The Galway Rover

A New Year

2010-01-02T07:44:00.000-08:00

On New Year's Eve, this comment appeared as my facebook status:

Megan realized it's been the new year for an hour and fifteen minutes in
Ireland already. Happy New Year, everyone.

Usually exclaimations of "Happy New Year!" are followed by exclaimation points, because the New Year is generally considered a happy event and as such is feted with parties and much joy. Per my usual, this year's New Year's parties were skipped and I went to bed at ten without even drinking anything carbonated. I am such a killjoy when it comes to thing like that. The reason for the party skipping was simple -- the only invite I got is from a friend who's already old enough to drink, so that would be an awkward gathering to attend. The lack of exclaimation points is a little harder to explain. A new year, new adventures -- all good things, but no new adventures in Ireland. Sure, I'll have lots of new adventures at school, but it's not the same, is it?

I guess the thing I'm trying to say is that I'm having a hard time parting ways with this blog. It was fun having something new to post about every week, and sure, as the new semester starts up again I'll have lots of things to post about on The Village Wordsmithy, but the question of time begins to become a major issue. As I've been sitting around at home I think I've spent more time worrying about whether I'll have time to do things rather than actually doing them. I've done next to no writing (becuase some part of my mind doesn't think it's a good use of my time and it's not helpful to my future career in any way) and the only projects of note I've accomplished are 8 dozen christmas cookies and my Ireland Scrapbook, which, by the way, is AWESOME.

I know I should take the blog down, or have it printed, finally, but that means the adventure's over. And I'm having a hard time with that.

Momapedia, Blogger, and now, Travel Advisor Extrodinaire

2009-12-21T13:06:00.000-08:00

Duty isn't a word that gets tossed around a lot any more, but as a simple vocabulary lesson, it means an obligation to do something. In my case, I feel I have a duty to share my experiences and knowledge with the world. It's the reason I was writing this blog, and it's the reason why, as my freind and former roommate prepares to spend her spring semester in London, I've been answering a few emails from her that look a lot like this:

Megan! I have more abroad questions for you, if you don't mind answering them.
Ok, so I need a converter, and an adapter for my computer, right? But the black
box-like thing that's on my charger cord, that's the adapter? or is that
something else? and that form you sent me - is that just computers or cameras too, or everything? I'm slightly confused by it. I think those are all of my questions...

I know Katherine's not the only person confused by these things, becuase I answered the same questions about computers and wall plugs for the first week we were in Ireland.

So -- Another vocabulary lesson!

A plug adaptor changes the size and shape of the metal plugs going into the outlet. You can buy these at most travel stores, like these at Magellen.

A plug converter changes the volume of electrical current -- that's the big black thing on your computer charger. If you look on the back of your camera charger or the box on your cord, there should be a little notice saying what current it can handle. Mine, for instance, says under 'Input' 100-240 V[olts] That's how much power it can handle without blowing up or frying your computer.

In different countries, the outlets let out more or less voltage; in England it's 240V, I believe. Your computer and camera charger SHOULD BE FINE without a converter because they are manufactured to operate in several different countries. Things like hair dryers and electric razors, however, only handle 100V or so, so they NEED a converter to work. Most converter plugs double as plug adaptors for obvious reasons.

The form Katherine mentioned is a lovely slip of paper issued by the US Customs and Border Patrol called Form 4457. (You can find it in PDF form here at the CBP site.) It's is for high priced items you won't want to pay duty( tax) on when you re-enter the country. Your camera & your computer are probably the only two things you'll need on there -- if you were bringing grandma's diamonds, you'd want to put those on there too, but I think you're leaving all your super expensive heirloom jewlery at home. If you remember, I talked about this form a little bit here and here back in September before I left. To quote myself, here's what I wrote then:

Monday, September 7, 2009

Customs Part Two

Having called the CBP at O'Hare Airport and talked to one of the nicest
civil servants I've ever contacted by phone, here's the skinny:You get to O'Hare
airport, you check your bags, you go to the CBP office, you fill out the form,
you show them your items to prove you had them before you left the country, they
sign your form and you go through security. When you reenter the country, you
show the form to the customs agents and you don't pay duty on it.

So that's that. Hope we've cleared things up for you future travelers out there! Maybe I should apply to the Study Abroad Office to be a SA ambassador.

So, Fun Story...

2009-12-12T16:40:00.000-08:00

You'd think the adventures would stop once you get to the airport. You get on your plane, you fill out your forms, you get off, you go home.

No sirree bob, not for Megan! Apparently the Momapedia can take care that a bunch of other people keep themselves together to get through the airport but she can't keep herself.

And I was so close! I got through the whole flight from Shannon to Dublin, and the whole flight from Dublin to Chicago, and then I end up FAINTING before we deplaned in O'Hare. Needless to say there is a HUGE blip in my memory there -- I have feeling nauseous, closing my eyes, and then going through the same trippy lights and magic show that always happens when I pass out. There might even have been some music, too. The next thing I remember I'm on the floor and people are helping me up. Yeah, that was embarassing. Apparently the random dude across the aisle caught me on the way down and I freaked a whole planeload of people out. GO ME!

So Katie and Khris, being the AWESOME traveling buddies they are, stayed behind while the flight attendents hooked me up to an oxygen tank and gave me water and iced my neck and waited for the Chicago Fire Department paramedics to show up and all those hoops they have to jump through when someone gets sick. I think I might have been dehydrated and just plain stressed(I had a lot of salty foods on the plane, in retrospect, and I hadn't gotten that much sleep the night before) and the FD guys think I might have done something funky with my bloodpressure because I didn't move around during the flight, which is lame, becuase apparently that only happens to old people. Again, go me!

So I went through customs in a wheelchair ("What kind of food is it you have?" "Cookies." "Okay! You're fine!") and greeted my fantastic family (who made a sign and made my brother dress up and it was fun) with the no doubt inspiring explaination for the wheelchair "I fainted on the plane!" and a really enthusiastic double thumbs up. The moral of the story is (I learned this from the paramedics) that you should move every hour you're on a plane if it's possible to help your circulation.

Needless to say my mom was thrilled about that one. And now I have a not so very fun travel story for all y'all. But I'm home, I'm safe now, and I have showered. Amen for hot showers, clean clothes, and living through fainting episodes.

Running Through My Head Right Now

2009-12-11T12:20:00.000-08:00

Gotta get up, gotta get out, gotta get home before the morning comes.
What if I'm late, gotta big date, gotta get home before the sun comes up
Up and away, gotta big day, sorry can't stay, I gotta run run yeah
gotta get home, pick up the phone, I gotta let the people know I'm gonna be late

There was a time when we could dance until a quarter to ten,
we never thought it would end then, we never thought it would end,
We used to carry on and drink and do the rock and roll,
we never thought we'd get older,we never thought it'd grow cold, but now

Gotta get up, gotta get out, gotta get home before the morning comes.
What if I'm late, gotta big date, gotta get home before the sun comes up
Up and away, gotbig day, sorry can't stay, I gotta run run yeah
gotta get home, pick up the phone, I gotta let the people know I'm gonna be late...

Stuff I Wish I'd Known Before Coming: Travel and What To Bring

2009-12-11T04:42:00.000-08:00

COUNTDOWN TO HOME: T MINUS THIRTY (?) HOURS?!

So we're packing away a whole semester right now, so it's as good a time as any to talk about things I wish I knew before hand about travel. First and foremost, the matter of your luggage is CRUCIAL. Make sure that your suitcase is big enough that you can get all your stuff in, but small enough that you can handle it easily and that you won't be in too great a danger of exceeding your weight limit . Wheels are also a plus, as you will be more than likely dragging this suitcase through several airports and possibly on a bus or two. Make sure you also have very visable luggage tags.

Consider bringing a second bag (of the duffel variety) to get all your souvenirs home. Also consider the concept of ballast in your packing. Ballast is things you'll bring there and won't bring home. These are things like food (I brought tea, which is all gone) or maybe a pair of shoes that you're going to thoroughly trash and then throw away here. If you have sensitive skin or something that requires specific stuff from home, bring that and use it for ballast.

Don't overpack. I brought ten shirts, two sweatshirts, three pairs of pants, three pairs of shoes and a few nice things to go out in, and I did okay. You get used to wearing the same shirt for two or three days at a stretch and everyone understands, because they're all not doing laundry either. If you feel you must you can always buy something here.

Roll your clothing into your luggage. You'll get more inside a suitcase.

Don't bring your mom's best bath towels, and DO bring two, if you have space. You can always throw out or leave those here for more space. Why two? So that while one is drying or when one is in the wash you'll have a backup one. Consider investing in a travel towel if you're going to be traveling before or after the program, or you're doing a whirlwind tour over your fall break. The space saved in your luggage will be payback on the investment.

When you're booking your planes, trains, and automobiles, be sure to allow yourself several hours cushion between destinations. This is Europe. Roads are not what they are in the US. Traffic moves slower. Also be sure to remember for fall break plans in particular that making up your mind a month in advance on where you want to go will save you a load of money, and that's money you're going to want to spend on souvenirs. Air ticket prices in particular go up exponentially when you get closer to the date you want to leave. Don't discount the bus system in Europe, especially in Ireland -- it might not be very quick, but it is cheaper.

Remember that there is a bus from Dublin to Galway with citylink -- getting a 15 euro bus ticket may be a lot less expensive than flying from Minneapolis or Chicago to Dublin and then from Dublin to Shannon.

Things You'll Want To Bring:

A good rainjacket with a hood -- umbrellas blow out, hats blow away. A hood is foolproof 97% of the time.

Shoes you don't mind hiking mountains in -- I don't care if you're not planning on hiking mountains, bring some anyway. These are ideally brown or gray, will not show dirt, and have laces and solid soles. They might even be boots. (I recommend Keens, which have gone through two mountains, five major urban centers, and just a lot of walking in general and are stil going strong.) They are not, as one girl on my trip seems to think, white Pumas.

Long underwear -- you'll thank me for this one, Ireland folks. It doesn't get as cold as it does at school but it does get cold, made colder by the wind and the constant dampness.

hiking socks -- your feet will thank me for this one, too. When you're hiking your feet will be cushioned, if you're out in rain your feet might be a little drier, and when you're at home in the cold your feet will hopefully be warm.

Fleece -- sweatshirts don't dry. Fleece does.

Shower shoes -- You'll want these when you're hosteling.

A backpack -- for excursions and for grocery shopping in town (or homework excursions to the coffeeshop in spiddal) a backpack is a must. It doesn't have to be a backpacking pack, just a school bag sized contraption.

A travel adapter WITH YOUR NAME ON IT -- everyone needs one of these and the way they get swapped around you'll want to know you're getting yours back.

Sad About the Happy

2009-12-10T01:50:00.000-08:00

That title looks like it should belong onstage with a very terrible and emo backup band behind it, but hey, it is what it is, and what it is happens to be a sentiment about going home. I guess I could start up a countdown again...

COUNTDOWN TO HOME: T MINUS TWO DAYS

That makes me really sad to write that, and it's sad for a number of reasons. First, it means that my study abroad experience is at an end, and I'm going to miss it. It's also making me sad becuase, as it says in the title, it's making me happy. I'm happy to be going back to my family and school and classes that get called off on account of snow or ridiculously low temperatures and hanging out with all my wacky, amazing friends who aren't here with me right now. And this makes me feel guilty, becuase I feel like I shouldn't be happy to be leaving, that all I should feel is sad.

I think this happiness comes from the fact that the paint is starting to peel off the facade here. As my dad told me a few days ago, "Your blog posts are beginning to sound like you're saying 'Okay, I'm done playing, can I come home now?'" As I told my dad then, he's kind of right. I am done playing. I would like to come home now.

This is partially due to the fact that we've managed to squeeze every calamity you could THINK of into the past two weeks. In theatre, the week before the show opens is called tech week, or, depending on the show, Hell Week, because you have to put in long days and get fed up with all the people you've come to love and tempers flare and in general bad things happen. Well, kids, this has been our Hell Week, starting with last wednsday night, which, as some of you already know, was Prom Night at our local hotel pub.

Our official title, dreamed up by Jimmy as our head prom henchman and cruise director, was BLING BLING FALL FLING, complete with poster and appropriate levels of glitter, but for whatever reason Matt got involved and changed the title to --

SOUTH BEACH PROM '09!

All the boys picked names from a hat and had to come up with some creative way of asking thier dates to Prom like you did in high school. We played all the songs that were popular three years ago and some of the songs that are popular now and had a great time. Okay, well, we were having a great time until Disaster Number One occured -- Maggie and Jimmy were having a little too much fun swing dancing and Maggie did something funky to her knee. This required her sitting out the rest of the dance in excruciating pain and then deciding the pain was so excruciating she needed to go to the ER.

So Fearless Leader, Maggie, and Jenna went to the ER at midnight, waited for EIGHT HOURS to see a doctor and then an additional TWO to get anything done about her knee (torn cartilege in knees gets low priority compared to bar fight bleeders, apparently.) That lead to Vaguely Annoying Occurence Number One, class having to get canceled because JD didn't get any sleep.

So that was that. We got over it. It was all good until Saturday Night, when the boys of cottage one decided to have JP, our fixit man, go-to guy and fearless barkeep, over for dinner. Being the fearless barkeep he is, JP brought eight bottles of wine, a bottle of port and a bottle of whiskey.
I wouldn't believe this if all five guys didn't agree on this part of the story -- they drank them ALL.

The direct consequence of this, of course, was six very, very drunk men, one of whom, for some reason, ended up back in our cottage, where he proceded to get VERY sick all over our entryway. Enter Disaster Number Two, quickly downgraded to Olfactory Crisis Level after Jenna, being the slightly drunk saint that she is, cleaned up for us. My raincoat still smells like puke (as it was the victim of a little projectile vomit) but other than that, at least our cottage doesn't smell anymore and we have a back door we can use instead.

After all the puking, partying, and prom, this week it was Khris and Maggie (she of ER fame)'s twenty-first birthdays, which required more partying and more drinking, with the added bonus of cake for those of us who didn't feel like getting sloshed. Thankfully, no disasters here; good fun was had by all. A bonus to this night was that after thanksgiving, when I stumbled through The Parting Glass with Mallory, JP kept asking me to learn A Song for Ireland and sing it at the pub. I wasn't particularly fond of Song for Ireland, so he said if I wouldn't learn that one I'd have to learn one in Gaelic.

So I did.

To quote my facebook status that day:

Megan is trying to learn a song in an another language and then perform it for a
native speaker of said language. FML.

FML is the only sentiment appropriate. I learned the refrain of Oro, Se do Bheatha Baile (Oro, You are welcome home) and stumbled through the verses in very, very bad Gaelic in front of two men who speak gaelic (and one who knew the verses better than I did) but good fun was had by all and everyone tried to join me on the verse, which blew my mind. ( You can listen to the Clancy Brothers version here on YouTube) Then I belted What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor (same tune, and bonus, I actually know the words to that one) and Whiskey in the Jar, which was so much fun I didn't know what to do with myself afterwards. Stayed out a little late (for me, anyway) that Tuesday, took two shots of some really tasty pomegranate liquor I didn't get the name of, then dragged myself out of bed for literature class and the dawnings of Disaster Number Three.

It's one thing to begin packing and getting ready to go home. It's another thing entirely when two members of your group find out they may have LOST THEIR PASSPORTS.

So the whole camp gets turned upside down looking for these two very important peices of travel swag and these two get briefed on how they'll have go to Dublin and apply for temporary passports at the embassy and finally -- Crisis Averted! -- both passports get found. Fhew.

So between the ER visit, the passports, and the puke, we managed to get every major crisis (short of, I don't know, someone getting lost or shot or drowned or something) into our last week here. It was an interesting cap to an otherwise drives-like-a-dream trip. And the cherry on top of this week's events was last night in the pub, when I performed an original piece this time about everyone on our trip. I called it a rap, but it wasn't really, more like a big long poem that incorporated everyone.

Another facebook quote:

Price of tution and fees for study abroad program -- 19 thousand dollars. Money
for souvenirs, bus rides to the airport and various taxis -- 2 thousand dollars.
Getting to the end of your trip and performing a rap about all the kids you just
spent three months studying abroad with and reducing them all to gales of
laughter -- PRICELESS.

