STOMP and into the end of the term!

So I'll combine the rest into one blog post because not that much has actually happened.

Tuesday, the 22nd, a few of my friends and I went to a STOMP performance - I'm pretty sure it's actually supposed to be in all caps, I'm not yelling, promise. However, now I will...IT WAS ONE OF THE MOST AMAZING THINGS I'VE EVER SEEN!!!!!!! I literally sat through most of the performance with my mouth hanging open and sometimes if I could tear my eyes away I would look around the audience and most everyone was in the same condition as me, at least my friends were. I don't even know how to describe it. The intricate rhythms and movements and music they were able to make using simple things like brooms, matchboxes, lighter, and basically trash was utterly incredible. It was awe inspiring!

The above picture is the set and all that stuff is not just for decoration. They literally hit every single thing attached up there, they all had their specific place in a set. Someone has choreographed and written, if this music can be written, their show to work all of that stuff in. I wish I could've taken more pictures from the performance. If you don't know STOMP or have never seen them, go to Youtube... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NhFmARAgu0  <- this one has some of the same people that I saw.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqJHjMCKhkE&feature=related <- and this one was definitely one of my favorites!! I want some of that pitched pipe stuff...soooo cooollllll!!!! What was especially cool, or at last I thought so, there were times when something would break, and then someone on the side would just throw a new one back in and whoever it was that had broke it would catch it flawlessly and continue on. Also...there were times when they would literally be swinging things at each other and hitting each other, basically dueling with things like trash can lids or big sticks, and never once did anything go wrong, and they were swinging full force....IT WAS SOOO COOOL!!

What was also great about Stomp is that it wasn't just rhythms and stomping and so forth, as you'll see, it's a performance, it was funny, you got to know the people on stage even though they didn't talk at all. There was also audience participation, see as everyone can make noise just by clapping or stopping. I would honestly love to be a part of Stomp or do something like it, seeing as my goal is to be able to play everything (lofty I know) I think I should add brooms and trash cans to the list!!

Okay, so enough gushing. The same week of Stomp, classes came to a close for the semester. I can't believe I'm basically done here. All that's left is to sit exams in May, and I only have two!!! So yeah, classes ended, this also meant that our Irish exam had to happen. This exam was in two parts, an oral and a written, the oral being the much much easier of the two. It's impossible to spell anything in Irish because it sounds so much different then the way it's spelled. For example: go raibh maith agat (meaning thank you) really sounds like "goraev mah agut"...blargh. Anyway, at least it's over. 

More excitingly, last Wednesday, Hannah came to visit me from Granada where she's spending this semester. It was so great to have her here and show her around the city that I've come to think of as home. I played the pipes for her and tried to teach her how to play...no offense to her, but she made me look fabulous haha! I gave her a tour of the city, we played a lot of guitar, I fed her boring food like pasta and grilled cheese, which she appreciate greatly as far as I could tell. 

On Saturday she and I, along with my roommate and neighbor decided to go to Clonakilty, a small seaside -ish town for the day. However, before we could leave, Christine (the neighbor of course) and I had decided a couple of days previously that we wanted to get our ears pierced. So I found a tattoo parlor that had good reviews and was close by and we headed over there before getting on the bus. I never thought I'd get any part of my body pierced, and I'm still not sure why I decided to go for it, I think Christine and I psyched ourselves up and then just did it, and I actually really like it, I got my left cartilage pierced and it looks pretty cool. It may not be a huge deal, but it actually kind of was for me, thus the sharing it on the blog. 

Anyways, afterwards, we headed out of the city for the day. We basically just wandered around for the day, found a cute bookstore with a really nice proprietress, had a picnic in the square, went in the church (which was not a cathedral because the bishop had died - apparently a bishop a cathedral makes) found the coast - the tide was super far out and it smelled kind of bad, but there were some cool birds. Then we took Hannah to her first traditional Irish pub, which actually turned out to be a super cool place. First of all, the bathroom smelled fabulous, like grapefruit or something, I went back three times just to smell it. Also, it had a lot of musical history, Neil Young had visited at one point of time!! There were also a lot of really cool instruments hanging up. And, the bartender gave us free pizza!! We all wished that we could somehow either move to Clonakilty, move the pub to Cork, or have some type of instant transport system into this pub. Hannah had her obligatory first Guinness and enjoyed it!

