Once Upon a Time

Finally, I've had a week that's blogworthy. I actually did things, saw people, ate food, and so forth, in ways exciting enough to want to tell other people about it!!!


So, most exciting news is that I'm moving apartments tomorrow. Remember those friends I made last week with the cooking and the pie? Well, they live two floors below me, across the hall from other friends, and they have an extra room, their third roommate just didn't show up at the beginning of the semester, soooo I'm gonna take it. This means I have a single (and possibly room if you want to visit) and will be living with friends, and will be neighbors with good friends/they guy teaching me tunes on the whistle. I realize living two floors up isn't that far away, but being right across the hall and in an apartment with friends will make a huge difference. I do enjoy the company of my roommates now, but having a double has been hard on both me and Betti, I think it will be better for both of us to have singles. This way she can skype and have people over in peace. We've already got a list of things we need to do after I move downstairs, starting with hot fudge sundaes and a movie tomorrow night. 


In other news, yesterday afternoon I decided to join the friends I'm moving in with, on a wild and rash trip to Limerick to see a men's rugby match. They had tickets, but only realized yesterday that because the game was in the evening, there was no bus to catch back to Cork after the match (which is about two hours long). In the middle of this craziness of not knowing where they were staying or what they were doing, I decided to buy a ticket to the match and join in...definitely for the adventure of it. Finally, after no small amount of stress and sending Jq through the pouring rain to print tickets (she had to turn a paper in on campus) we had a game plan of sorts. So we set off to catch the bus, it's still raining, and we leave ten minutes before the bus is supposed to leave. This is when we decided this trip was an adventure story we were writing as we were going, and it was not allowed to turn into a horror story, so we stayed positive. 


Chapter One - Leave the building
Christine and Kasey stop at an ATM, it's seven minutes until the bus leaves so Jq and I run ahead to buy tickets and find the bus. This was easy enough, but wait, the bus driver is almost unsure if he has enough seats for the four of us, and Kasey and Christine are still inside in line to buy tickets. So Jq and I run mini interference at the door to the bus to make sure we all make it. And we do, just squeezing into the last four seats minutes before the bus departs. 


Chapter Two - Bus ride
Which was uneventful, thankfully. At one point I asked Jq if we were sure we were on the right bus, because I was in such a rush, and then when I sat down I started to think about it, and wasn't positive. Only to realize, after a friendly Irish guy made fun of me for getting on a bus not knowing where it was going, that the bus driver would've told us we were in the wrong place when he looked at our tickets when we got on. Then, I really wanted to look out the window, because the countryside is so beautiful and there are a lot of really cool ruins, but the girl next to me, who had the window seat, pulled the shade closed. So I just took a nap. 


Chapter Three - Arrive in Limerick
Creepy guy asks us if we want a cigarette or need anything. We ask for directions to the street we need and then hurry off. It was surprisingly easy to find the hotel that we booked. But this is where it gets exciting. We wanted to book a family room, which is supposed to have room for two adults and two kids, with a double bed and a pull out couch, but they said that it wouldn't fit four adults. So instead we booked a room for three adults, one double and one twin bed, but there were four of us. So as we were walking there we came up with at least three contingency plans for who was going to go in and check in, and what we would say if they asked specific questions, and it ended up not being necessary (at this point). Christine and I went up and checked in while Kasey and Jq loitered around the couches pretending not to know us. Then we all happened to get in the elevator at the same time and made our way to the room, which was nice enough for a hotel. 


Chapter Four - Walk to the match
This turned out to be surprisingly easy as well. We'd google mapped directions, but ended up not needing them because all that was necessary was to follow the streaming hordes of people and the traffic. We arrived just as Edinburgh scored the first points. The match was a lot of fun. And though rugby is definitely not a sport I enjoy playing, it was nice to somewhat understand what was going on and be able to semi coherently explain it to the others. Honestly, the men's game was also a little more exciting to watch then the women's match last week. They throw the ball so much more quickly and just seemed to keep the flow of the game going. There also weren't any all out brawls on the field (though I can't really decide if that's a plus or a minus). Munster ended up winning! Which was exciting, it's nice to have traveled that far and have the team you're rooting for win. We live in the province of Munster, it's basically the south of Ireland. What's interesting in rugby, is that whenever there's a kick, either for a penalty or after a try is scored, everyone goes completely silent. A literal hush falls over the crows as hundreds of people shush each other. It's a crazy experience. Sometimes there's the one jerk who will shout something or whistle, but most of the time everyone is completely silent. Except the birds, but then you can hear them twittering up in the rafters.

A scrum. They basically lock into each other and push.

The Munster mascot. Looks kinda like a creepy blow up lego guy. He walked around a lot of the field...very very slowly.