Nearly everyone in our group came up afterwards and said this poem was the best thing that had happened all trip and I don't think this blog would be complete if I didn't include a copy of it here. I'm told Britta has the whole performance on her camera, and Mallory wants to record it and remix it when we get back to school. If I could, I would insert the laughter-- it makes the whole thing so much more epic.

Whassup, whassup, my name is Meggie Gee

and I'm here to spin some ryhmes in a hotel near the sea

C'mon Bennies and Johnnies, I'm here to make some noise

with my gangsta pal Murray and my gangsta pal Joyce.

Oh, who am I kidding? I live in the 'burbs.

My knowledge of the hood comes from newspaper blurbs.

But we're in Ireland now, and that means an escape

so the word is adventure that's going shape

All these ramblings and travels the whole country over

(But I will hit you if you start up that song on the Rover.)

Now, pack up the car, gang, this road trip must start

Separate Sam and her Ipod? I haven't the heart.

Let's let Pat take his pictures of all of us sleeping

And Jimmy's Notebook set all the girls weeping

So let's visit a castle! let's climb all the walls!

(but wait till the rain comes and everyone falls...)

Where is everybody? The bus has to go, stat!

Come on, Mollie and Mallory and Molly and Matt!

But Kathleen's off wandering, and we've lost Ross again

Oh, where is that Jenna? (We're supposed to be there when?!)

Hey, look, our hostel! To the pub for fish chowder!

Jeezy Creezy, Katie, could you shout that much louder?

Buddy Check! Double Date? Is someone in the loo?

(Uh, Jackie, that creepy guy's looking at you...)

Mollie, is that a lego hand you've got there?

And Mallory, what is it you've done with your hair?

But our trip here's been fantastic, our time here's been swel

leven if Ben spent the whole trip unwell.

We rode a lot of buses, we saw a lot of stuff

and JD's still wondering if we saw enough.

Let's all settle down here, let's be lazy and free

(Psst, Shannon, let's talk after class and have tea!)

This sentiment sounds with a familiar ring

I'm sorry, Catherine, but you can't obsess over everything....

Hey, David and Kyle, I know rubgy's fun

but could you keep it down? We hear you in cottage one!

Oh, Katie, if I get down on my hands and knees

and smile real wide, are there more cookies, please?

Pipe down, Nicole's got something to say

though it might not make sense for the rest of the day.

Who could forget Prom night? Or all the prom quotes?

That letter Nicole got is one for the notes.

The party! The music! The costumes galore!

Matt's South Beach getup is now program lore!

Kathleen's dancing should win some award

And let's not leave out Maggie's trip to the casualty ward!

The pub nights! The dances! Expressions on faces!

Hey, guys, Britta and Maggie are now beer pong ACES.

Let's crank up the music with Cotton Eye Joe

and Katie and Molly will give us a show!

The end of our time here's beginning to loom

So Jessie and Khris, could you please get a room!?

Allison, please don't get teary-eyed

This is just "See you later," it isn't "Good bye."

We tripped the light fantastic, turned the country upside down

And the rovers go 'way whistling down the road from Galway Town.

The last line is a reference to the song that gave this blog its name, which I didn't get a chance to perform last night owing to the climate at the pub last night and the fact that it references a man named Jimmy, which we happen to have one of on this trip.

It may have been a little crazy around here the past two weeks, and I am getting really ready to get away from the craziness, but I will miss it here. I'm sad about the happy feeling I get from looking back at all the shenanigans of the past week, (because even though they're disasters, they're our disasters, and in retrospect some of them are funny) probably for a third reason I didn't mention at the beginning of this blogpost -- I don't want it to go away so quickly.

Stuff I Wish I'd Known Before Coming Here -- Food

2009-12-03T08:45:00.000-08:00

I am leaving this country in nine days. It is a sad and sorry fact, but it is a fact nonetheless, and so in between writing a 2000 word essay for my religion class that I am apparently the only one in the class taking seriously I am compiling a list of things I wish I'd known before coming here. The first and largest of these is a shopping list.

Why a shopping list? Well, for starters, shopping entirely by yourself for the first time in a foreign country with foreign currency is a scary thing, and if you're not used to grocery stores or grocery shopping in general, the whole process is a bit flummoxing, and I figure everyone could use a little help. Obviously every palate and cooking level will want different things in their cabinets, but these are things that my cottage bought the first week and continued buying for the rest of the trip.

A NOTE ON SHOPPING IN EUROPE -- we've found that food doesn't keep as long here as it does in the US because they put less preservatives in everything. You'll get used to shopping for a week at a time, which is more economical in that you have to think harder about what you're buying so it doesn't go bad. You also probably won't be overeating the way you probably do at home. (Hey, we on Galway '09 know we were all guilty of this one.)

BASIC KITCHEN STOCKS

instant coffee, tea
milk -- this will only keep for a week or so, so be careful you don't buy too much. ALSO check what KIND of milk you're buying. We made the mistake of going whole the first week. For people used to 2 percent, it was not fun. If you are a 2 percent kind of person, you want "Low Fat" milk. Whole Milk and Skim Milk are the same as they are in the States.
dish soap, dish towels, and a dishrag (we don't recommend sponges, as they never dry and start growing mold)
Trash bags -- check to make sure you get BIG trash bags instead of trash liners for bathroom sized bins.
salt and pepper (you'll thank us for this one, I know)
Oatmeal -- functions both as a hearty and filling breakfast food and a cookie baking supply.
cinnamon and raisins for breakfast oatmeals.
dry cereal
Pasta
Potatoes -- I know they're stereotypically Irish, but when the working Irish peasants were living on 14 pounds of spuds a day they were better nourished, taller and stronger than the rest of the peasantry in Europe. And they're crazy easy to prepare. Boil them, mash them with a little milk and butter, stick them in a stew. Take it from my friend Samwise, taters are pretty tasty.
Onions -- Personal tastes will dictate if you buy these, but they're fairly cheap and they add flavor to anything.
Bread -- Check the dates when you buy bread. It will NOT keep as long as it does it the States. If you're used to whole wheat bread, look for wholemeal or brown bread, which is what Europe calls its whole wheat bread. If you don't have a preference, go with brown -- it's more filling and has more energy than white, if it is a little more expensive.
Butter
cooking oil -- Canola oil will help you saute everything and if you're feeling spendy, it is also helpful in popping popcorn or frying up some french fries. (We did both -- so can you. Super easy.)
Sugar -- if you're baking, a must. And you can put it in your oatmeal and in your tea.
Peanut Butter, Jelly, and Nutella -- These three sandwich staples will get you through none too few lunches and excursion dinners. And if you're feeling adventurous you can swap up the kind of jam you buy. (I myself am a fan of orange marmalade.)
Fruits and Vegetables -- yeah, yeah, they're a little expensive. But you'll thank yourself when you're the smart one on the trip languishing for lack of vitamin C. Bananas and apples are pretty cheap, as are carrots and celery. They make excellent snacks as well as additional fodder for your sandwiches. PB, Nutella and Banana? DELICIOUS. I could eat this for dessert.
Lunch meat -- if you feel you cannot live without your carne, let me warn you, lunch meat is expensive here. But it does help swap up the sandwich fixings.
Eggs -- there's a huge difference in price here between free range eggs and cage laid eggs. Check what you're paying for.
Cheese -- Cheese was the most expensive item we bought every week, but that's because we love cheese and we were buying a kilo or so because we put it on EVERYTHING. Baked potato for lunch? Cheese on it. Pasta? Sure, some fromage would be lovely. Hey look, bread left over! Let's do grilled cheeses.
Digestives -- We can't impart to you in words how much we love these cheap cookies. They come in tubes, they appeal to pretty much everyone, you can get them with chocolate on the bottom or, if you're feeling really spendy, with caramel and chocolate. Or you can go the cheap route and add your own Nutella and PB, which is also pretty awesome.

We had some standard menu items in Cottage Five that are cheap and fairly easy to make. Overall on this trip we spent between 50 and 60 euro a week to feed five girls, (that's 10-12 euro a person) and we ate pretty well. Obviously you'll want to work out what you enjoy making, but again, here's a place to start.

Stir Fry -- Rice, carrots, spinach, celery, chicken, onions
Fried Rice -- rice, soy sauce, carrots, eggs, celery, onions
Pita Pizzas -- pasta sauce, salami, spinach, onions, cheese
Paninis -- Cheese, lunch meat, artisan bread, spinach, onions
Grilled Cheese and Tomato soup
Breakfast for dinner -- eggs, sausages, pancakes, hash browns or breakfast potatoes. NOTE -- pancake mix in Europe is for CREPES, not American style pancakes. I already make crepes, but if you're not familiar, I would trawl YouTube for a tutorial. Also, you cannot get maple syrup here unless you want to pay A LOT of money.
Chili -- canned tomatoes, kidney beans, carrots, zucchini (courgettes as they are known over here) and spices
Burritos -- tortillas, ground beef (look for steak mince) chili spices, spinach, tomatoes, spinach or lettuce, and if avocados are in season, you can make your own guacamole. As a side note, salsa is kind of expensive on this side of the pond. Consider making your own.
Pasta and red sauce
Lasagna -- cottage cheese, mozzarella cheese, lasagna noodles, spinach, onions
Baked potatoes -- you could put cheese, beans, spinach and onions or a multitude of other things on top of a baked potato. We used these for a lot of lunches.
Hamburgers -- ground beef, hamburger buns, spinach, tomatoes, ketchup, onions
Meatloaf -- If you don't know how to make one, ask your mom to teach you. Pretty cheap and very filling. ground beef, tomato sauce, onions, spices, egg, oatmeal
Chicken and Dumpling Soup -- chicken, eggs and flour for the dumplings, boullion, celery, carrots, spinach

I hope this is helpful to all of you. Best of luck and Bon Appetit!

Cultural Jealousy

2009-11-27T06:20:00.000-08:00

Throughout this trip I've been using a term I made up myself, and now, coming to the end, I feel I owe the world an explaination on what 'cultural jealousy' really means.

Cultural jealousy is the reason I wanted to come to Ireland in the first place. Declaring yourself French American or German American doesn’t have the same sense of solidarity, the same cohesive identity that being Irish American infers. I wanted to belong to that Irish group, becuase I like thier traditions, their language, their way of life. The Irish in America are a tribe. They stick together; they're proud of where they came from. Same thing with Irish Catholic. It's a phrase with history, with negative connotations, even, but it's a phrase with a punch. You can't say German Catholic -- it doesn't quite make sense in the wake of Luther and the reformation. And French Catholicism went out with the Revolution. But Irish Catholicism -- that's a branch of religion with figureheads and first families. Kennedys, I'm talking about you.

I am no stranger to cultural jealousy. It's why I sometimes spell amoung with that darned extra u, already used the word 'queue' before crossing the pond, get angry when the BBC is the only channel making TV programs I want to watch, drink tea, and why all my favorite actors have nifty accents. That's right, folks, I am a card-carrying Anglophile. Nice to meet you, too.

But one of the things I've learned this trip is no matter how hard you try, no matter how many books you read or how many dialect tapes you listen to and endlessly copy or how many years you live somewhere, you will never fully belong to a tribe you're not born into. Those people who come to Ireland trying to imitate Barry Fitzgerald with thier leprecaun red hair and shilleleghs? Those people are trying to fit a tribe and failing. When I was desperately seeking in to the Irish camp I thought marriage to an Irishman would solve all my problems. We'd move into a flat in the middle of Dublin and have charming children who would all hopefully pick up their father's way of speaking. That's not an in into the camp at all -- if anything, it's just a way to get yourself declared more foriegn than you started.

So. Cultural Jealousy. I think it's safe to say it's best kept to yourself. Because let's face it -- how many badly reproduced accents does the world need, anyway?

Mail Call!

2009-11-24T03:58:00.000-08:00

At school, getting mail of any kind is a big deal. Okay, so maybe the credit card bill isn't as big a deal as a card from your parents, but still. Mail means someone's thinking about you. Mail means you exist to the world.

I've been really lucky in that lots of people have sent me mail here. I've gotten two packages from my mom as well as several cards. (Hamper.com is a site made of win!) My roomie from last year sent me a letter, which made me miss home and working at the library a lot. My friend Beatrice sent me a post card from Rome, where she's studying now. And yesterday, I got a package from my Aunt Jo! (You all remember Aunt Jo? She was with me in London!)

This is me and my surprise at getting such a wonderful package! (See, I can be creative as well as thankful!)

And this is me being really amused that my mom and my aunt both sent me the same thanksgiving card! (They must be sisters or something.)

So this week, as you can tell by the cards, is Thanksgiving, and we've got a big meal planned. It's really strange to be here in a country that skips (for obvious reasons) from Halloween to Christmas. But we're holding out on our Christmas revels for Turkey Day, one bastion of American Tradition in the bastion of Gaelic tradition, the Gaeltact region of the West of Ireland. We've got an American football and we're going to pass the pigskin around at some point on Thursday before turkey time. I've got a lot of things to be thankful for this week. I'm thankful that I'm here in Ireland, that I can be here in Ireland, that I'm here with a group of wonderful people, that I have a family that loves me and friends that care, and, last but not least, that the postal service can find me even here.

Adventures in Food

2009-11-20T06:48:00.000-08:00

"Adventures? Dreadful, nasty, uncomfortable things -- make you late for dinner."

--Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit.

So, you know what happens when you've lost the desire to have adventures across the country? You begin having adventures in food! In addition to being a lot less stressful, it's also a lot cheaper. You don't need to worry about bus tickets or bringing home souvenirs, excluding people is only an issue if you don't make enough, and at the end of the day, everyone's well fed and happy. And unlike Bilbo, no one is so unfortunate as to miss dinner.

This week's first adventure was something we'd been planning for a while, ever since Halloween, as a matter of fact. Britta had bought a pumpkin as part of our Halloween decorations, and as the gorgeous gourd remained uncarved, we decided it was time to make pie.

What an undertaking! None of us had ever made pie start to finish from scratch before, so this was an adventure of the most epic proportions. No pre-made pie crust, so we had to purchase a crust mix and hope it worked. No pre-made pumpkin filling, but of course we'd already solved that problem. No pre-mixed pumpkin pie spices, but I inadvertently solved that one when I purchased "Mixed Spices" (Cinnamon, coriander, ginger, nutmeg, and clove) for my homemade wassail this week.

So, where do pies begin? With the pie pan, of course! And like many things, we didn't have one. Looked for a pie tin at tesco -- no dice. Decided, instead, we would bake it in our cake pan. Who said pies have to be circular, anyway?

After the pan comes the crust -- Solved with the help of the mix, but to get it in the pan, you have to roll it out, and guess what? No rolling pin! No matter -- we at cottage five are all about Improvise! Adapt! Overcome! We used an empty wine bottle instead. (No, we did not drink the whole thing to get it to that stage, although I'm sure it must have crossed someone's mind.)

Next step -- the filling! Had any of us made pie filling before? Nope. Were we all going to try? You bet your bonnet. So try we did. We halved the pumpkin, and put it skin-side up in a pan full of water in the oven for about 45 minutes to steam/bake. Then we scraped the carcasses clean (there's something really fun about calling it a pumpkin carcass) and mashed that pumpkin until it screamed for mercy. Then we added the "Mixed Spices" and ran a knife through it several times because (surprise, surprise!) we didn't have a blender, either. (That's a re-occuring theme here, by the way.)

Googled recipes for cream substitute, because we had no cream -- ended up adding more milk instead. Cooked the pumpkin on the stove until soupy and poured it into our square pan to bake for another twenty-five minutes. Our cottage by this time had filled up with a bunch more people who had all been promised pie and a Dead Poet's Society meeting, and none were disappointed.

If that wasn't one of the best things I've ever baked I don't know what is. It wasn't like a pumpkin pie you'd get at home, but it was delicious, and everyone really liked it. (If you'd like to make pumpkin pie, I suggest using this recipe here.) And, of course, there was a race to finish eating it, because we needed the pan again for Wednesday night's dessert potluck, in which we were making Adventures in Food Offering Number Two: Banoffee Pie.

My quest for Banoffee Pie began back in October when I ran a search on my favorite recipe site, Recipezaar.com, for recipes involving digestive biscuits, which we are all huge fans of here on the Galway trip. So, when we conceived of the dessert potluck, this was the first recipe I ran for.