There was supposed to be a bus back at 5:05, it was on all the schedules, but apparently it doesn't run on Saturdays, so we were forced to head back into the town to grab dinner and wait around until the 7:05 bus. So we did, and then decided we wanted ice cream, or Jq decided we wanted ice cream (she always wants ice cream - we've had at least two cartons in our freezer until recently), but the only ice cream place was closed, and closed at 5 pm everyday...we were confused by this!! After five is the prime time to get ice cream!!

We finally caught the bus and headed back into Cork. I had planned to take Hannah into a pub for some live Irish music, but we got sidetracked by friends and ended up just staying up late and playing music for each other and chatting, it was pretty great. I have a feeling we also ate ice cream, or Jq made brownies, this is what usually happens on these evenings. 

Sunday, Dan and I tried to play pipes and concertina together, but it didn't work out too well, they were really really not in tune with each other, so we went to separate rooms to practice, probably for the best. The only other thing we really did on Sunday was head to another pub to finally get Hannah to some live music. There was a really cool group, it seemed like they spent a lot of time playing together, and it was super nice. 

Monday I had to leave early for a class that only happened this week - Environmental Science in the Field - so I left Hannah to her own devices for a couple hours before she flew back to Spain. She managed to vacuum the whole apartment and go shopping...crazy lady!

This past week the class I mentioned has been taking place. It's basically just been day trips where we learn a new type of field assessment technique in different places around Cork. I saw a bog and peat, and salt marshes, and the ocean. Today we were there and it was freezing, but crazy people were out with kite boards!! It's been really cool to get out of the city, and everyone in the class was really nice. I kind of wish it had been going on all semester, then I feel like it would've been more likely that I would've made some Irish friends, it was only today that we really started talking, but they were all super duper nice.

This week has also been full of everyone leaving. Kasey and Ricky left for Europe last Thursday, Jq left on Tuesday, Christine on Wednesday and Dan on Thursday, now I'm all alone for a few days. My goal is to finish all the assignments I have so all I have to do when I get back at the end of April is study for my two finals. 

Beautiful church in Clanakilty...so peaceful inside.

The kind of smelly estuary....lots of swans, herons and sandpipers though.

House...cool stonework...masonry?

Inside our pub...that's a wall of super cool instruments over there.

Hannah drinking her first Guinness!!

The toilet tank with a pulley in the really amazing smelling bathroom.

Down the street in Clonakilty...so Ireland.

Closed ice cream shop...sad moment...

Evening of jamming and singing and so on...so great!

The group of musicians in the pub on Sunday...possibly singing "little lion man" by Mumford and Sons at this point.

Peat bog, first day of field trip...trying to figure out if this area would be suitable for a wind farm.

Cut peat...

Beautiful serene lake that is the source of the River Lee that runs all the way through Cork and into the ocean. I wish I could go back there.

Another beautiful location on our second day of field trips. I loved the clear reflection in the water.

This Shetland ponies tried to befriend us, by eating our equipment, clothing and hair...they were actually really sweet. This one is pretty young.

More good reflections...such a gorgeous day.

On the third day we looked at geophysical features to try to determine the sensibleness of putting in another house here.

Lower salt marsh...a pretty location, but kind of a bummer of a day, the boots that I got for free from Margaret leaked...possibly she sabotaged them in revenge for me waking her up in the middle of the night.

Crazy kite boarders...reminds me of those Oregonians that go out on days like this. 

Life continues to be grand!

A week from today I leave for Venice!! Can't wait!

Also, I suggest looking at this blog, or other by typing "view" at the end of the url, like http://irelandspring.blogspot.com/view    there are some cool new ways to view them. 

Until next time...

How to make the perfect cup of tea

I'd like to start this post by saying I'm probably going to write three posts tonight but they need to be separated because different/important things happened that necessitate their own space. Soooooo to begin, let me take you back to the night of Monday, the 21st of March.