Chapter Five - Post match fun
After the match we followed the streaming hordes back into the city of Limerick. Which, despite it's reputation as "stab city" was actually really beautiful. The lights on the River Shannon kinda reminded me of the bridge over the harbor in Sydney. Anyway, first we went into a pub that was really crowded, but there was going to be a live band, so I was reluctant to leave, but after having stood in the cold at the match for a couple hours, we all wanted to sit down. So we headed around the corner to a smaller pub. This pub was so perfect and cute. I think we were probably the only people there under 30, but there was a group of probably six or seven men, that fluctuated while we were there, with a bunch of instruments who were belting folk songs. Not traditional Irish music like we've seen in a bunch of other pubs, but just folk songs from around the world, at one point the banjo player played Lara's Theme from Dr. Zhivago. It was really nice. We all just got a pint and sat around a candlelit table, listened to the old men, wished we could've joined them, and chatted for a couple hours. It was fabulous! After this, we decided we were craving something fried, having stood at a match watching people eating hotdogs and hamburgers. So we headed to the nearest kebab place.


Tangent: WHY DON'T WE HAVE KEBAB PLACES AT HOME?!?!?! I don't mean to yell, but yes, they may be too prevalent here, and in Australia, and I'm sure elsewhere around Europe, but we don't have them at all at home. They have hamburgers, and kebabs (which are really gyro), and chips (fries) with all sorts of topping: curry, garlic and cheese, taco...oh man, these places are fabulous, and not very expensive and sooo much better then McDonald's or burger King (which also exist here too). I just don't get it. I don't know what I'm going to do without garlic and cheese chips!


Anyways, got our fried food, planning on heading back to the hotel to continue hanging, maybe play a card game. But after we finished, we were wiped out...


Chapter Six - Back to the hotel
So this is where the story gets thrilling and there's suspense...who knows what's gonna happen next? I finally proved my prowess with directions and directed us safely back to the hotel. The lobby is completely empty as we enter and we're heading towards the elevators when all of a sudden, "excuse me!" calls a security guard, who was definitely sitting behind the tree in the corner. He walks up to us with sheets of paper and asks us for identification. Christine, being the person who booked the room, gives him her name, and he finds her on the sheet and crosses her off. However, we only have a three person room and there are four of us...what do we do?? The security guard catches this detail and asks us about it and we all scramble to remember our plans from before. Oh yes...Jq is actually a student at the university of limerick and she'd just left her stuff in the room because we were headed to the match. She was just here to pick it up and head back to school. Man, I'm sure he didn't believe us, but he waved us on, and I put the dead bolt in the door, just to make sure they wouldn't come checking :) I think that was literally the most exciting/tense part of the adventure, aside from trying to determine if we were going to get a hotel/hostel or just try to stay in a pub all night and wander around until the next bus (so glad we didn't do that, we were all sooo tired). 


Chapter Seven - Saturday morning
We woke up this morning in time to catch the 10:35 bus. Checked out of the hotel without any hassle at all, walked back to the bus station without getting lost. And headed back to Cork. This time I got to look out the window the whole way and saw some pretty cool ruins. That's something we don't have at home...old castles in the middle of fields just falling to pieces. So cool! Arrived safely back in Cork and went our separate ways to do homework and write blogs and so forth, until we reconvene tomorrow to move me downstairs and have a fabulous day!


The End


I was really glad I decided to join them, I couldn't decide yesterday, especially since the weather was ghastly, but it was definitely worth it. It wasn't even raining in Limerick, the weather was perfect for a rugby match, a little chilly, but still really nice. 


Until next time...


Irish proverb of the day
It is the quiet pigs that eat the meal.
Is iad na muca ciúine a itheann an mhin.

Another week (or two?) flies by.

It's been a while since I last posted. That's probably because nothing uber exciting has really happened. I've fallen into a semblance of a routine and now days just seem to be passing like lightning and I don't have a chance to blog.

So last week after the ceili was pretty uneventful, went to classes. Continuing to improve with the uillean pipes and the tin whistle. Dan has been teaching me more tunes, hopefully I'll have built up a respectable library in my head by the time I get back. I don't believe we did anything particularly Ireland-y that weekend. It was so long ago, I honestly don't really recall. I do think the weather was bad, perhaps it was a stay inside weekend, as many seem to have been recently. I do know that on Sunday I trekked the two miles to a friend's apartment to cook dinner. I was sopping by the time I got there, but it was worth it, we baked a pie and cinnamon rolls. In the process we had some misadventures with the conversions of liters and grams into cups...oh Europe. But everything turned out delicious.

That was Sunday of the Superbowl. We stayed and watched for a little while, but there were absolutely no commercials, there were just british commentator people telling us about how the game of football works. And it's actually just pointless and uninteresting to watch football because they stop every two minutes for a TV break. So I headed home in the downpour.