The banoffee pie was guess-and-check cooking at it's finest. I didn't measure a thing that went into it, and it also met with rave reviews. I wasn't such a fan of the whole thing, and I think in the future I'll try it with either a banana puree or a custard of some kind. And, of course, the whipped cream that goes on top. The recipe we used you can find here. (Other offerings at the potluck included two types of brownies, sugar cookies, shortbread cookies, and a chocolate cake. And a meringue, I believe, though it never made an appearance.)

My first two adventures took the preparation of the food into the forefront; Adventure in Food Number Three took a step (okay, a huge flying LEAP) in the other direction as I tried something completely different -- Canned Curry.

I'm still not entirely sure what possessed me to do this, but I have been there and back again, and I must say, for something coming out of a can it wasn't entirely foul. I think I could have used a little bit more rice with mine, but that's the fault of the leftovers I served it over and not the canning company. If only I had discovered this sooner. But I'm sure my lunches haven't suffered from lack of britishly seasoned curry. (Huzzah, a new adverb! Britishly -- to do something in a british manner. "Britishly seasoned: Seasoned very mildly to suit a British palate.")

So this is the Galway Rover, roving into the realm of food with lots of tasty extracts from the other side, wishing that your flans never collapse, your chilis and curries are always spiced accordingly, and your pancakes always land in the pan.

Words, Words, Words.

2009-11-17T04:42:00.000-08:00

The precision of language came up in class today, and I thought that would be a perfect jumping off point for a blog post to use for my project as well as a connection to a project I've been pursing under the radar for a little while now. I said something that apparently sounded really smart, which I will attempt to remember here.

When we look at the terms United Kingdom, England, and Britain, to an American these words mean the same thing, but to someone who claims that part of the world as their home the three terms are three completely different concepts. England refers to the country of England -- surrounded by water with Scotland to the north. Britain is two things, both the entire island on which England and Scotland sit and also the idea of empire, the allegorical Britannia with her union-jack drape and helmet a la Athene. To be English means you were born in England and claim that as your homeland, but to claim to be British means something less concrete, rather to associate with an image than a place, something that is itself a stylised English-ness but also encompasses the idea of Empire, the pith helmeted and mustachioed version of the adventurer claiming all lands for Queen and Country under the auspices of the grave parliamentarians away in Westminster, drinking tea and eating flavorless beef as he goes along, stiff upper lip and public school accent betraying his origins to the world. You don't have to be English, or indeed even a citizen of any part of the United Kingdom to act British. It is a designation outside of politics and borders. And the United Kingdom, last of all, is the physical land itself -- England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. Each of these areas has their own flag, their own national symbols, but all those put together make up the Union Jack -- the red Saint George's cross for England, the white Saint Andrew's cross saltire for Scotland, and the red Saint Patrick's cross saltire for Ireland.

Interesting, then, that the Irish Republic no longer claims the Saint Patrick's Cross (a large red X over a white field) as one of their national symbols, (in fact have never claimed it) and have taken up instead the colors that represent the Catholics, the Protestants, and peace between them. In the North, however, where they do value their status as part of the British Empire, the Saint Andrew's cross is prominent in the arms of Ulster, usually with a red hand added to the foreground, sometimes open, sometimes clenched into a fist.

Britain and the United Kingdom have added and subtracted from themselves over time -- at one time the United Kingdom was the empire on which the sun never set, including all of Ireland, India, British Palestine, and a good chunk of Africa. Now it's shrunk considerably, leaving a thin stain on the places it once encompassed -- the shadow of poorly divided political boundaries in the Middle East, English as the language of the learned class in India, rampant economic underdevelopment in Africa. While the physical space of the "empire" has condensed, it seems the intellectual space, or rather the symbolic space, has grown larger, becoming not only the images of empire but the memories and nostalgia associated with it, and even further out than that the images of nostalgia, the old civil servants sitting around in clubs eating the curries they brought home from India and Ceylon and reminiscing about the old days.

One of my ongoing projects here in Ireland has been to chart language use, what words get changed in cross-Atlantic conversations. Ever since the first weekend in Galway, when I asked for a take-out cup of tea and was corrected to "takeaway" cup of tea I've been keeping a list of words that are different depending on what side of the pond you're on. I added to it in London and significantly more in Manchester, and it's interesting to observe now.

Fries are chips, and chips are crisps. If you're reading directions for the stovetop version of oatmeal, you want to read how to cook porridge on the hob. When I visit museum websites, I can see "What's On" and plan my 'holiday' accordingly. When I go out to eat, I can order a jacketed potato instead of a baked one, courgettes instead of zucchini and fairy cakes where cupcakes would be in the States. When I drive home (on the left side of the road, mind you) I have to 'give way' instead of yield and watch out for ramps in Ireland, humps in England, and speed bumps in the United States. And you shouldn't forget to park in the car park instead of the parking lot. If a man upsets me, he's a tosser, a wanker, or a bloody nuisance, but if he's my friend, he might be my mate. The word hooker is particularly interesting -- In Galway it's a type of boat, in rugby circles a type of player, in the States a prostitute, and in certain parts of Northern England it's someone who writes lefty with a funny slant. I get a lift from a friend at half three instead of getting a ride home at two-thirty, and when I ride the Tube instead of the subway I have to mind the gap where in the States I watch my step. I look for the way out, not the exit, and the toilets instead of the restrooms. I can top up my tank of petrol and check under the bonnet of my car to make sure everything's working before loading my baggage into the boot to go up to university, where I will probably get stuck behind a crowd of slow moving freshers who don't know where the canteen is. When I go to a football match (not a soccer game) I check (while waiting in the queue) to make sure the colors I'm wearing are the same as the home team kit. I dispose of my rubbish in a dustbin, and at the end of the day, after I have said cheers to the man who operates the lift in my building, when I am eating my biscuits with my water (still or sparkling) and watching something on the telly, I can rest easy knowing that tomorrow will probably be just as brilliant as today.

Where Has the Time Gone?

2009-11-16T13:01:00.000-08:00

Three weeks left. Where has the time gone? I know I shouldn't be thinking of the end, that I should be thinking of the present. But as we wind down these last days, so many of us have started talking about how much we're looking forward to going home, about what we're going to eat when we get there, and it's been striking me how simple the things we look forward to are.

Clean clothes.
Dry clothes. (You have no idea how happy I will be I won't have to hang my clothes in front of a gas fireplace to dry)
Not having to wear the same eight shirts.
Vegetables.Being able to bake for a month solid.
Making dinner for my family. (I already do this a little, but I find I love it here.)
Clean dish towels.
Clean towels in general.
Hot showers more than twice a week.
Walking in the woods.
Being able to talk to my family in the same time zone.

There are things I know I'm going to miss about living here, though. Living with and getting to know 27 other people really well, for one. Being close enough to these 27 people to invite someone over for tea just to talk for a half-hour. Taking a half-hour to drink tea. Being with people who like drinking tea. Not having a crazy amount of homework. Being able to talk with my friends who are now in the same time zone. (Yeah, Helen, this is you.)

But I know that I've learned things, too. I'm not the same person I was when I first stepped off that plane two months ago. I can plan meals and make shopping lists for a five person household and not break the bank. I've learned to compromise on my eating habits for the good of the group. I've learned I have a bigger problem with public rowdiness than I previously thought, and I have a hard time dealing with people who are drunk and insensible to reason. I've learned to like some people on this trip a lot more than I thought I would. People on this trip have begun to like me a lot more than they thought they would. I've learned that I love vegetables, that I hate the idea of eating the same thing twice in one week, and that I don't enjoy the taste of alcohol, although I am not adverse to a glass of wine with dinner.

That's another thing. I had my first taste of alcohol on this trip, and the idea of a glass of wine with dinner is growing on me. It's strange to think when we get home I won't be able to partake in that anymore when everyone here is just so free about it. There will be a lot of adjusting to do when I get home, but I think I'm up for it. If I can change continents, I can change back again.

Tales from an Irish Kitchen

2009-11-13T11:24:00.000-08:00

(Or, perhaps more appropriately, They Let Her Out In the Vicinity Of The Stove And Look What Happened.)

This past week we had our second community dinner. This week, per promised, was the much-anticipated chili cookoff. It was surprising to me that seven different groups, being told they had to make the same dish, came up with seven entirely different chilies from basically the same ingredients, give or take a few. Allison used zucchini in hers, Pat gave us a white chili, Khris's contribution was really spicy and mine was a thinner mixture with corn and kidney beans. All of them were delicious, but there was a bit of a dilemma beforehand owing to the problem of some corn meal.

For whatever reason (I say historical precedent, others say regional taste) I went to all five major food retailers in Galway (Marks and Spencer, which I didn't know we had one of, Dunnes, Tesco, Aldi and Lidl) in pursuit of cornmeal with which to make the traditional accompaniment to chili, the almighty American Cornbread, and found...nothing. Nada. This was a problem. How were we to eat chili without cornbread? Our Culinary committee (read: Me, Katie, and Shannon) were flummoxed. Okay, I was flummoxed; Katie and Shannon promptly and reasonably suggested we make something else while I whined about walking to five different grocery stores. They decided on beer bread and I decided on cheesy scones.

Had I ever made cheesy scones before? Nope. Did I have a recipe? Nope. Was I going to find one? You bet your bonnet I was going to find one. So I did. Actually, I found a recipe for vegetable scones and left out the veggies, becuase I'm smart and adaptive like that. And I made a double batch of the best cheesy scones ever. Not that I'm, you know, biased or anything.

Cheesy Scones
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup yellow onion
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon dry oregano, crumbled
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
7 ounces shredded cheese(Monterey Jack or Cheddar)

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Saute onion in 1/3 cup canola oil, until brown. Let cool. Beat eggs until mixed well, blend in milk, sauteed onions and the remaining oil.
2. Add flour, baking powder, oregano, and garlic powder. Mix well.
3. Stir in cheese. Spoon onto a baking stone or greased pan in biscuit sized spoonfuls.
4. Bake 20 to 25 minutes.

Those of you who know me know that I love to cook. Those of you who have lived with me know that I also love to experiment with my cooking. Leftover rice from when we had Chinese and maple syrup for breakfast? Tried it. Those mashed potatoes and the red-bean casserole no one else would touch? Been there, eaten it. Basically, if it's leftover or we have a lot of it, chances are I've tried to make something with it. Some of my experiements turn into actual meals. Some of them are just ways for me to get leftovers out of the fridge. (Don't ask me why I seem to think it's my god-given duty to eat leftovers. It's just the way I was brought up -- something about not wasting anything.)

Today being Friday, as well as cold and a tad rainy, and the great majority of my cottage mates being away for the day in Cork, I decided to try something after dinner that I sometimes make at home. You cut up apples, add cinnamon, and microwave. It tastes a bit like a very crude apple pie filling and as you all should know, I am a huge fan of the apple pies. I normally wouldn't have done this, but I justified it with the brown spots developing on the apples. See what I said about finishing things?

Anyway, it turned out lovely, and so I thought I'd share. It's ridiculously easy, it doesn't take much time, and the ingredients aren't outrageously obscure.

Fakey Cakey Apple Bakey – serves one
2 small (or one very large) apples(jonagold or gala – a softer, sweeter apple.)
¼ cup sugar
1/3 cup oatmeal
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp butter

Dice the apples into rough chunks, large enough to spear on a fork. Add cinnamon and sugar to apple chunks and stir well, coating through. Add in oatmeal, again coating through, and add butter to top of mixture. Microwave on high for about two minutes, stirring at halfway to make sure the butter is melting and the apples are cooking. If desired, add more oatmeal for more of a crumble-like consistency. Voila – it eats like a pie but without the crust. If your sweet tooth is just that insatiable, you may also want to add a tiny bit of ice cream to the top.

Space to Breathe (and a Few Thoughts on Food)

2009-11-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

Oh, finally. Excursions are over, and now there's space to breathe. It's been a wonderful week here. Class was canceled yesterday (Thursday) after JD's cold got really bad, and then, of course, there was Friday. No class, lots of space to breathe, and go on walks into Spiddal to go to the market, and work on the three different essays we have on our plates right now, and just chill out for a few days. I love weekends when they feel like weekends.

This week has been fantastic for other reasons as well, though. Whenever I talk about all the Bennies and Johnnies as a whole, I often find myself saying "our family." It's hard to explain to other people (from home or from other study abroad trips) why we say family, but there's really no other word for it. We're all so close. We have family meetings, family meals...and nowhere was this more apparent then dinner for the past three nights.

On Tuesday, the Cottage One boys invited us over for dinner with them. They made dinner (beef, gravy, and mashed potatoes served on toast) and we brought pies to share afterwards. They borrowed some plates and some chairs and we all dressed up and ended up staying for several hours after dinner had been cleared off the table, and, as I remarked several times beforehand, it felt exactly like going to a big family dinner for Christmas or Easter or something, right down to the chair-borrowing. It was just a bunch of people getting together to share a meal, and I miss that part of my family tradition that seems to be collapsing as people grow older and move away from home. Even though I used to dread family dinners with my dad's side of the family, I still liked the institution, the idea of sharing a meal. I think I might plan something big and grandiose for my grandparents when I get back. Just to have them over for dinner.

Wednesday night was even better than Tuesday, because on Wednesday we had our first community potluck, a resounding success that everyone agreed must become a weekly institution. (On the bill of fare next week: Chili and cornbread.) Every cottage was required to bring two dishes, a main course and a dessert, and then everyone got to try a little of everything. My Cottage Five family contributed our famous fried rice, which everyone enjoyed, and my crepes, which met with pretty good reviews as well. (The gauntlet was thrown down by one of the boys on our trip on the subject of my crepes earlier in the semester and so I had to make them for our potluck. I'm not sure he even ate one, so that makes me a little angry, but hey, I guess you can't please everyone.)

So, two days of really good food, and what happens after that? On Thursday night cottage six invites us over for soup, to use up the chicken they brought to the potluck. We brought over some vegetables and between the two cottages cooked up some pretty fantastic homemade chicken and vegetable soup. We even bought some bread at the Farmer's Market that afternoon to eat with it. Nothing fantastically fancy, or even remarkable because of taste, just good food enjoyed in good company. Next week we're returning the favor and making them crepes for dinner. I'm super excited about it.

I've been thinking a lot about why I enjoy cooking so much after these past couple of days. Last week, after one of our number had to go home for the funeral of his grandmother, I couldn't help thinking about my grandmother, and how much emphasis dinner always had in her household. One of my clearest memories of going to Grandma Martin's house was the way every morning, before everyone else got up, she set out the cereal and oatmeal and bowls for breakfast so that when we all woke up, we'd be able to eat. (I was always amazed that she got up as early as I did. We were always the first people up.)

She also had this habit, when we would have large family dinners (at least twelve or thirteen people) of never sitting down until she was absolutely positive everyone had what they needed. It's a lot of running around for a dinner that size. I understand now why she did that -- because around the table, she wanted everyone to be able to enjoy themselves and not have to worry about anything. She wanted everyone to be a family while they were eating, not twelve people who had their minds in eight different places at once. And I love that tradition. I've even started doing that setting out the breakfast things some mornings, just because it makes me feel close with her. I really, really wish I could share this trip with her, partially because I think she might have liked hearing about Ireland, and partially because I know she had some really great travel stories of her own, when she went to visit my grandfather in Germany. It's really strange, but all the memories I have of my grandmother are of her serving other people. She was a very, very hospitable woman, and I wish I had admired that more when she was alive.

So that's been this week. A lot of homework, a lot of food. Tonight I know dinner's not going to be noteworthy. We decided, after being spoiled for three days, that tonight is a good night for pasta. And after that we're going to a football match -- Galway FC vs. Cork. It'll be great craic, to be sure, and tomorrow I'll wake up nice and early to work on my literature essay. Maybe take a walk by the ocean to brainstorm a few ideas. Or maybe I'll just sit out on the rocks and breathe.

North and South

2009-11-02T01:14:00.001-08:00

No, I’m not just stealing the title from the book I’m currently reading for my blog post. I’m attempting to summarize my last weekend, which, as some of you already know, was spent in Northern Ireland. As I said a few times myself this weekend, I technically left the country, but really, the only thing that changed was the fact that the street signs stopped being bilingual and the people started having a different accent. Other than that, it was still very…Irish. The people were friendly and willing to share their stories, which were very horrific, depressing stories indeed, given the history of that part of the world for the past thirty years.