One of my roommates, Jq, had just arrived back from a trip around Ireland with her cousin and had some crazy sort of lung deal, like whooping cough or something (not really that serious, but it did sound like a lung was going to come flying out of her mouth any minute). So I told her that I was making her a cup of tea. Her response was that she had never had tea before. And I'm like "what?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I definitely need to make you one now". However, in our apartment we only have black and green tea, neither of which were the appropriate color to sooth her throat. Thankfully, I knew that our good friend and neighbor had been sent sleepy time tea from a friend at home. I figured that for the sake of Jq's lungs, Christine would not be upset with us if we borrowed/took a tea bag.

This is no big deal, we go over to their apartment all the time, mostly for cooking supplies (which actually normally ends in hour long hang out/discussion sessions), so I knock on the door. Dan answers, I enter and retrieve the tea bag, I'm unsure if we have honey (a necessary component in soothing tea) so ask Dan if it's alright if I borrow his. Important tangent: when Dan opened the door he had obviously just been shirtless and was halfway through putting one on...so as I'm leaving, he asks if I'll be bringing the honey back immediately or the next day so he'll know whether to keep the shirt on or not (I swear these details are important), I say I'll return it that night and head back to my room to brew some tea.

I like to imagine this is what it looked like when I make tea.

The water boils, I put the tea bag in the mug, add a generous amount of honey, this girl is about to lose a lung for goodness' sake) and let it sit to cool down a bit. While we wait for this, I decide to bring the honey back to Dan. Jq, for some reason, decides that it's important for her to come too and say thank you. A couple of days before this, we'd figured out a cool trick with our doors where you put out the bolt so that it doesn't close all they way, this makes the running back and forth between rooms a lot easier. So Jq put out the bolt, but apparently not all the way, and the door closed behind her. I did not know this, I'd already entered Dan's apartment and closed his door, so when I opened it to head back to my own, Jq was standing there, looking slightly pathetic and probably coughing. She hadn't brought her card and I hadn't either (though that would've been pointless because it had stopped working earlier that day), neither of us had our cell phones either and our landlady's phone number is at least in mine.

Margaret, our landlady, had previously told us stories (long long long stories) about previous mishaps that have happened at Copley Court, and told use explicitly that she doesn't mind being woken up or interrupted to let us in because it's her job. Soooo, we borrow Christine's phone, but neither her nor Dan have the phone number. So Jq and I have to run down the two flights of stairs in bare feet (it's 23:00) at this point, to get Marge's number. We call and no one answers....decide to call our other roommate who's out at a pub with her visiting boyfriend...no one answers. Meanwhile, Jq's mug of tea is still seeping and cooling in our apartment, the whole reason for this venture in the first place. Call Marge again, she picks up, very upset.
I say, "Hi Margaret, I'm so sorry to bother you, but we've locked ourselves out of our rooms!"
She says, "Are you joking?" in a not very friendly voice.
Me, "No, we forgot our keys"
Her, "Aren't your other roommates around, why would you lock yourself out of your room?" Apparently thinking that I personally had managed to lock myself out of my bedroom. So I had to straighten her out and try to explain the situation, but did not stand firm and said that we would continue to try to reach our third roommate and perhaps she'd come and let us in. Marge says that if we absolutely have to we should call her again and she'd come let us in. So we call Kasey probably ten times, we also spend some time sitting on our neighbors couch, and some time sitting in the hallway trying to study Irish from memory, and some time sitting on the window sill looking at the moon (which was particularly full and close at that point in time). So a good half an hour has passed before we decide to suck it up and call Margaret back again...she is not happy.

When she arrives she looks particularly grumpy, keep in mine it's only like 23:30 at this point, so not too late. But she says she had to take some painkillers for her back and was in bed mucho early. But still lets us in. Finally Jq is able to drink the tea...and it was at the perfect temperature!! She thoroughly enjoyed it and managed not to lose any lungs!

So in sum, to make the perfect cup of tea, there are many steps. Also, I had to visit Margaret the next day to replace my broken card, she wittily told me that next time I leave the room at night, I shouldn't forget my card. Argh...but even if I'd had it, we still wouldn't have been able to get in...oh well. It was quite the exciting experience. Turned out that Kasey had decided not to bring her phone with her because no one called her at night...perfect.

Sorry for the weirdly detailed account...I wanted to at least write it down for me because it was such an epic night!