I guess one answer is probably that I've actually been doing some exciting things with my life, so much has happened since the last time I wrote that I can't even really remember the order in which things did happen, but let's see what I can do.
So I moved, and it was the best decision ever! Thank you thank you thank you to my parents for okaying the spending of the money to move from a double to a single. But also, just to be clear, it's not the single that makes it the best decision ever, but the people I'm rooming with and close to. We've had like three or four group dinners (which I will talk more about) and just spend a lot of time together talking and being friends, whereas in my old room, I would spend most of my time on my computer alone. Basically I cannot gush about my friends or living situation now enough, so I'm just gonna stop because I think you get the idea.
Ok...so after the moving in. Well I guess the first thing is that Kasey and Jq watch tv shows together in the evening (kinda like Hannah and I do) and they're working on a show called Dexter. Anyways, that first night in this room they invited me to watch with them and since then it's become a nightly ritual for all of us, often joined by cookies or ice cream. We're also loading the show free from the internet so sometimes it can be an adventure. Jq will start loading it on her computer, but it will freeze, so we'll come to mine and watch on megavideo, which will say we've reached our time limit in like 10 minutes so then we go back to Jq's or try Kasey's...you get the picture. It's fun, but can be tiring...I think it may actually be why I've got a head cold, too much time spent chasing Dexter around computers and not enough time sleeping.
One of the huge plusses of moving is that we share the kitchen and everything in it here. We'll all go shopping together, or two of us will go and get what we need, often it's the basics: milk, eggs, bread, orange juice, and then we'll split the cost. It's so nice to not have to worry about having my own shelf in the fridge, because if something runs out whoever goes shopping next will get it. No ones overly worried about keeping track of who's spent how much money on what, because it evens itself all out. We also do dinner in a similar fashion. One person will have an idea and cook and we'll all eat and help clean and then the next day it's someone else's turn. Some nights we all do our own thing, but that's when we're busy.
Now I'm going to tell you about the fabulous things that have been cooked. Kasey made a really delicious pasta dish with chicken, basil, tomatoes and onions, on spaghetti mixed with balsamic vinaigrette, I've never put balsamic vinaigrette on my pasta intentionally, but it was fabulous. Another night Jq made pizza margherita...ahh so goooood. Because they'd both cooked, it was my turn, and I invited our friends from across the hall over for savory/dessert crepes. Sauteed some mushrooms and onions, asparagus with garlic (I love asparagus!!) and then baked broccoli with garlic, for the savory ones. For dessert I sauteed apples with cinnamon, brown sugar and a little vanilla, some people put nutella along with it, or just plain ol' whipped cream. It was a great meal, but man were there a lot of dishes. The next night, because Dan's friend was visiting from Paris, his roommates, two of which are French, made a fantastic french meal for all of us, and Dan made a cheescake. I don't remember what the meal was called, but it had potatoes and really good cheese and pork pieces, which I did eat because I've been really good, and it was a french meal made by french people...I mean c'mon!! Tonight Kasey and I are going to make buffalo chicken burgers with garlic mashed potatoes and are incredibly excited. Man, that was a whole paragraph about food, and it probably could've been longer, did I ever talk about our sundae and sangria night? Well that was delicious and fabulous as well....basically, we eat a lot, and well.
In the "not food" realm of being in Ireland things have been continuing on. Finally have assignments, for instance the marine environments paper due Thursday that I am procrastinating on by writing this. Also had two quizzes around the midterm, one in marine science and one in archaeology, I think they both went well, hopefully getting them back soon. Whistle and pipes continue to go well, also along the music vein, I've started teaching Kasey how to play the guitar which is fun! Basically school is school, not uber exciting.
However, this past weekend was fun. We had another archaeology field trip on Saturday which was really cool.
The first site we went to was the site of the largest wedge tomb in Ireland, the Labbacalle Wedge Tomb. It held three bodies, a child, a man and an old woman (old meaning in her forties), and it used to be even bigger, the first capstone would've extended even farther to the left. This monument is from the final neolithic, which would be between 2,800 and 2,300 BC...so a really long time ago!
This is the wedge tomb, you can't see the whole thing.
Inside the wedge tomb. There were different chambers that held the bodies. The first one held the child and man, and a woman's head. The second farther back one held a woman's body without a head...
Then we went to Glenworth castle, built in the 13th century BC by the Anglo-Normans. It was really falling apart, and had a lot of scaffolding all over it, but it was still mighty impressive
This was a cool waterwheel on the way up to the castle, I'm not actually sure when this is from, but it looks relatively recent seeing as the wood is still there.
One of the corner turrets on the defensive wall.
The tower part of this was actually built later. This section used to be the gate house, there was a dungeon below the ground on the right side. It's amazing to think that people put so much time into building this things stone by stone.
Our last stop was the Rock of Cashel. It was originally built to be a stronghold of the Kings of Munster in the early medieval period, but that building is gone and has been replaced three times over by different religious buildings. The site was given to the church in 1101 when they built the round tower (which you can kind of see in the right part of the first picture). The rest of that building wasn't actually there when the tower was built as a signal of this being a religious place now. Another church was built further away that has since been destroyed to build this bigger cathedral.