After a grueling four hours on our trusty bus (You wouldn’t think traveling by bus would be tiring – it is.) we passed over the border and into Northern Ireland. No passports, no checkpoint, not even a sign saying “Welcome to Northern Ireland!” I suppose that’s because they thought it would get defaced. The only tangible sign was, well, the street signs, which, by the way, also get defaced by nationalists who want to see The City Formerly Known as Derry and Now Officially Called Londonderry get a permanent name change back to what it was before Cromwell’s men tacked the title of the English capital in front.

Derry, Londonderry, Stroke City (Derry/Londonderry) The Maiden City, the Walled City…Let’s face it, this town has more names than most people. We were probably going to have a hard time processing this, so Fearless Leader arranged for a sitdown lunch for all of us (An excellent idea.) before going on a walking tour with world-famous (and I do mean that) Martin McCrossan (http://www.irishtourguides.com/). Martin’s an interesting guy, coming as he does from Northern Ireland and being a Catholic married to a Protestant, and he really knows his stuff about his city. He took us around the city walls, explaining the city’s history with Oliver Cromwell, the Williamite Wars, and how all of that fed into the religious tensions that until ten years ago were a constant way of life in the city, Derry/Londonderry’s own slice of the pie aptly named The Troubles.

We went down into the Bogside, where in 1972 a peaceful civil rights march on behalf of people who wanted the right to vote turned into a violent clash between the police and the marchers. Until that point, you had to own a house to get a vote in Derry, and as most Catholics were poor and rented their houses, this mean that government was largely put into office by Protestants, meaning that the policy being produced was, well, pro-Protestant.

The Bogside has the reputation of being, at one time, one of the most violent neighborhoods in the world, and walking through it was an intense experience, not only because we knew we were standing where a bunch of people got shot in the 70s but also because, in complete opposition to this, the neighborhood seemed so…normal. People walked their dogs, men stood outside washing cars, kids were skateboarding in their driveways. This did not look like a place that was ever a war zone, except for the large murals painted on the sides of houses and the high fences meant to separate Protestant neighborhoods from Catholic ones, and vice versa.

At the end of our tour, Martin introduced us to one of the many volunteers at the Museum of Free Derry, a man named John Kelly. Mr. Kelly, it turns out, is the brother of one of the thirteen people shot during that civil-rights-march-turned-chaos, now known as Bloody Sunday. As the museum was closing just then, John offered to let us come back tomorrow morning and then have a question-and-answer session with him about his experience during Bloody Sunday and how he came to be the historian and activist that he is today.

Wow. What a guy. After going through what was possibly the most intense museum experience of my life, (probably because it was chronicling events that went on literally right outside its front door) I got to listen to this man talk, in simple, unassuming language, about how his brother was shot (he walked us to the community center and showed us the wall where the paratrooper who shot his brother stood and the house where his mother was watching the whole scene from) and how that led him, along with the families of the other victims, to campaign for the reassessment of Bloody Sunday as a massacre and not, as the government currently views it, as a police action against terrorists.

Needless to say, that was pretty awe-inspiring, and John Kelly was a really nice guy. If you’re ever in Derry, look him and his museum up. They’re good people there, and they’ve got a good story to tell.

So after all of that, we hopped back on the trusty bus to go to the Bushmills distillery to drown our sorrows in the whiskey making process. As far as factory tours go, it was a factory tour, and I now know a little bit more about the whiskey distilling process than I did before. We also got samples at the end of our tour; I took mine, a Bushmills ten year whiskey, as a hot toddy which I almost did not finish. (After some cajoling, though, it did happen.)

Sufficiently liquored up now, we then drove to Giant’s Causeway to walk around a bit and chill out while at the same time literally chilling ourselves to the bone, as it was now raining kind of heavily. (Heavy rain for Ireland is equivalent to normal rain at home – normal Irish rain is more like mist. And heavy Irish rain goes on for hours, which is why it’s very, very annoying.) But Giant’s Causeway was very, very cool, and now I can say I’ve seen it, even if it was cruddy weather

Hopping back on the bus, we drove for another several hours to arrive in Belfast well after dark tired, wet, and hungry. Most of us made dinner and some people went out. I stayed in and did homework, which was a wise choice on my part, because on Sunday I was in no mood to do anything productive. Saturday, then, was consumed by a bus tour of Belfast (only kind of cool – we were a bit sick of the bus by this point) and then a free afternoon by ourselves.

I went along with friends intent on doing some shopping for Halloween and as such, I really didn’t see much of the city apart from the downtown shopping district. But somehow I’m kind of okay with that. There were a few things I would have liked to see there, but I think that’ll have to wait for another trip to the North. One of the important things I did learn is that Belfast is totally tourist safe, contrary to what people might think after they’ve read John Conroy’s Belfast Diary, the book we had to read for seminar.

Saturday night being Halloween, all sorts of crazy shenanigans went on. I stayed aloof from this, however, by taking up Fearless Leader’s offer to go see a movie together. We got dressed up (JD as a pirate = hilarious) and went to watch the fireworks (For an American who associates fireworks with the middle of July, this was mind-boggling) and then go see Pixar’s UP! which was wonderful even the second time. JD had never seen it before, though, and she thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Came back to a roomful of slightly drunk (and one very drunk) roommates, who continued to trickle in through the rest of the night. Not going to go into details there, but hey, it was an experience, and it did happen. Been there, done that, have the image etched in my memory, did not get a tee-shirt and am kind of glad about that.

Sunday, after reminiscing about the night before and confusing the crap out of someone who was not assigned to sleep in our room and woke up there, we piled back into the bus to drive an impossibly long way to Strokestown House and the Famine Museum there. At some point on that drive I sang Whiskey in the Jar to the bus to generally good reviews. (I made everyone sing the chorus, which might have helped.)

So. Strokestown House.

Pemberly, anyone?

A lot of the contents of the house were things that we had already seen at Muckross several weeks earlier, but it was interesting in light of what Allison and JD said about comparing two sites; one with funding for preservation (Muckross) and one without. Big difference in quality and general tone, to say the least. The Famine Museum, while slightly better done, seemed a bit redundant to most people, who were very tired and looking forward very much to sleeping in their own beds that night.

We were tired, irritable people who had by and large not done any homework Sunday night, and hopefully a night of sleep has cured us of these ills in time for class this morning.

For the full scope of this weekend's pictures, including a selection that is by no means exhaustive of the murals of Derry and Belfast, you can go here:

Northern Ireland

This is the Galway Rover, done with all planned Roving for this trip, and looking forward very much to playing the Wild Rover no more.

And it’s no, nay, never (clap-clap-clap-clap) no nay never no more (clap-clap)
Will I play the Wild Rover, no never, no more…

Up and Down in London Town – Part Two, Tuesday through Saturday

2009-10-28T12:20:00.000-07:00

Another day, another set of catastrophes, another bit of homework to be avoided, another blog post. So, where were we? Ah, yes. Tuesday.

Tuesday we found ourselves trudging along, with hundreds of our fellow tourists, going to visit one of the most popular sites in London – The Tower. Even the name is enough to make you cringe if you know the history, and looking on one of the oldest and most widely known fortresses in Europe was pretty awesome. Like Hampton Court, the Tower of London also had a special exhibition on Henry the 8th, this one in conjunction with the Royal Armories about Henry’s armor and weapons.

This would have been cool were it not for the fact that the Tower of London, in addition to being popular with the tourist crowd, is also popular with school groups.
I really, really, really hope I was never that annoying on school field trips, because these kids were downright obnoxious. No one was paying attention to anything, and if you’re a college student intent on learning something for the entrance fee, it’s really hard to read the signage when twenty-odd eight-year olds have their hands pressed over the glass, talking about everything EXCEPT what’s in front of them.

I digress. We also got to see the Crown Jewels and all the other perks of the Tower of London. But my favorite part of the ToL was the Medieval Palace built by Edward the Second? Third? Anyway, they’ve restored it. It’s awesome. I took pictures.

That was about the last thing we did there, afterwards visiting the Tower Bridge Exhibition (also fairly cool) and the HMS Belfast, a battleship that saw service during World War Two and which is now part of the Imperial War Museum. A very nicely put together exhibition and a must-see for WWII buffs.

Tuesday night was our first experience of London Theater with a show called The 39 Steps , a 1940s style comedy involving only four actors. Hilariously written and fantastically played. I recommend it wholeheartedly and unreservedly.

Wednesday’s trip involved a lot more hiking than I thought it would, though not in a horizontal fashion. Nope, Wednesday’s hikes took us vertical – up to the top of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, that is, to one unbeatable view of the London skyline. I never want to look at a spiral staircase again, because all six-hundred something steps up to the top were one continuous loop (my vertigo is coming back just thinking about it.) Also got to see Nelson’s and Wellington’s Tombs and Monuments and in general just indulge my Napoleonic Wars fangirl for a few minutes. It was awe-inspiring, seeing the tombs of two of the world’s most well known military figures. And their monuments aren’t bad, either. Lots of other famous people in Saint Paul’s – Ivor Novello, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Joshua Reynolds, and Florence Nightengale were some of the other names I recognized. Missed Churchill, apparently, shame about that.

If my Wednesday had been more iconic Andy Warhol would have made a painting about it, because after Saint Paul’s my mom and I crossed the river to Bankside and the Globe.

Yes, you heard me. THE GLOBE.

Literary fangirly squee moment here! They didn’t let us up on stage, but I stood out in the Wooden O and said my bit from Henry the Fifth and felt really, really good about it. Yeah, like the Shakespeare nerd I am, I know the whole speech. Memorized it freshman year of high school. I’ll let Derek Jacobi take it away for you.

After that, wandered down with Mom to the South Bank Bookmarket, bought myself a copy of North and South (Finally!) and then met back up with Aunt Jo to go see our second taste of London Theatre – Les Mis.

Oh. My. Stars. I now understand why people love this musical as much as they do. It is INTENSE. And now I want a revolutionary, socialist leaning French student for my very own. It would help if he could sing and wear a sexy vest like Enjolras does, too, while I’m making a wish list.

So that was Wednesday night, which was no way to head into Thursday morning, when I got up really, really, really early to go hop on a train from Euston to head up into unknown territory to meet my writing buddy and sometime Kingdom of Heaven loving partner in crime, Helen. I was tired, I was hungry, and perhaps more to the point, I was terrified I’d have to spend the day with someone who was either cold, distant, or disinterested and who would turn me back to the train station before my train left at eight. The last time I met someone I didn’t know, I ended up having to live with them for six months and it was awful.

Enter The Author, wearing raincoat and black beret. She has just traveled three hours by train though the english midlands very early in the morning and has had little to eat. Scene. I get off train. I scan crowd. I find Helen. She sees me. She greets me. She hugs me. I hug her. I realize this is going to be all right and I had no business being worried at all, as Nicole and I (the aforementioned stranger and my freshman year roommate) were not on hugging terms. We’re not even on speaking terms any more, come to that.

We went for coffee and ended up staying, talking for an hour. Then we visited the Manchester Art Gallery and the Manchester Museum, both fine institutions with some wonderful exhibitions on that day. After that we adjourned to her dorm for lunch, where I got to meet all her roomies and help make lunch (about which you have already heard.)

I almost didn’t want to leave. All of Thursday I had the overwhelming feeling I was with my people, and for acquaintances formed just hours previously, that’s saying something. They were welcoming and wonderful and I’m not sure I conveyed that enough how much I appreciated being allowed into their home. (Also realized when I got back I forgot to take a picture of us together. OOPS. Oh well.)

So we chilled out. Helen’s roomie Reagan made brownies. We watched a movie. (Young Victoria, so awesome. Rubert Friend as Prince Albert and Paul Bettany as Lord Melbourne...le sigh. ) It was an awesome, totally normal, college student day, and I loved it. In fact, it was a perfect prelude to Friday, because, sad day, my mom was leaving us to go home.

We visited Westminister Abbey in the morning -- more tombs, more art, more audio guide, narrated by Jeremy Irons, of all people. Could we just have a moment for the sheer awesomeness of Jeremy Irons narrating an audioguide?

Okay, now that that's out of the way. After Westminster we dropped Mom off at the Tube station with directions on how to get to the airport and then left ourselves to go out to Camden Market, a wild and crazy place filled with wild and crazy people. A true experience, to say the least, and quite possibly the most diametrically opposed place to Westminster. But a lot of fun, too, seeing what you could find there. Almost bought some really heavy silver jewelry, but didn’t really feel like spending that kind of money just then.

Saturday, my last day in London, started off being the most disappointing and ended on rather a higher note than it started – always a good thing when it comes to travel. We took the train out to Oxford to have a look at the venerable college town and things went from bad (pouring rain) to worse (The Bodleian Library, one of the ONLY things I really wanted to see in Oxford, was closed) But I did see a small exhibit on book bindings, I didn’t have to pay for lunch courtesy of Mike’s family friends, whom we met up with for the noontime meal, and the weather did clear enough for us to do a bit of walking and take some awesome pictures, including one of the Eagle and Child pub, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien’s favorite hang-out spot back in the day. It was very much a hobbit-ish place, I felt. Very small and very cozy. Also got to see Christchurch College, where they filmed part of Harry Potter Numero Uno. Very cool.

That's from the top of the Carfax tower, after the rain cleared a little bit.

And so Saturday ended. We went home, went to dinner, crawled into bed, and I set my alarm for very early when a cab came to pick me up and ferry me to the airport, where I climbed on a plane, and then a bus, and then another cab home to PLH. It was stressful, it was long, but it was my break, and now I’m back. It’s good to be home, even if home isn’t actually where home really is. You know?

Being inappropriately confusing, this is the Galway Rover, bidding you adieu.

Up and Down in London Town – The Food Segment.

2009-10-27T01:37:00.001-07:00

As I have somehow finagled my way into writing what amounts to a food column for my sister, I figure I should do this sooner rather than later, while the thoughts are still fresh. I was surprised at how well I ate in London, given that England has something of a dire reputation when it comes to eating well. (Read: It’s usually given out that they have no flavor there. At all.)

My first food experience was Friday morning in the airport, when I downed a large mocha from Costa Coffee, a European chain of coffee houses we’d already seen in Dublin. Good stuff. And they were open all night in the airport, which I was impressed with. Lunch on Friday was in a little pub whose name I can’t remember, but I do remember being really hungry and eating something that was really quite filling. Friday’s dinner sticks out a bit more, probably because we passed the restaurant almost every day after that – a little place called Giraffe that was good eats at a reasonable price. I had Jambalaya meatballs, which was not what I was expecting but tasty nonetheless.

I should make a note about our dinners. I think everywhere we ate basically worked out to around fifteen pounds a person for dinner, which, for the quality of food and service that we got, was a good price to pay. Not too extravagant but not MacDonalds, either. Or rather, for my mother to pay, as she insisted on picking up my tab for dinner every night. (I suppose she thought otherwise I’d run out to Tesco and dine exclusively on PB and Nutella sandwiches, that being the cheaper option. She’s probably right.) Whatever the reason, thanks for that, Mom.

Saturday’s comings and goings being dominated by the Arsenal game, Saturday’s eats were a bit in that corner of the food market, a place that doesn’t often get coverage in food columns. I suppose in the states everyone assumes you eat hot dogs when you go watch baseball and brats when you sit down to watch the Super Bowl. Well, if there’s a food for soccer matches in the UK, I guess it might be the hamburger. Strange, I know, but that’s what everyone was selling on the way to the stadium. I shared a chicken sandwich with my aunt and it was strangely filling. Since we were also up in the club seats, we got tea and free beer at half-time. Mom and I thought they should also put out some kind of snack. Huge bins of trail-mix wouldn’t be too expensive, would they? Crisps, maybe? Although I suppose that might get hard to clean up. Anyway. Dinner on Saturday night was at a little pub down the street called Mabel’s, where I ordered vegetarian lasagna and was seriously impressed that the vegetarian option in a pub, of all places, could taste so good.

On Sunday, by the time we got to the Victoria and Albert museum everyone was a little too tired to actually leave and look for lunch elsewhere, so we ate in the café. It’s always been my expreince with museum cafes that they are ludicrously overpriced and never very tasty, but the V&A people have their food down. And it’s delicious, too. Mom and I shared a sandwich and a bowl of butternut squash-y soup. And a slice of some class of tarte, which was delicious and slightly reminiscent of cheesecake.