This past week was also relatively uneventful...man, I've become so boring, this is not supposed to happen in Ireland. Anyway, it turned out that a lot of people had a birthday or people coming to visit this past week, so I had a bunch of hanging out to do. It was Katie's birthday on Wednesday and we went out to eat at a restaurant and spent most of the time discussing our upcoming weekend to London, it sounds like it should be a lot of fun. We're going to be there for a long time though, we better not run out of things to do! Then after dinner, my friend Christine had a friend from Rome visiting, and it was also Dan's birthday, and though I'd been invited to dinner, having just eaten, I went over for dessert. Dan made delicious butter cake (something like that) and Christine made Guinness floats which are phenomenal. I honestly enjoyed them better the plain Guinness.

Thursday we went to see Black Swan, and though I'd already seen it (free on the internet) it was definitely better on the big screen. Friday, I wasn't planning on doing anything, but the rugby team got a bus to go up to Dublin to see the women's national team play France in the Six Nations Cup. The men were playing France at the same time, but where the tickets to the women's game were 5 euro, tickets to the men's were 150! So we went to the women's game. The bus ride up (3 hours) was kinda crazy. They Irish girls on the team were a hoot, they started drinking the minute the bus started moving, and this included the coach, who is not that much older then us. They did this thing where they drank large cans of beer and then taped the ones they'd finished to the bottom of the one they were currently drinking, and the person with the longest "wand", while not really winning anything, definitely was given a lot of respect. By the time we reached the pitch, after getting a little lost in random fields in the dark, they were completely smashed. And this only served to make them rowdier as the game commenced. It was cool to see a real game live, though Ireland did lose, but just barely. It got really rough, there were actually a couple fist fights, the French were uber aggressive.

The ride back was a lot less exciting, I think most everyone passed out. We finally made it back at 3 am and I just came home and crashed. Yesterday, after sleeping in, I did some homework then headed downstairs to learn some tunes from Dan. It turned out there's a beer festival going on this weekend at the local brewery, the Franciscan Well, so a bunch of us headed over there. The beer was really good, and we just sat around in the heated tent and chatted about some intellectual things. I decided to invite everyone over for dinner, so we stopped in at the English Market to grab some fresh baked bread, I love that place! I made taco soup and an apple pie, which was a big hit, woot for making friends through cooking. We ended up chilling and drinking some wine, then headed out to An Brog, a pub close to us that has a lot of space for dancing. It was good fun slash, always an interesting experience to watch
people.

Anyway, that brings us up to right now, sorry to ramble about day to day happenings, but nothing really exciting has been happening. I do have my first quiz on Tuesday and I'm thinking about quitting rugby, it may just not be my sport, and it's taking away from other things I'd like to do, like go to more music sessions on week nights and so forth....we'll have to see.

Irish proverb of the day:
There are two versions of/two sides to every story & (at least) twelve versions of every song.
Bíonn dhá insint ar scéal agus dhá leagan déag ar amhrán

Ceili!!!

The ceili last night was really cool (Don't tell my parents). I went with a group of people from my building and we had a blast. I even knew a couple of the dances (The Siege of Venice I think...it may even be the one that's in the video?) and was definitely a little more adept then some of the people there, thanks Folklife! But whether or not people knew what they were doing, everyone had a blast! Hopefully we'll find more to go to. We were saying that we wish America had some kind of tradition like this that we could do at dances and such. We had a contra at Bowdoin once, but not that many people came, and it was mostly girls at that. But there were a bunch of guys at the ceili last night, and some of the American ones I talked to said that they were having a lot of fun, why can't we do stuff like this at home?!?! It probably helps that it was at a pub and everyone was having a Guinness or a Murphy's. 

Another interesting realization from last night: not everyone in the States has to learn the Virginia Reel. I guess I know it originally from Oregon Trail, due to living in Oregon, but we do it every summer at Willowbrook and we just did it at school sometimes. Weird

Oh, other things I keep thinking to say but always forget when I go to write this:

-velcro shoes, surprisingly popular here, in the adult population. I guess not adult, more people my age, but still, I keep expecting some of them to light up too!

-The Irish say like almost as much as we do, but where we put it at the beginning or middle of sentences they put it at the end. So we would say "like, I had a really great time tonight", and they would say "I had a really great time tonight like". It always sound a little more sophisticated when they say it.

-I've been asked for directions twice and have been able to give them without hesitation. Yeah that's right, I know my way around Cork, Ireland. 