The left side, actually most of the picture, is taken up by the gothic cathedral, the round tower (on the right) was built well before that and used to stand alone
The day was mostly beautiful, it was really windy, and rain swept through a couple times, but it mostly looked like this. Wouldn't it have been scary to be standing there when that corner fell off the building??
So Saturday was a day of education for me, my friends took the day to go to the Jameson factory and get a tour as well as taste test the whiskey, kinda bummed I missed out on that, but the field trip was definitely fun. Sunday, Kasey and I decided to go to Killarney national park. We are both frustrated with the way the mountaineering club runs their hikes. Their mission is to climb mountains as fast as they can, but that's not what either of us are interested in when we go on a hike. There's no wildlife where they go, just hills and rocks. I'll admit, it is rewarding to climb a mountain and reach the top, and I'm glad I did it once, but I'd rather hike through woods with birds and trees and such. So we set off for Killarney, having heard it was beautiful and well worth it.
We woke up early, planning on catching the 10:30 bus, but wanting to go to the store to grab picnicey things for lunch. So we're out of the apartment by 9:30, the day is already beautiful, but no one is outside. I guess everyone was in church, but Cork, which is usually bustling, was completely dead! We didn't think too much of it, but found this fact applied to us when we got to Tesco and it was closed, with no indication of it's hours. All we have at this point are cookies and some trail mix, we definitely need food. So we try Dunnes, also closed, opens at noon. Last attempt is centra, a kind of 7-11 store, and it was open...finally. So now we have supplies and head to the bus stop.
The ride was uneventful, there were some grey looking clouds ahead of us as we were driving, but the day ended up being completely gorgeous. We get to Killarney and expect to see signs pointing us towards the visitor's center, as our friend Christine told use would be the case. However, these are nowhere to be seen, so we just wander into the middle of the town. Which is very cute and small. Finally we find a sign board that has a map with the visitor's center on it and make our way in that direction. Come to find out, this is something else that is closed on a Sunday. So we have no map or any idea of what to do, or even where the entrance to the park is. But...there are a bunch of bike shops renting bikes to travel the park with, so we head over to one of those to see if they have a map. Turns out he does, it's not very good, but it's still a map, however, he's having a hard time letting it out of his hands before convincing us that the park isn't worth it unless it's seen via bike. There's apparently no way of seeing what you need to see if you just walk, because it's 10k down to where you want to go 8k around that lake and then 10k back. It is completely true that this would not have been doable, however, there's a whole other section of the park that is close by and completely walkable. So I grabbed the map out of his hands in the middle of him telling us for the fourth time that he would give us discount bikes if we didn't have a lot of money, said we'd think about it, and left.
We wanted a better map, so we went in search of someone else who might have one. Ended up in a hotel at one of their racks of pamphlets and found a couple more maps, which altogether gave us a general picture of what we wanted to do. So we set out into the park. It was nothing like the hiking we do at home, on trails, the path was paved and it wasn't really wild. A lot of points of interest in the park could be driven to, so the path was near a road. But it was still nice. We decided that we wanted somethings between Killarney and the mountaineering club, but I think I preferred our laid back stroll through the park to the steam engine that are the serious mountaineering club people.
I took my "Irish Wildlife" book and we identified a bunch of trees and birds and ferns and such, taking it slowly, stopping to eat and look at the surroundings. We even climbed a tree at one point. It was a perfect outing. We decided that when we get back home we'll try to meet up in between Boston (where Kasey goes to school) and Maine to go hiking and backpacking during the school year next year. Hopefully then we'll get our happy medium. We managed to walk a good distance a see a lot of stuff, and were even able to not have to retrace our steps (like the bike man said we would) to get back to the entrance, so we saw a lot of stuff.
The beginning of the hike. If we'd been with the club they would be going up those mountains behind Kasey!
This is Mac, a Common Frog. We're not sure if it was male or female because we only realized that we had to look at it's thumbs to see after I'd let it go, so we went for an androgynous name.
Ross Castle. There were a lot of people here feeding ducks and swans, it was really pretty.
Getting out of the tree we climbed, climbing this tree made us feel very accomplished.
This is Ross Island. In the mesolithic period, and on through the ages, people mined copper here. The mesolithic people would build fires against the rock face, throw cold water on it and then hammer it with a stone hammer over and over and over again to get at the ore. It was cool to see something we'd learned about in archaeology in real life. I really wanted to go down the hole, but there was a fence around it.
Look a bird! In a tree! This is why we went on this hike. This is a Treecreeper because it scuttle up and around trees really quickly to find insects. It was hard to capture a picture of it.
Beautiful day!
We took a different trail back, that was paved, and look what we got, a natural slip and slide. If I'd brought a change of clothes I would've been tempted...
Red Deer just chillin in the middle of a field. There was some bird scurrying across the field also, but it was too far away to get a picture, I think it was some type of partridge or something.
All in all life continues to go swimmingly. Leaving for a weekend in London early Thursday morning, will hopefully have all sorts of fun adventures there. Now it's off to finish this paper.
Irish proverb of the day:
The north wind's heat or the cold of the south wind, means rain.
Teas gaoithe aduaidh nó fuacht gaoithe aneas, sin báisteach.
Teas gaoithe aduaidh nó fuacht gaoithe aneas, sin báisteach.
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