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