OMG, just got back from the gym, our rugby practice was just a gym session tonight, and now I can barely life my arms. I haven't worked out in a long time, and I bench pressed for the first time ever. Colleen and Rafa could do 10 kg, which we figured out is 22 lbs, I could barely just lift the bar...lame. But hopefully I'll keep going and work up. The only thing is that the gym is two miles away from where I live, and it's hard to work up the motivation to get over there and then come back after. Oh also, the gym is like brand new and all high tech. To get in, you swipe your card and then put your finger on a scanner and it reads your fingerprint!! WOAH, like crazy. Before you go in the first time you sign a waiver and then they put your fingerprints into the system...I guess it's so if someone steals your card they can't get into the gym, but really, that seems like a lot of work to keep people out. Also, to get into the library on campus you have to swipe your card, at Bowdoin anyone can go into the libraries. They're very protective/territorial here!

Irish proverb of the day:

A wren only has need for its nest.
Is leor don dreoilín a nead.

Preparing for their first ceili ever!!

The guy on the left was the caller...he was really good. they also did a cool broom dance I've never seen before. This pub also reminded me of the bar in Casablanca, the name of which I could not remember the whole night and had to look up when I got home...then felt really silly that I couldn't remember!

One Month!!

I can't believe it, I arrived here a month ago practically right now. It doesn't seem like I've been here for that long, but when I try to remember what I did last Monday, it melds together with all the previous Mondays...so I guess it must be true.

Yesterday was the first day of Spring and it definitely felt like it, the weather report said it was supposed to start raining and keep going for ten days, but that didn't happen, it was sunny and in the fifties. It did rain this morning, but that cleared up and it's been sunny and warm again, it's so beautiful, I can't wait for Spring to actually hit and for things to start blooming. I ordered a field guide to the wildlife of Ireland that should be here soon so I can start identifying things!! I had hoped to get one before going on the hike on last Sunday, but it turned out that it wouldn't have been that useful anyway.

So yeah, the hike. It was good, really good to get out of the city again and see more of the Irish countryside. We drove a couple hours west of the city and camp upon a ridge of hills rising in the distance, called Caherbarnagh. They didn't look too big and that's basically all they were, hills. But man, the mountaineering club here is no joke, it's not a hiking club, it's moutaineering. We climbed straight up those hills, and as you were climbing up, they definitely feel like "just hills" anymore. We were scrambling up through gorse (pricklies) and without a trail. It was fun, but very exhausting work. It had started out as a warm and sunny day, but the clouds rolled in and by the time we got to the top it was freezing, like literally. There was snow on the ground and the wind was ferocious.

I thought we looked very reminiscent of the von trap family at the end of The Sound of Music when they're climbing over the alps (I think) in a line. If I'd had enough breath I would've sung "Climb Every Mountain". It was definitely worth it, and it was a beautiful view from up there. So we clambered up, then walked along for a couple hours, stopping for lunch on the way. There was snow up there (not that much, but still!) and little boggy areas were frozen completely solid. Then it was straight downhill and an hour walk back along the road to the cars.

The ascent. See the green up there? That's all prickly bushes, I fell into them a couple times...

View from the top of the first hill. It was a kinda foggy day, but the view is still pretty good.

It was very windy up there...so much so that they're able to harvest the stuff!

Close up on the wind turbines...no Don Quixote in sight...we looked though.

View from the top, this may have been around lunch time. Man, it felt good to get up there...an achievement like.

There's the Von Traps now, leading the way. You can also see the snow ahead, it was in an area that was sheltered by any other hill, it started and then stopped suddenly.

Frozen moss. It was really pretty, the white dots in the ice are air bubbles, I wish I had captured it more artistically but I didn't want to be left behind.

I can't ever imagine climbing a mountain like Everest, or even Hood, I was freezing at the top of this hill!

The hill down. They hadn't hiked this mountain in ten years, so were kinda making it up as they went along...but we lived, and that's what counts right?

Look!! A whole herd of Sophies hanging out on the mountain slopes. This must be where they breed labradoodles!! No, but really, Sophie would've loved this hike.

The people in this club were really really nice. We all went to a pub afterwards, where they get cheap beer, probs because they always bring huge groups of people in every week, and free pizza...woot! It was a lot of fun, I've heard that the hikes only get harder from here, and I was totally wiped after this one, but hopefully I'll get myself to go again. With this hiking and rugby and all the walking I've been doing, I should be getting in shape. 

Haha! Speaking of rugby, at practice last night, we had half the field, and a men's rugby team had the other half. At the end of their practice, for some reason, one of the guys had to pick up all their gear...completely naked. It probably had to do with the fact that the women's team was their, but it was still ridiculous shenanigans...oh college, gotta love it!

Classes continue to be good, finally starting to get paper assignments, but they're still not due for awhile. This week is also tradfest, it's the week the traditional music society does a lot of stuff. So there are good concerts and such, tonight we're hopefully going to head to a ceili, maybe I'll remember some steps!

Irish proverb of the day (this one is apparently a blessing):

That's all, I don’t have any other story
Sin sin, níl aon scéal eile agam