This meal also reminded me how much I miss fall food and vegetables at every meal in general. But it’s really hard to put veggies in when a) they’re expensive and b) one of your cottage mates won’t eat them. Dinner that night was at Carluccio’s, an Italian place in the same location as Giraffe with just the right mix of calm, casual vibes and legit Italian influence. My potato gnocchi were heavenly. This was also the meal I tried a glass of wine with. However, as my gnocchi were in white sauce and the wine was red, I think I may have been committing some kind of culinary faux-pas.

Monday was a day for food, as part of our tour around Hampton Court included a tour of HVIII’s kitchens. Very, very illuminating, and very cool. I learned about how meat was roasted and why (Meat was a status symbol, and food historians estimate about 70% of HVIII’s diet at Hampton was meat) and why pies were important to the Tudor cook. Hampton Court could have as many as a thousand people living there at one time, and to cook for all of them would have required a lot of pots and pans. So, by making a pot and lid out of simple flour and water crust, meals could be baked for three or four people at a time without having to do dishes afterwards. It’s like the Bread Bowl of Tudor England. Of course, the crust usually wouldn’t be eaten, which shocked my mother and I, as the crust is usually the best part of the pie.

Lunch at Hampton Court, however, was not fantastic, as I took this opportunity to order a children’s meal to see what kind of toy comes in the box. I was hoping for something Happy-Meal sized, maybe a Barbie-inspired Wife of Henry the Eighth. I got an eraser instead.

On what plain of existence is an eraser a toy?!

Anyway. My lunch was also a bit insubstantial, as English schoolchildren can apparently subsist on a sandwich containing a single slice of ham and nothing else, a piece of fruit, and 100 grams of fruit juice. I was supposed to get yogurt, too, but they were out. Oh, and a cookie that would make the prepackaged gurus at Keebler and Chips Ahoy blush. But now I have a Hampton Court Eraser.

Monday dinner totally compensated for the sad nature of Monday Lunch, as this was YO! Sushi night. (http://www.yosushi.com/) YO! Is a fun, funky little chain where the food comes to you on little plates off a conveyor belt, an idea that my mom really liked as it enables you to try a lot of different things that you wouldn’t necessarily have tried because you see it going past and you think, “Hey, that looks tasty!” I, for instance, tried some kind of seafood salad that was delicious that I would never have ordered off the menu.

Me and my mommie. :D

I suppose I should mention why breakfast never seems to have come up. Breakfast was provided by the good folks at our hotel, with options ranging from eggs to porridge to…well, more eggs. But it was good food, it was filling, and it got us through the day, even if my mom is now sick to death of eggs. And I tried something delicious – yogurt, fruit and nut muesli, and stewed apricots. Delicious, and just the right blend of textures. It became a breakfast staple.

Tuesday Lunch, our day at the Tower of London, was disappointing in the food department, as the soup my mom and I shared was utterly tasteless and the children’s meal, which my mother silently suffered through to make sure her first born got her ToL eraser, was again insubstantial. Shame on you, whoever made the Onion soup that day. I applaud you for being able to get absolutely zero flavor out of an onion. That takes talent. I suppose I could make some crack about prison food, but as the Tower has not been a prison for some years, you would think the food would have improved since then.

Tuesday night’s dinner was dictated by our attendance on a theatrical production, the 39 Steps. Because the show started at eight, we needed to eat somewhere near the venue to make sure we got there on time. So we stepped into Garfunkel’s just as most of the theatre-going crowd was leaving to arrive for their 7:30 shows on time. I had a beef and mushroom pie, which was delicious and filling. In breaking with Tudor tradition, I ate the crust. We also had a discussion about the exact nature of jacket potatoes, which, in English culinary jargon, mean that they have not been de-jacketed, or skinned.

So, basically, a baked potato. You could have said that. Every time I saw the words ‘jacketed potato’ visions of Yukon Golds in little black dinner jackets sprang to mind. Clearly we’re not on the same page.

The 39 Steps was hilarious and I highly recommend it if you want to see a show. Garfunkel’s… well, I think they were a little short of staff that night, because the service wasn’t fantastic, but if you go after all the theatre-goers have left the food is pretty good.

On to Wednesday, where because of our whirlwind through Saint Paul’s and Shakespeare’s Globe, my mother and I kind of skipped lunch. Although we were considering buying a packet of crisps at the Globe called Darling Spuds. (Get it? Darling Spuds? Darling Buds? …Okay, no dice.) We ended up walking along the south bank and ducking into a place called EAT. for a snack. Mom got coffee and I got a muffin. What kind of muffin we’re still not sure, as I asked for bran and may or may not have gotten carrot, but it was good and it held me over until dinner at Thai Square, where we were eating because of the proximity to the Theatre district.

My mom, aunt and I tried something different for dinner that night – we ordered a fixed menu for theatre- goers. 14.50 for a whole heck of a lot of food, that’s what that was. A great deal, in my opinion, and I got to eat a little of everything. Pad Thai, a green curry, some kind of coconut sauce something that was delicious, and coconut ice cream for dessert. Beautiful.

Les Miserables that night was beautiful, too. I counted my pennies (okay, my pound pieces and some larger bits of change) and bought a program with a little financial help from my mom. And now I have the lyrics to the West End’s longest running musical stuck in my head. I listened to some bits online, but I liked our cast better.

After reveling in 1830s France a little longer than I probably should have, I went to bed only to get up at Ohmygawd o’clock in the morning to catch a train to Manchester for my highly anticipated visit with Helen, my writing buddy. As I had not eaten breakfast that morning, some of my first words off the train were “Helen, I need caffeine.”

Helen promptly obliged me by leading on to Caffe Nero , another coffee chain with fantastic mochas and at this branch, anyway, a fantastic view of Manchester’s resident Ferris Wheel. She ordered cheesecake and we shared this before heading out. Breakfast of champions, right? But I was richly rewarded by having a homecooked meal for lunch – Spanish Omelettes. Mmm, eggs with flavor. A recipe for you!

Spanish Omelettes à la Helene – Serves two.
Four eggs
two potatoes, medium sized, cut in small cubes
onions, diced

Pan-fry the potatoes and onions until cooked through. In meanwhile, introduce guest to roommates and discuss literature and latest BBC offerings. In separate bowl, scramble eggs and add to veggies in pan. Allow guest to take over cooking, as she is more confident in her egg making skills. Add more conversation. Allow to cook through before flipping. Serve warm with Worstershire sauce and more conversation. Garnish with YouTube sharing to finish.

Who needs structured meals when you’re having fun? I also kind of skipped dinner on Thursday, substituted for by Helen’s roommate Reagan’s brownies.

Guys, you don’t know what you missed out on. Best. Effing.Brownies. EVA. Reagan was afraid they were going to be too crumbly; they were perfect. And I, who come from the land where brownies are made far too often and with too much carelessness, should know what a good brownie tastes like. They were warm, they were soft, they had just the right crumble. The only thing that would have made them more perfect was vanilla ice cream. And being able to finish Young Victoria. But you can’t have everything you want.

I promised to share recipes with Reagan and Helen, as they want to learn to cook more, and went home that night a happy and well-fed individual despite not having gotten my three square that day.

Friday’s lunch at Camden market wouldn’t be remarkable – a chicken burrito with undercooked onions in it – were it not for the fact that we were in Camden and eating said lunch on seats made out of mopeds. They were pretty awesome. Friday’s dinner in Café Rouge was also not a huge deal (I had soup and a salad, not feeling up to more) but we did try crème brulee (not fantastic; I’m convinced Little Sister could do better) and something else that can’t have been too fantastic as I don’t remember it. Crepes with bananas! That’s what it was. Yeah, that was bad.

Saturday for lunch Mike, Jo and I went to Oxford to meet up with some of Mike’s family friends, who insisted on taking us out to Lunch at a place called the Mitre. I had really good chicken tikka and stayed out of the conversation, not feeling like I had much to add. In consequence, I finished my meal very quickly. Oops.

Saturday dinner, being my last dinner with Jo and Mike, was again at Giraffe. Feeling carnivorous, a very seldom feeling for me, I ordered a greek lamb burger and was not disappointed. Feta cheese, lamb, spinach, several different kinds of sauce. It was heavenly. The fact that it was also the height of a pint-glass probably helped a bit, too. We also got a Rocky Road sundae to share, another heavenly dessert. (Their brownie wasn’t as good as Reagan’s, though.)

Waiter, there's a giraffe in my smoothie.

On Sunday’s trip to the airport I splurged and bought breakfast at Giraffe. Far too expensive for the food I received – the very small smoothie pictured above (I saved the giraffe, by the way) and porridge which was good, despite being covered in a bunch of things I wouldn’t put in my oatmeal. But I tipped my waiter, got on my plane, and headed for home, where upon arriving I was greeted with open arms and the news that there had been no trip to the grocery store that day.

No food? None at all?

Just down to pasta. Don’t even have enough peanut butter for PB and J. Don’t have bread, either, come to that.

That bad, huh?

Nods all around.

And after being so culinarily spoiled for the past ten days, I suppose I deserved that. But home is home, and we always find a way around something. Cottage mates Brita, Catherine and Nicole went into Spiddal to pay something extravagant at the convenience store for cheese and quesadilla fixings and sauce for pasta, and we ate well on Sunday, sharing our board with Shannon, whose own cottage mates had not returned yet. We made dinner – Shannon made cookies. Such cookies! For something thrown together without eggs, they were delicious.

So that's food and London. This is the Galway Rover, world traveler, sometime food critic, and even more seldomly chef, saying Bon Appetit!

Up and Down in London Town, Part One

2009-10-25T09:26:00.000-07:00

One thousand and nine pictures. That should give you some idea of the epic scale on which my holiday was conducted. Or at least the touristy nature of my ten day break. Ten days, of course, is a lot to cram into one blog post, so I’m going to split the whole shenanigans in two parts. Hopefully I’ll have time to tell you about all of it. I drafted the first three or four days of outings as they were happening, and I’ll have to recount the rest from memory.

Setting the way-back machine, Mister Peabody!

Hooboy, London sure is a busy place. I’ve only been here three days and I feel like I’ve already seen the whole city by foot. It takes getting used to, too. When I got here I decided it was a bit too busy for me, but that might have been because I hadn’t slept in twentyfour hours and all I was running on was hazelnut chocolate and one very, very large mocha while sitting in the Heathrow airport with my mom.

Let’s start there. Thursday. I was one of four people packing stuff into the back of the bus because we were leaving early, and then off we jaunted to the Burren, a unique botanical wunderkind where they have examples of several different kinds of landscape and plants that botanists from all over the world come to study.

On the way there Michael, bus driver extrodinaire, pulled over to have us make a stop at Poulenaboune, a portal tomb built around the same time as Newgrange, but in a different style. SO COOL. The stone at the top weighs FIVE TONS. As my high school history prof would say, mindblowa. We drove through the burren some more, stopped for more pictures, and then continued on to the Cliffs of Moher.

Oh, side note.It was foggy. Did I mention that it was foggy that day? Because it was. The mother of all cloud banks parked herself right over us that day and didn’t move until it was dark outside and I was flying out to London. So…. That made this interesting. And disappointing. No cliffs of insanity for Megan that day.

Ah...yeah, that's about it. No, it got a little better later, but still. Fog like you wouldn't believe.

After another harrowing bus ride to the Dublin airport, I parked myself on my plane and then hied off to Heathrow, where I proceeded to overnight in the terminal (not the most fun experience of my life – little sleep, lots of stress that the Police would pick me up for vagrancy) and then meet my mother in the terminal at six-thirty with a homemade sign in the Chauffeur queue and a big silly grin on my face. She really liked that.

Long story short (and I’m seriously annotating here, I’ve got so much work to do this week it’s not even funny) we met my Aunt Jo and her boyfriend Mike in the terminal, found the Tube, got on and off with as little fuss as it is possible for four Americans with lots of luggage to make and dropped our stuff off at our Hotel before mounting off on a whirlwind of sightseeing.

Nelson’s Column!

Saint James’ Park!

Whitehall!

The Old Admiralty Buildings! (Squee! I was at the Admiralty! Jack Aubrey would be so proud of me. I'm such a P O'B fangirl.)

Number Ten Downing Street!

(My camera died, so I have no pictures of either of these...I'll have to steal some from my mother when she gets the chance to get a shutterfly or something.) (Mom, this is a covert prompt to get you to get a Shutterfly...or something. :D )

Anyway, that was exhausting. Ask me what I ate for dinner that night. Go on, ask me. I don’t remember. Oh, meatballs. Now it’s coming back to me. Well, whatever it was, it was delicious.
Somewhere in there Thursday became Friday, and of course, after going to bed Friday became Saturday, when I visited the British Library (Another squee!) and went to my first ever Premier League football match (Double Squee!) Arsenal Versus Birmingham. This, we are assured, is how football is supposed to be played. None of your silly high school stuff. Mike’s friend hooked us up with really fantastic seats (club circle, almost right behind the goal) and so we bought our jerseys and cheered on the Gunners to a resounding 2-1 victory. Again, no pictures -- didn't bring my camera this time.

But man, when you put on those jerseys. You’re not just sticking on a shirt, you’re joining a tribe. That was intense. It’s a team sport just to watch a football game. Everytime a goal gets missed there's a sound in the stadium like every supporter in the stands just received a collective kick in the gut. (I said that during the game, and every time it happened after that my mom laughed. But it's true! I tell you it's true!)

Sunday was pretty chill – we went to mass at Westminister Cathedral (Not the Abbey; the smaller, less well-known, Roman Catholic variant a block down the street.) Then we headed over to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where they made my day by allowing me to take pictures of EVERYTHING, and then to the Royal Albert Memorial, which makes for a very interesting discussion piece on Colonial rule during the Victorian era with its four corner statues. (I’d seen photos of these before in Po-Co, so a shout out to Madhu for making that excursion more interesting!)

I could probably do a whole post on the places we ate for dinner, but Sunday night was special because I had a glass of wine with my spinach and potato gnocchi at the really fantastic Italian place down the street from our hotel. And it was none of your five-euro-a-bottle wine, either. It might not have even worked out to five euro a glass. Anyway, it was good. I ended up not finishing the glass, but that’s my relationship to alcohol for you.

Monday was by and large my favorite day of the trip – our journey to Hampton Court, famous as Henry the Eighth’s palatial hangout in the 16th century and less famous as the recipient of William the Third’s additions in the 17th century and George the Third’s redecorating in the 18th. This was a good year to go to Hampton Court, as it is the 500th anniversary of HVIII’s ascension, and so they’re putting on lots of fun events with --- wait for it – costumed interpreters! YAY!!!!

The guy in blue was cute and really funny -- I heard some girl asking him about his codpeice after this speech was over and she couldn't bring herself to say 'codpiece' and he seemed to think it was hilarious. And he stayed in character the whole time! Although if we want to talk about codpieces, Thomas Seymour's kind of took the cake.

Eyeah. You can't really see it in that picture, but that was one crimson behemoth of a codpiece. I love Tudor fashion. It's so overtly sexual, and yet still so prudish by our standards. So many clothes, and yet so many ways to flaunt it. Seymour was also really funny. They just had a good cast in general for this extravaganza, I have to say. At some point my mom turned around and said, very quietly, “Megan, I can see you doing this. This is totally your thing.”

Ladies and Gents, my mother! A round of applause; I have trained her so well.

So, after watching Katherine Parr get dressed for her wedding (HVIII's wife number six, for those of you who aren’t familiar) finding out about to role of pies in the Tudor cook’s repertoire, exploring William III’s fantastic gardens and again, taking lots and lots of pictures, we headed home for another interesting experience – YO! Sushi. If you find one, go! It’s really fun and the food’s really good. A picture to demonstrate.

Sushi, colored plates, and a conveyor belt. Good food couldn’t get cooler. And if you go on Mondays, all the plates are a little over two pounds, so you can get five or six and not break the bank.

And that brings us to Monday and the end of my notes. When I have time, between figuring out my classes, registering for classes (Five o’clock, our time, Wendsday), reading Dubliners and writing a précis of John Conroy’s Belfast Diary, I’ll get back to you on the rest of it.

