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.
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