For the entirety of my pictures from these days, you can go here --

London Break Thurs-Mon

On our next segment of Up and Down in London Town: The Reverse British Invasion—the Tower of London and why I hate school field trips! The HMS Belfast, where I sang a lot of Andrews Sisters to myself and almost bought Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain! Saint Paul’s and why I hate spiral staircases! The Globe and my Shakespeare fangirly moment! Thursday, when I went up to Manchester to hang out with the awesome and incomparable Helen! Westminister and Camden in the same day! Oxford and my Tolkien encountering awesomeness! And of course, my journey home. This is the Galway Rover, and that’s the way it is.

Yeah, We've Got Class

2009-10-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a month since I arrived here, and I've just now realized that I haven't told you all a lot about what our classes are like.

Generally, we have a three day schoolweek, with four days of excursions from Thursday to Sunday afternoon. Classes are in three hour blocks with a break somewhere in the middle depending on how benevolent our professors are feeling. On Mondays we have History of Ireland from ten to one with the awesome Laurence Marley. Professor Marley is from the North of Ireland around Belfast, so his lessons are usually accompanied by some anecdotal evidence from his own life about how the history is resonating today in parts of Ireland. In his class we've gone from early, pre-christian Ireland up through the first of the English incursions in 1172 (when they were invited in, of all things!) and now we've just finished the 1798 rebellion with all its Catholic Emancipation, both-sides-of-the-religious-argument flavored goodness. We also skipped forty years ahead and got a Cliffs Notes version of the Famine for when we visit Strokestown house on our way up North in two weeks. As I'm fairly certain mine is the only name Professor Marley knows definitively, I think we can all gage how much I talk in that class.

Three hours is a long time to sit through history lecture, but it's really interesting and as we visit more places we get more chances to put our history into context. Last weekend, for example, we visited Newgrange, which is right down the road from where Jacobite forces under James II were trounced by William of Orange's troops, signaling one of the last nail in the coffin for the Catholic gentry of Ireland's chances for increased enfranchisement in government. (In addition to being a great example of this country's historical intertext, it's also a good way to show how small Ireland really is.)

After History, we have an hour for lunch and then we launch into Issues in Contemporary Irish Catholicism. We haven't really learned anything in this class, and I'm not sure we're likely to, so the less said about it, the better, I think.

On Tuesdays our Seminar class is the focus of the morning session. Fearless Leader Julie Davis takes this time to have us discuss readings for her class as well as connections between our other classes and the places we've visited. Our capstone for her class should be really cool, as we have to chose a creative way to document our time in Ireland and chart how our perceptions and understanding of Ireland have changed throughout our time here. Then at eleven, Archeology meets and discusses all sorts of things about pre-christian, pre-historic Ireland. I'm not in this class, so I can't speak to exactly what happens or even what gets discussed. But everyone in it seems to enjoy themselves.

Wednesdays are pretty much now my favorite day of the week, because for three and a half hours we get to steep in Irish Literature with one of the coolest and most laid-back professors on the planet, Gerard O'Brien. The other thing I like about his class, aside from Professor O'Brien's generally cool demeanor, is the wide variety of material we cover. Last week, for instance, we spent an hour on Yeats' poetry, an hour on the short stories of Frank O'Connor, Daniel Corkery, and Sean O Faolain, and the rest of our time reading John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World aloud.

It's a good mix and it keeps everyone happy; those who don't like poetry don't have to put up with too much, people who don't particularly like short stories (like me) don't have to read too many, and then we can all sit back and let the readers do all the hard work when we get to the play. Professor O'Brien really knows what he's talking about, and it's due to his recommendation and the lending of his own copy that I'm reading Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two Birds, a hilarious riot of a novel that is going to be made into a movie soon. I am so looking forward to this movie, and I can't even begin to explain the plot of the novel. It's a bit like Jasper Fforde but from a different perspective, and it's absurdly written and interwoven together, being three or four narratives laced together in some really crazy ways.

So that's what my school week looks like. Not that it'll look like next week! Stay tuned after the fall break for a run down of my foray into the land of scones and high tea as Mercury Gray Storylines presents :

Yes, it could be a bumpy ride.

Kilmainham

2009-10-12T13:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, let me begin this post by saying that Kilmainham Gaol was an intense place, and not just because many of the leaders of the 1916 rising were held and executed there. Many, many other people died there, either by hanging or from starvation or malnutrition caused by the prison diet. People process things in different ways, and one of the ways I process is by writing poetry. I also process by creating collages, both digital and physical. This is one of the digital kind. I think to understand the poem you need some images, so there they are.

Kilmainham by ~hmsmercury on deviant ART

In Dublin's Fair City

2009-10-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

You know that fly on the windshield feeling? Yeah, that's back again, because holy shoot, it's OCTOBER. And apparently it is warmer here than it is at home, and they got SNOW at school, and lots of other crazy happenings are going on. And fall break is THIS WEEK. Wowser.

As you might have guessed from the title of this post, this weekend was spent in the hip, happening city of Dublin, which takes its name from the original Viking inhabitants of the city who decided the place where the Liffey meets the Poddle was a Dubh Linn, a black pool. Wow, where to even begin with this weekend? I guess I could start with Thursday, when we left, but that just seems like a lifetime away. My head just spins to talk about.

Focus, Megan, focus. Thursday. Thursday we rushed out of our cottages and bustled off to Clonmacnoise Abbey in County Offaly, a monastic site established by Saint Ciaran in the 6th century. It's a beautifully restored site complete with six different churches, a round tower that was originally seven or eight stories tall (yeah, I know, a medieval skyscraper. Wild!) and a wonderfully picturesque collection of graves and high crosses. The sun was shining, the sky was a perfect mix of clouds and blue...in short, it was a good day for taking pictures.

We were dropped off in Dublin early in the evening and several of us decided to go to the National Gallery (Free!) to check out some art before going to the pubs for the evening. I browsed around and bought some postcards of some of my favorite paintings, as well as one of a lithograph of Trinity College back in the Georgian period.

Speaking of the Georgian period, an update on my Pride and Prejudice fanfic. If the theoretical P&P fic lives in Galway, it spends its weekends in Dublin having wild parties. Or drinking tea and discussing Catholic Emancipation, depends on when you catch it. I didn't know this before coming, but Dublin has some of the best examples of Georgian architecture (like Trinity College and the Merrion Square area) outside of Bath, England.

Oh, and the name Lord Avondale occured to me this weekend. Not sure who he is exactly yet, but I'm fairly certain he's an MP and of course, as an MP, he has to go to London to sit in Parliament because the Irish Parliament was dissolved in 1800. (I won't go into details, it's very, very complicated. All of Irish History is very, very complicated, actually.)

So that was Thursday. Friday it was gray, rainy, and downright depressing weather for our visit to Newgrange, which still managed to be one of the most awesome tours I've taken this trip. Have I mentioned yet this weekend is my favorite excursion of the trip so far? It was awesome on top of amazing on top of even more awesome with a side of ridiculously fantastic and garnished with just a hint of cool.

Anyway.

Newgrange is a prehistoric tomb about five THOUSAND years old where every year, on the winter solstice, the sun shines through a box above the door lintel and illuminates the tomb's center room. Fantastic mathematics and engineering involved here. Five thousand year old engineering and it still manages to boggle the mind. Probably because it's five thousand years old, but I digress. Very pretty artwork here, too.

We stopped at the Hill of Tara, too, on a special request; by that time it was full-out raining and the hill of Tara is...well, it's a hill. If you've studied it, like Mallory has, it's the coolest thing in the world because this is the place the High Kings (Ard Ri, in gaelic) of Ireland kept as their capital city. If you haven't studied it, it's still just a hill, and a really soggy hill where you're being rained on at that. However, on the way home we had Sing Along time with our bus driver, Michael, (who is all seven kinds of awesome) and now I owe the bus a song because Michael thinks I have a nice voice. (I'm planning on singing The Irish Rover, if anyone remembers about this song business.)

And Saturday. Saturday was our free day, and it was amazing. The fun thing about Dublin is that it is such an accessable city by foot, and even though we'd only been there for two days, by the time we got to Saturday we felt at home in Dublin, so much so that I had absolutely no qualms about wandering around the city by myself. I started nice and early by walking to O'Connell street, the main drag of downtown Dublin, to take lots of pictures of the statues and the Post Office. THE Post Office!

Here, have a YouTube video to explain. As I've said so many times this weekend, Neil Jordan's Michael Collins is so dead useful in explaining Dublin and some of the sites we visited this weekend. Plus it's just a fantastic movie and it involves Liam Neeson as the Big Fella himself. What more do you want?

The latter end of that clip takes place in Kilmainham Gaol, which we visted on Sunday. More on that later. So. O'Connell Street, the GPO, and then to Trinity College for the Book of Kells. Ladies and Gents, a confession. I liked the architecture at Trinity more than the manuscript, and I didn't have to pay to see the gorgeous buildings of the square. I had a little bit of a Master and Commander fangirly moment and imagined the square full of some Napoleonic contemporaries. Somewhere, Stephen Maturin is shaking his head and sighing.

But still, Kells is Kells, and now I can say I've seen it. And it was cool, just not eight euro worth of cool. They also had an exhibit on Napoleon in the Long Room, which was almost as cool as being in the Long Room itself.

Yeah, I know. Biblophile heaven.

After Kells I walked to the south end of the city to my favorite site of the day, Number Twenty-Nine Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin's restored Georgian Townhouse.

Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pictures here, but please believe me when I say it was really, really cool. I learned a lot about life in Georgian Dublin, not the least important fact of which was that after the dissolution of the Irish Parliament the city went into decline as most of the gentry moved to London for the Parliament session. I bought more postcards, and then I wandered back to Dawson Street (I gave up trying to find the Duke of Wellington's House) for lunch.

Ah, lunch. My most fond memory of this weekend was my lunch on Saturday because I found a pasty shop on thursday and on Saturday, my lunchtime dreams were realized. I bought a traditional Cornish pasty and a can of 7-up (my second can of soda since arriving here) and went to Saint Stephen's Green to pull up a bit of bench, watch the duck pond and the little kids next to me feeding the pigeons, and eat my pasty. It was heavenly. The birds and the little kids were amusing, the pasty was delicious. Life just doesn't get any better than that. I even took a picture.

After lunch, I had pretty much exhausted my list of things I wanted to get done on Saturday (Go me and my planning!) except for one last stop at Dublin Castle. Now, unbeknowst to me, it was Open House Dublin this weekend and they were offering free tours of Dublin's big architechural landmarks. Thinking, however, that admission was still 3.50 and having just spent 4.50 on a slice of apple pie that was certainly NOT worth that much, I skipped the tour and settled for taking pictures of the courtyard. Here, have another Michael Collins clip.

You can all thank Neil Jordan's film for my interest in Ireland and Irish history in the first place, by the way.

After the courtyard, I went around the back of Dublin Castle for a look at the Chester Beatty library, which was free and so much cooler than the Book of Kells. There was so much more on display, it was all a lot brighter and more colorful than Kells, and did I mention it was FREE?! The collection of the Chester Beatty includes Sir Arthur Chester Beatty's world renowned collection of Qu'ranic manuscripts, illuminated manuscripts from every faith tradition that produces illuminated manuscripts, and some wonderful examples of book binding as well as written work from places that don't produce books with covers. I had a little geeky moment with a page from the Shahnamah illustratin Khusrow Parviz falling in love with Shirin and another geeky moment with a beautifully illustrated copy of Genji monogatari, Murisaki Shibuku's epic story that many literary people whose opinions are worth something consider to be the world's first novel. (This was one of those "book without two covers" examples, and was on a scroll instead.)

I did a little bit more walking, took some more pictures of a few churches. Dublin is a city FULL of churches, I can't even begin to explain how many churches there are. Not a whole lot of them Catholic, but there's a historical reason for that I don't feel like explaining now. Again, Irish history, very complicated, moving on.

Saturday night took all twenty eight Bennies and Johnnies to the Abbey Theatre and their little sibling theatre's production of Enda Walsh's play The New Electric Ballroom. No one in our group had heard of it before, no one went in knowing what it was about, and quite a few people left the theatre STILL not knowing what it was about. (Yes, it was one of those plays.) Despite being really uncomfortable for some parts of the play, I really enjoyed watching three sisters, Breda, Clara and Aida struggle to overcome strong memories and the heavy toll that a routine life wrests upon the soul. The play raised a lot of important questions about routines (Should we develop them? Once developed, should we change?) love (Is it fair to project your disappointments in love on others and ruin their chances? Is it safe to leap into love? Is taking a chance at love worth it?) and the power of words (Should you allow rumor to affect you? How can repeating something make it true?) After the play, Fearless Leader invited me to go out with her and some people she had met at her hotel that morning for drinks and a further discussion of the orchestrated madness we had just witnessed.

A word on drinks on Saturday night -- while we were busy being cultured and watching a play, the rest of Ireland (as well as two of our Johnnies) were busy watching Ireland play Italy in a qualifer game for the World Cup, so the bars were packed with drunk and happy soccer fans when our play got out. Somehow we found a quiet place to discuss and life was, in short, pretty fantastic. Lou and Lynn, the older couple that Doctor D randomly met over breakfast, were a blast to talk to, and all three walked me home to make sure I didn't get mauled or molested by the crazy drunk people in the streets. It was a wonderful cap to a wonderful day.

On Sunday I slept in, went to ten-thirty mass at the Franciscan church down the street from my hostel (another drive-by mass: thirty-four minutes long. We counted.) and then hopped in the bus to go to Kilmainham Gaol, a place that has been a lynchpin in the political landscape of Irish history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I'd put another Michael Collins clip here, but the first one about covers it. That's the East Wing of the jail, and yes, it was actually filmed there, along with about 100 other films.

(I learned that the walkway that Collins is following as he reads De Valera's letter wouldn't actually have been used by prisoners, so that was a fun bit of historical inaccuracy to watch again.) I wrote a poem about the jail afterwards. I think that's for another post, though.

Then we repeated the familiar sunday afternoon routine: bus, groceries, bus, home, dinner, homework, sleep. Now it's Monday morning, I've got my Guinness glass filled with hot cocoa and a load of laundry to do. MG over and out!

If you'd like the whole weekend in pictures, you can look at them here!

Dublin

Oh, The Places You'll Go! (On the Internet, That Is...)

2009-10-06T09:41:00.000-07:00

Today being Tuesday and my calendar being remarkably free, I got a chance at a completely lethargic and blissfully unscheduled afternoon. Today's activities included drinking several pints of tea from my stolen Guinness glass (we've found that the larger reason for lifting the pint glasses from pubs is that apart from being great souvenirs, they also make much better drinking glasses than the ones in our cottages), watching Lost in Austen snippets on YouTube (SO much fun! Eliot Cowan as Mr. Darcy is unbearably good looking) and attempting to read J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World for literature tomorrow.

But of course, I must do all of this aimless mental meandering from the comfort of our classroom, where the internet is strong and the electricity with which to run my laptop is free. And invariably, being in the classroom in the company of all my traveling companions attempting just the same thing I am, I get drawn in to all the manner of fascinating discussions. Today's, for instance, was on blogs. Jimmy politely inquired whether I wrote a blog or not (Do pigs fly? I write three!) and then probably immediately regretted asking such a question as I launched off on a paean to blogs, RSS feed readers, and the usage of such things in communicating to the rest of the free world with such devices. Then Jenna was drawn in, and to make short work of a long and circuitous story, I spent a half-hour showing them how such wonderous devices work and wandering through a maze of other people's blogs attempting to follow every single one I could find.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mercury Gray Storylines is proud to present, for the first time on any stage in all its unabridged glory, the CSB/SJU Galway Study Abroad Blogroll for the 2009 Season!

http://jimmybackes.blogspot.com/ Jimmy B's blog, which should be fascinating for the discerning reader as Jimmy is going to write his Senior History Thesis on Irish Monastic Life.

http://thomasinireland.blogspot.com/ Expedition to the Emerald Isle as written by the incomparable Thomas, supreme jokester on our trip.

http://mattinireland2009.blogspot.com/ Snapshots of an Irish Adventure, Matt's photoblog. Matt is a wonderful photographer, so his snaps are well worth following.

http://johnmurrayireland.blogspot.com/ Just what it says on the tin. It's John Murray, he's blogging, he's in Ireland. Get ready, kids, it could be a bumpy ride.

http://jennainireland.blogspot.com/ Jenna's first adventure in blogging, it should be fun to follow and a joy to read, as Jenna is always at the heart of the party.

http://mollyinireland2009.blogspot.com/ This blog is near and dear to my heart as it is written by the person on the trip who's known me the longest, the awesome Molly McC. She's unashamedly proud of her Irish Heritage and she flaunts it in real life just as much as she does on her blog.

http://malloryegoespuddlejumping.wordpress.com/ A literary as well as a visual treat, Mallory's blog gets referenced enough here as she is a writer whose tone and professionalism I wish I could emulate more often.

http://cajensen11.blogspot.com/ Catherine is one of my cottage-mates and an all around fantastic human being with a great sense of humor and a great eye for the world's comings and goings.

http://eringobraghgalway2009.blogspot.com/ The blog of our assistant director, the incomparable Allison. As she is a graduated veteran of college and the wider world, her blog will be a little bit different then everyone else's, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

And, of course, we have my humble offering, which you already know the address of. So, this is Mercury Gray, alias Megan, your very own Galway Rover, signing off for the evening and bidding you all adieu.

As I Was Goin' Over the Far-Famed Kerry Mountains

2009-10-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

Ah, Whiskey in the Jar. What a great song. Well, I spent all weekend being carted over the Kerry Mountains in a bus, and I have to say, they'd be a great place to hide out from the British Regulars. Also would be a great place to shoot a movie, say, maybe, one about a cursed peice of jewelery and some short men called hobbits, but hey, what do I know?

This weekend's trips begin the four day excursions we'll be having for the rest of the semester. I didn't know it was so hard to shove your life into a bag for four days! But I did it, and now we're back at the Park Lodge to tell you all about our visit to Kerry. On Thursday we spent a lot of time on the bus and also tried a novel new way of getting around -- driving the bus onto a ferry! Hooboy, were we ever excited about that. The bus-bonding time, not so much.

Our big stop on Thursday was Gallarus Oratory, a stone chapel built in the 7th or 8th century that's still standing today. Oh, one other thing -- they built it without mortar.

Pretty fantastic non-masonry job, don't you think?

We also stopped to have lunch in Tralee, home of yet another famous song "The Rose of Tralee." They have an excellent rose garden there in homage to the song and I took lots of pictures. (Is this enough macro for you, Catherine?)

Most people weren't very excited about our final destination for Thursday, the tiny fishing village of Portmagee. We played a lot of cards Thursday night and waited around for Friday and our photography workshop.

On Friday I learned more about photography than I think I'm ever going to need to know in my life, but it was fun and informative and now I have a few more things to think about when I'm snapping pictures of everything that gets in the way of my bus window, things like aperture and shutter speed (faster shutter speed, less chance of the bushes obscuring my picture out the bus window!)

Everyone else was a bit put out by the fact that we were stuck in a sleepy little fishing village for two nights and went to the pub to drown their anger in alcohol while I stayed in to watch Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things, which was an excellent use of my Friday night, in my opinion. I wanted to be a flapper the rest of the night.

Saturday morning found us back on the bus on our way to Killarney National park sans Fearless Leader Number One and in the capable hands of Fearless Leader Number Two! (All hail Allison!) And despite getting lost a little bit (lost here having the meaning 'not where we meant to be, but cool nonetheless') we enjoyed ourselves immensely. Lord of the Rings references were rampant, which of course means that it was AWESOME scenery.

We drove around the Ring of Kerry and through Killarney National Park, stopping to get snacks in a tiny town called Sneed. I tried a fresh baked pasty, and it was so delicous I am now resolved I will embrace this British workingman's lunch staple as a part of my culinary repetoire and my move towards trying all foods Irish and English. Yes, it involves puff pastry and yes, it will be awesome.

Saturday afternoon's stop was the one I was looking forward to the most this weekend, being a 19th century Irish country manor called Muckross House. Constructed in 1843 for Henry Arthur Herbert and his wife, the famous watercolorist Mary Balfour Herbert, Muckross House also boasts an extensive collection of formal gardens in addition to the two-thirds of the house's rooms on display to the public. Gorgeous!

If there's a Pride and Prejudice fanfic running around Galway City, there's a Dickens-Gaskell Victoriana extravaganza lurking in Muckross's back garden. And what wouldn't want to lurk in the back garden, with a view like this?

It's no wonder Queen Victoria chose this house as one of her stops when she visited Ireland. The Herberts were given six years advance notice of her visit -- aaand she stayed two nights. Lame. The visit and all its preparations eventually drove the Herberts into bankruptcy and they were forced to sell the House, which changed hands several times before becoming the property of the Irish State in the 70s. They turned it into a museum, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Saturday night was spent in the happening town of Kilkenny, a rocking place full of great pubs, fantastic music, and several nightclubs I did not visit on account of feeling severely overdressed. (You'd think girls in Ireland would wear more clothing on account of the weather, but no, no, there are miniskirts up the wazoo here. Or up TO the wazoo, depending on how vulgar you feel you can express yourself.) OH! And I bought a sweater! And it was on SALE! I am so proud of my sweater-finding skills.

Sunday morning myself and several others went to mass at Saint Mary's Cathedral in the heart of Kilkenny, and after one of the shortest sunday services I've ever been to in my life (less than fourty-five minutes) I spent the rest of the morning before we had to check out of our hostel taking pictures of the storefronts of Kilkenny. (It sounds boring, but it was actually really fun. No one else is out at 8:45 in the morning on a Sunday. I had the whole town to myself, apart from the streetsweepers.) We went back to Tralee for lunch and a spin around the Kerry County Museum, including a really cool tour of what Tralee would have looked like in the 1450s.

Medievalist freinds, be jealous. I got treated to a bunch of really bad statuary and it was awesome in its terrible campy goodness.

Rawr. I keel you.

Then we got to get back on the bus, have more bus bonding time, and go grocery shopping. I realized several things on the bus ride home this weekend. One was that I would really love an ipod for all the bus riding we have to do, because sitting on a bus for three hours is plain boring. Second was that I should probably thank my parents for making me take so many car trips as a kid because third, this trip is beginning to feel like one big, long, family vacation.

Oh, you laugh at me, but it's true. Try as we might, all twenty-eight of us Bennies and Johnnies are slowly turning into one big family, and nowhere is this more evident then when you enclose us on a bus for three or four hours at a stretch. Some siblings sleep. Some siblings take pictures of the sleeping siblings. Some siblings take off thier shoes and some try to steal the shoes the others took off. Some tell stories and some listen and some ignore everyone and plug into their ipods, leaving the ipodless ones to amuse themselves by staring out the window or doing homework. Someone always asks Fearless Leader how long it will take to get there, and of course Fearless Leader doesn't know, and then we all avoid asking the terrible "Are We There Yet?" that was so common to my family car trips as a kid. The only thing we don't do on the bus is play A, My Name is Alice or listen to books on tape. (I miss A, My Name is Alice. Again, something for the ipodless ones to do. Alas that we think we are too cool for car games.)

But all this talk of family car trips makes me miss my real family, who I don't get to talk to as often as I should. I'm really looking forward to my London trip. Must go purchase plane tickets now!

ALSO: If you'd like to see ALL of this weekend's photos, you can do so here at my PicasaWeb.

County Kerry

Food, Glorious Food!

2009-09-28T23:55:00.000-07:00

As I sit down this morning to tell you a little bit about our diet here, I can't help thinking of the fantastic consideration for food Benedict put into his monastic rule (which we've touched on in class several times in the past days. Benedict has rules for how you should choose the guy who oversees your wine, directions for when to eat, what to eat, and how to eat. But as with the rest of his text, he specifies that two things should happen -- the meal should be prayerful, and the meal should be taken with everyone else.

I don't know if we've acheived the prayerful bit here in Cottage five, but almost all our meals are taken in common when they can be. It's cheaper that way, both in terms of energy and in terms of the buying of actual food, and it's also more fun. At lunch we recooperate for the rest of the day. At dinner we have discussions about lots of things. Generally there's some laughter involved. It's a community event.

Living with near constant gray clouds and having our lives reduced down so that meals become islands of levity in our day is starting to cement for me why food was so important as a social tool in medieval society, and so important that Benedict wrote out entire chapters devoted to it. We don't eat lavishly, but we're pretty good planners, so we do eat well.

Our meals generally start on Saturday night, when we return from our excursions. Then we sit down, discuss what we made last week, what worked and what didn't work, and plan out our meals for the coming week. This week, for instance, we're having Panini sandwiches (yesterday night) Pita Pizzas, breakfast for dinner in the form of Pancakes and Omlettes, and Pasta in white sauce, which we are going to make on our own since white sauce here is not alfredo. We've found out we all love cheese, so we eat quite a bit of it here in Cottage five. We also eat a lot of Digestives, these sweetmeal biscuits (cookies) that are sweet and cheap.

Food in general is a community event over here. Maybe that's because we're determined not to spend too much money on food, but it still brings us all together. We borrow recipes from each other, we share kitchen implements (We, for instance, have the coveted cheese grater) and we lend out ingredients. Last night we lent Cottage One two onions. Cottage One paid us back in meatloaf, which I'm eating now for breakfast. (I 'm going to have to have a word with Cottage One on meatloaf construction; the boys seem to have put the ketchup on top of the meat instead of mixing it in -- a heartier loaf, but significantly drier.)

Food also becomes a community event when Geraldine, one of the Foyle Clan, calls someone or another into the kitchen and says those three magical words we love to hear -- I have leftovers.

There is nothing -- NOTHING -- that will endear you to college students quicker than the prospect of you giving them free food, and Geraldine has done this twice now. So whoever gets the industrial sized pans of food (last night it was soup, a salad, some steamed veggies and cole slaw) sets them out on their table and calls the other five cottages with a BOYB alert -- Bring your own bowl. We all run over (again, fastest way to college students is free food) with our bowls and spoons and dish some out, some people staying around to discuss where the food came from (Geraldine) why she's getting rid of it (christening party this weekend) and what we're actually having for dinner that night (nothing as good as this).

Food is also going to become a community builder in the coming days. The Foyles have alerted us to the prescence in Spiddal of a certain lonely american student, and we're going to attempt to invite her over for dinner at some point. We're also going to attempt to have our two Fearless Leaders over for dinner sometime, as an expression of our goodwill and just a nice thing to do. We've found out two of our number know how to fold napkins very artfully (napkins here having the meaning paper towels) so we'll set out all our silverware (we might need to borrow some, as we only have six forks) and our glasses and maybe we'll even make a cake of some kind for after dinner. But it'll be fun.

A Toast to Arthur...And Patrick...And all the other men in my life at the moment...

2009-09-26T13:10:00.000-07:00

It's really hard writing a blog post to summarize your weekend when your weekend really started on Wednesday night, because at that point, your weekend's been longer than your week and that concept is so far steeped in absurdity it almost doesn't bear out being thought about.

Fearless Leader, understanding that we do only have so many hours in the day (and paying great heed to all our whining and groaning) gave us Thursday off from her class so that we could catch up on reading and homework. So, naturally, on Wednesday, JP decided to open the bar again. Hooboy. I tried another shot (a tasty one this time, creme de menthe and Baileys over ice) and just generally chilled out with people until my cold got the better of me and I went to bed.

Oh, yes. I have a cold. More accurately speaking I have a small storm of coughing dwelling in my chest cavity that occasionally condescends to come out and shake it's fist at the neighborhood of my throat for breathing too much. Sometimes my sinuses join in on the fun. Once or twice my nose gets pulled in. It usually ends in my hacking up a lot of nasty looking mucus. The cops have not been called in yet. Antibiotics and crime prevention may prove necessary if this gang war escalates. Anyway.

So Thursday was wonderful. I read like my books were going to be confiscated and got a lot of things done (excepting my laundry, which has reached dire lows.) And Thursday night, of course, was Arthur's Day. If you're my roommate Brita, you will keep refering to this as Saint Arthur's Day, but as much as the beer drinkers of Ireland would like to think so, Arthur Guinness is NOT a saint and no, the 250th anniversary is NOT an officially sanctioned church holiday.

Arthur's Day was a wonderfully clever publicity stunt cooked up by the enterprising folks at Guinness to sell more product by marking the 250th anniversary of Arthur Guinness inventing Guinness with music, a telecast to pubs across the nation, freebies, and of course, cheap beer. 2.50 a pint, actually, which meant that every college kid in Galway was out at the pubs drinking all day. (You think I'm kidding, I'm not -- it was a street festival out there. There are a huge number of college kids in the City of Tribes.) So, of course, I went and got my first pint of Guinness and raised a glass to Arthur at 5:59 (17:59 in military time, the year of the first Guinness.) After my first sip (taken like a noob before the beer had settled, which I'm told takes approximately 190 seconds after it's been pulled) I determined very quickly that a) I can't stand beer of any kind, no matter how much of a cultural icon it is and b) ordering a whole pint was a bad idea.

I ended up pawning off my leftover Guinness (I drank maybe a quarter of the pint) on everyone I was with and barhopping for several hours before going home. I also took home my first bar glass, swiped from an obliging window ledge in the midst of the street-fair-esque craziness. We barhopped a little bit, and then a few of us went home to blog and upload pictures and do a little more homework while the more adventuresome of our tribe stayed to party it up for the rest of the night.

Friday morning we all loaded up, hangover residues and all, into our freindly neighborhood tour bus and sped away to County Mayo for the weekend. First stop was Ballintuber Abbey, the monestary that wouldn't die.

It was battered by the Normans, decimated by the Tudors, burned by Cromwell and left in disrepair for several hundred years. Am I forgetting someone? Oh, yeah, now the gosh darn barnswallows won't leave the place alone either. But it's a beautiful old place with lots of lovely ruins and carvings and a graveyard that was made for art prints. Then we went to Foxford Woolen mills, a textile center begun in the 1890s by a nun who wanted to improve the standard of living in the area by introducing industry. Very, very cool, and I bought two lambswool scarves. A very good investment of thirty euro, I thought. My first big splurge of the trip.

In the afternoon we visited Hennigan's Heritage center, a very unique museum in that the man who gave us the tour, Tom Hennigan, was actually showing us around the house and farm that he grew up in. Not very often you get that kind of museum expereince, is it? Mr. Hennigan's purpose with his Heritage Center is simple; nowhere else in Ireland is there a museum where you get Ireland from the Irish farmer's point of view, and he thinks that there is a great deal to be learned from some of the simple traditions of the peasentry. Well, I learned tons, not the least of which was that it is indeed possible for a single human being to talk without notes and from memory for almost two hours straight. That alone was impressive. Also impressive was the amount of stuff Mr. Hennigan has inherited or been given so many artifacts from people all over the country. (About a month ago someone gave him tools that were used in the Harlan and Wolfe Shipyard building the Titanic!)

Friday night we went into the town of Westport, where they had an arts center going on and where we got to try out printmaking -- so much fun! Best hostel I've ever slept in, worst night of sleep of the trip so far, but breakfast and the rest of the day made up for all of it, because the greater part of Saturday morning was consumed by Croagh Patrick, the great mountain that the great saint reputedly climbed way back in the day when he was doing his preachy, conversion thing around the country.

My mother made me hike a mountain in New Hampshire once. At the time, I thought it was the worst thing in the history of my family vacations. In hindsight I should thank her. (I should thank her for so many things on this trip. My mom has saved my bacon from across an ocean, people, she is just that amazing.) Croagh Patrick was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life, and I didn't even make it to the top. But being able to look out and see the bay spreading out in front of us and being able to say, hey, we climbed all of that was really, really rewarding. Some of the edge got taken off when we met some of the people who had made it all the way to the top on the way down, but other than that it was a grand expeirence. We stopped back in Westport for the annual Horsefair and Market and I bought some soap, a heavenly little splurge of homemade, olive oil, essential oil, goats milk filled goodness. I used this soap to scrub the mountain out of my skin -- I'm telling you now, if you've never used handmade artisan soap, you've never lived.

This weekend was chock-a-block with obligatory cultural experiences -- first guinness, climbing croagh patrick, traditional horse fair. Sunday we added one more -- a Gaelic Football game. I actually never made it to the game (which they won, by the way) and I ended up walking all over Galway with Shannon after going to mass and taking some wonderful pictures at the cathedral in Galway. Then grocery shopping, bus ride home, and dinner. 10.25 euro per person for groceries this week. I feel I have done well.

So, Arthur and Patrick and the guys on my trip who did Croagh Patrick barefoot and the cute fellows in the pub on Thursday and the Spideal Gaelic Football team and my dad who made his first comment on my facebook today, I wearily raise my teacup and digestive biscuit to you. Good going, fellas.

The Wearing (And Shopping, and Living) of the Green

2009-09-20T23:48:00.000-07:00

Seeing as how the weather is absolutely beastly out and I really don't have anything else to do this morning, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about recycling and environmental concerns as I've encountered them in Ireland.

To begin, an anecdote: One of the first words in Gaelic I learned was Bruscar. What does Bruscar mean? Litter. Why did I learn it so fast? Because it is emblazoned on every single trash can you see, and for an island of its size, Ireland has a lot of trash cans. They're very, very big on making you pick up your trash. Recycling is also more predominant here: one of the first things we were given when we moved into our cottages was a list of what goes in what waste receptacle. We have a trash can (some types of plastic wraps off food, fruit peels, used tea-bags) a recycling bin (paper/plastic/metal/tetrapack containers) and a bin for glass (which the hotel then has us sort into brown, green and clear glass for recycling). IF we were living in a perfect world, there would be a bin for the food scraps so we could compost them, but alas, it is not. The hostel we stayed at did have a bin for food scraps.

Also interesting to note: on almost all the Aldi products, there is a small box on the back of the packaging detailing what it's made out of and if it's widely recycled or not.

Glass Jars: Widely recycled
Steel can: Widely recycled

Cardboard Box: Widely Recycled

Another interesting thing we've been getting used to is our electrical outlets. Because we have to pay for our electricity, we're very fond of these. If we're not using the outlet, off it goes. This is the switch for our oven. Right now both of them aren't in use, so they're both off.

More switches and the meter we use to pay for our electricity. We hate it and we...well, we generally hate it. I think we hate the idea that we use so much power, anyway. Generally when we're not using something, like our radio, we unplug it. This also means that we use our computers less. It takes a lot of energy to charge them, so when we work in our cottage, we run off of our battery, and we charge the computers in the classroom, where the electricity is free. Less trips to the classroom, less use of the computer. At least for me, anyway.

Another thing about Ireland and the environment that a lot of people on our trip keep forgetting about is that no shopping store in the entire country will give you a plastic bag. Ever. Unless it's already wrapped around your fruit, plastic bags or even paper bags have no place in grocery stores. You bring your own, or as Sam and the rest of Cottage Three found out yesterday, you buy a big jute shopping bag at the checkout line when you realize you have no place for your groceries. Being the forward thinker that I am, I brought my own shopping bags from home. And gosh darnit, if they are not the most appreciated items from my luggage I don't know what are. (The big red one is designed to keep cold things cold. So glad I brought that.)

On the subject of food, dare I mention that we're eating a lot less, and of that food, a lot less of it is pre-packaged? Not so much a lot of fresh food, (one of the girls in our cottage won't eat eighty percent of veggies the planet offers) just food with less packaging on it. For instance, a five kilo bag of potatoes we split with the cottage next to us has less wrapping on it than a smaller bag we might have bought at home. And Ireland is very much about local food. When you go into Tesco or Aldi, they're very quick with their shelf tags to point out that this was produced in Ireland and this wasn't. Whether that's an island mentality or a genuine economic concern to keep the local money in the local economy I don't know. But the eggs we've bought were from Irish hens, the Irish bread is a little cheaper, and the Irish meat is...well, it's still expensive, but we need protein from somewhere besides peanut butter.

We also walk EVERYWHERE. The village down the road? Twenty minute walk. Thirty if you've got groceries. In a week or so we'll have some bicycles to borrow. And there's a Farmer's Market there on Thursdays; another way to support the locals. (I got bread and apples there last week -- tasty and CHEAP! Ten apples for two Euros!)

I'll probably do another post on our diet here on the Emerald Isle. (Everything you've heard about potatoes is true) But that's about all for right now.

Good Lord, Really?!

2009-09-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

I feel that the theme of the past week has been a long string of moments that involve me wanting to shout "Good lord, really?" in an exasperated voice or an excited voice or with any number of other intonations. Some GLR moments have been awesome (Seamus Heaney reading his poetry to a darkened church, going inside a 16th century castle,) some have been harrowing (grocery shopping, my propensity to attract strange drunk men in pubs, my first shot, my first hostel stay) and some have just been downright angry-making (Spilling an entire bottle of laundry detergent, not having any clean clothes, the crazy amount of homework I can't keep track of, et cetera.)

Our school-week finished well, apart from the homework bit. Literature is going to be a lot of fun, even if I can't get up my guts to speak in that class. And our weekend trip this week was interesting on top of fascinating with a side of just plain COOL.

Thursday night J.P., one of the Foyle Clan who run the Park Lodge Hotel, opened the bar for us and our general mayhem. That man is several steps shy of sainthood, considering what he put up on Thursday. I was talked into taking my first shot, which I have still not been told the exact composition of. Peach schnapps, some liquor that tasted like coconuts with Malibu in the title and vodka seems to be the prevailing recipe at the moment. I left before anyone tried to talk me into shot number two or three, probably on account of the fact that the first one was pretty foul tasting. Whoever thought of coconut flavored liquor deserves to be beat over the head, preferably with a bottle of the vile stuff, whatever it is.

Friday we climbed Mam Ean, a holy site where Saint Patrick is reputed to have visited and blessed a well or slept in a bed there or tied his shoes or something. I've been told so many different things I really don't know which is true.

This was also our first taste of real Irish weather, with heavy mist and whipping wind. But however cold we were climbing up this magnificent mountain in Connemara, the view from the chapel certainly compensated for the trouble. Many of us remarked how similar the Connemara countryside in those parts looks to Rohan in Jackson's Lord of the Rings. All were agreed a marathon showing of all three movies would be in order when the weather gets really crappy in November. This pleases me greatly. We also had an epically amazing LOTR moment when we had to tag-team a call up the mountain to make sure everyone got back to the bottom, which was a bit like the lightings of the beacons of Minas Tirith. Pretty darn cool. Also high up on the pretty darn cool scale was when our tour guide Alan told us that JRRT did some time as a lecturer at the nearby University, which just confirmed for us that this place is more types of awesome than we have words for. (For a more perfect rendering of this situation in prose I don't think I could produce if I wasn't dog-tired and filled with half a dozen other things to do, I recommend my freind Mallory's blog post here.)

After that we headed to our hostel in Clifden. I'd never stayed in a hostel before, but it seemed all right to me. I'll pack a little more food next time, but other that it was fun. Then we went for a real treat -- Seamus Heaney, Nobel Prize winner and just fantastic guy in general, reading some of his poetry. I recorded him reading two poems, neither one a particular favorite of mine, but still, it's Seamus Heaney. It is really cool to hear his voice again as I sit in the middle of my classroom. I started writing a poem about Connemara as I hiked up Mam Ean, but it seems a terrible imposition to mention that humble offering and Seamus Heaney in the same blog post.

Saturday morning dawned clear but cold, and we all piled back into the bus for a hike around Connemara National Park (so beautiful! The picture above doesn't even begin to touch the surface!) and then a trip to Auchnanure Castle.

Oh, boy, was this ever cool! The castle was restored in the 60s and is in beautiful shape. We were given a tour by a wonderful young woman named Jenny, who clearly enjoys her job telling visitors about this 16th century tower house, a fortification meant more for the control of power and trade rather than defensive purposes. Many, many pictures were taken before my camera ran out of battery, but I went home a happy camper.

(That last one, for the record, is a minstrel's gallery. Mallory has some really good photos of me hamming it up trying to look like I play a lute.)

And I remained a happy camper until I spilled that bottle of detergent trying to do laundry, but hey, I can't have perfect days all the time, can I?

Poetry and other bits from the past few days

2009-09-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

It's been a long several days, and quite a bit has happened. We went to the Aran Islands, and hiked for quite a bit, taking in the general splendor of the place along with the ruins at Dun Aengus and the various and sundry sea-walls and things on the way there. It was, in general, quite lovely. Then on Sunday, we went with our Literature professor to go visit Thoor Ballylee and Coole Park, two very influential sites in the Irish Literary revival of the early 20th century. Coole Park was the home of Lady Augusta Gregory, who wrote several books on Irish Mythology and founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, and Thoor Ballylee was the Norman tower purchased by the poet WB Yeats where he did much of his writing.

And I realized that the current of these past few days has been poetry. There's plenty poetry written about the Aran islands, plenty of poetry wandering about Coole Park, and I'm feeling quite poetical myself at the moment.

Thoor Ballylee is a beautiful old place, the sort of tower one could very easily make into a home. Old enough and grand enough to be castle-like without the issues of size or the drafts or any of those castle complaints. I'm not a huge fan of Yeats' work (The Isle of Innisfree is the only poem of his I know offhand I enjoy reading) but I liked the little snippet he wrote to be carved on the side of the tower where it is today.

I, the poet William Yeats,
With old mill boards and sea-green slates,
And smithy work from the Gort forge,
Restored this tower for my wife George;
And may these characters remain
When all is ruin once again.

Simple and direct. And rhyming, in a recognizable rhythm. That's what turns me off about some of Yeats' work.

Coole Park, too, was magnificent. One of my group members later remarked that he had never thought of Ireland as a land with so many trees. And such trees! These trees are the trees about which stories are written and songs are composed and grand overtures to arboreal beauty in general are addressed. These trees are the ones being cast as Ents.

As we were walking I leaned over to Mallory, tugged on her shirt in a very theatrical fashion and said, in a small voice that was trying to be cheeky about the business, "I think we're in Narnia." She laughed. "I think you're right," she said. "Let's watch out for talking beavers."

I've written two poems myself in the past week. One was on our first real morning here, entitled "A Recipe for a Perfect Irish Morning" which I read to the group and widespread applause against the backdrop of Galway Bay at sunset. Magnificent! The other I wrote just this morning is a song in what might be termed the Irish style, inspired by Thoor Ballylee about a man who conquers a castle to impress a girl and doesn't quite succeed with his grand overtures of love until he finally tries something as absurdly simple as telling the girl how he feels.

And today was the first day of school! So I sat in class for a grand total of six hours today, three of which were wonderful (History will be amazing! and hard, so much reading involved) and three of which were dreadful (Contemp. Catholicism is not what I thought it would be) But we'll make out all right in the end.

Here's "Recipe for a Perfect Irish Morning." I'll try and get someone to record me reading it at some point; I enjoy the sound of my own voice too much.

Beginning with some basic stock,
an Island made of sand and rock,
we now begin our recipe
with something simple; making tea.
To this add perfect silence, broken,
only with some tiny token
sounds of birds I cannot name
Add to mix the only claim
to the kitchen table. When that's done
add place on couch for reading, one.
While this is simmering, gently run
the golden currents of the sun
over the mixture, soaking through
with sunlight and a dash of dew.
As my roommates rise on sleep cold feet
My receipe is near complete.
Just one more thing: Add ocean swell
of waves now rising, and mix well.
Serve with a slice of sky now warming
and here -- Voila! -- an Irish Morning.

(A note on serving; sometimes prayer
makes sweeter what's already there.)

Day Two: Words, Words, Words

2009-09-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

So, today we ventured out of our country enclave and into the great, grand ould city of Galway to meanader about for a few hours. We're taking it nice and leisurely our first few days here. Baby steps into the pond, donchaknow. And damn, it was fun! Despite almost getting lost twice and not eating lunch (because I'm CHEAP! And frankly, I wasn't hungry either.)

And today we visited the BEACH! See! Best pictures of me don't involve my face.

Michi, I am imagining more feet next to mine. My feet are very lonely here. Lonely, but squiggling in Irish Sand. (Sand that I still have between my toes, by the way. Stupid me, went in the ocean and forgot to bring a towel.) This is the view off the beach.

Visited the Church of Saint Nicholas today, a very old Irish church in downtown Galway with some fantastic memorial tablets and a very beautiful interior. I took a lot of pictures, but I don't have time to get them all up here. Downloading pictures anywhere, blog or PicasaWeb, takes forever.

But today was about linguistics, strangely enough. We learned, for instance, that the phrase 'to lynch someone' comes from the famous family Lynch in Ireland, who once way back in the day had to hang one of their own sons for killing a Spainard. Also learned that whiskey comes from the Irish Uische Beatha, which means water of life. Funny, no? Then I brought up boycott, which comes from another Irishman's name, Charles Boycott, who was ignored and ostracized by his tenents when he raised his taxes too high during the Famine. Also got a coupon for free coffee/tea while Shannon and I were in a department store, and was reminded when I asked if we could get the tea to go that in Europe I need to ask for a takeaway cup. Oops.

And we learned that Galway means City of the Tribes, coming from the na Gall, which means foriegners, referring to the foriegners who apparently first built the town.

Speaking of tribes, all of our tribe is finally here, and we've taken our first trip into the city and we've walked back from Spiddal and shopped at the local convenience store (Spar for the win!) when our real trip to the real grocery store got called on account of the bus company. (Boo for the bus company!) Mention has been made in the other room of going into town tonight and I'm not really sure I want to go into a pub even if it is just to have a glass of water. I'm not for drinking tonight. But I also didn't have anything since breakfast today, so that's probably a good thing.

Live from the Emerald Isle!

2009-09-10T11:28:00.000-07:00

OHMIGAWDI'MHEEEEERRREEEE!

And what a trip it has been to come here. So short, in the grand scheme of things, and really long, now that I sit down and type about it. Where to begin?

I left my house for the airport at two, got to the airport at three-fifteenish, met up with Nicole and Katie (my awesome traveling buddies!)

We got through security (Only a few kersniffles there; Katie had never been on an airplane before, let alone through security, and the line was moving really quickly, so I didn't get a chance to explain you need to take your laptops OUT of the bag before I went through myself. Ooops.) Anyway, we got to the gate, sat down and waited for a while, found two of our Saint John's compadres, Kris and David, and hung around in the airport until they started boarding. Found out Kris, David and I all have the same Lonely Planet Guidebook. Good call on that one, Aunt Sue. Katie accidentally ripped her boarding card in half, but other than that we made out okay.

Seven hours on a plane is NOT fun, especially when you're swapping time zones faster than a teenage girl changes clothes in the morning . Unless, of course, you're Nicole and you have the awesome luck to be seated next to a frenchman who is doing PhD work at the University of Illinois who regales you the whole flight about how life in France is different than life in the US. Lucky duck. He was kind of cute, too, in that rangey kind of way. Anyway, they fed us on the plane (food was pretty decent, actually, for a meal that came entirely in little plastic boxes) and we slept and watched movies and tried to sleep more and just basically reveled in the fact that WE WERE ON A PLANE TO IRELAND.

Then we get off and we have to go through Immigration, where a woman checks our passports and asks lots of questions and almost doesn't let me into the country because apparently my letter isn't specific enough about where I'm studying but eventually relents with a stern warning that I must register with the local Gaurda (Police) station within ten days or I will be deported. This I already knew. Then we go through security again, where I have to chug fifteen ounces of water out of my Camelback water bottle so I don't have to leave it in the airport and then we get two hours to wait for our next plane. My phone card does not work. This is probably for the best, as it is nine in Ireland and three at home. For those of you who have never been, the Dublin Airport is really, really nice. I liked it, a lot, even if we did have to walk forever to get out to our gate. (And then we got to board off the tarmac, which was different.)

Finally we get on our connector to the Shannon Airport, which is only a half-hour long, and then we go through immigration again and get our bags and finally we find Doctor D and the rest of the crew who have been waiting very patiently for us, the last of the party, to arrive.

Then I nearly forget my baggage in the airport (because I haven't slept since five-thirty-something my time yesterday and it is now one-thirty-something Irish time today and somehow these todays and tomorrows and yesterdays make sense in my sleep-addled brain) and finally, finally, we get on a bus, where I can forget no more luggage, hold up no more immigration lines, and cause no more damage to anything other than my pride as I attempt to take pictures out the bus window. Thank god for my camera, which is idiot proof and can take pictures out the window. It is fantastic. I should share more with you, but alas, the computer is willing and the internet is weak.

And now we're at the Park Lodge Hotel, where they have fed us and given us internets to check our emails on and updates our various blogs and had clean sheets and the promise of tea in the morning. I'm going to be a tea junkie when this trip is done. I've been saying all day "I think when we get to PLH I'm going to make myself a cup of tea." So here I am, with swollen lymph nodes (Yes, Mom, I know what swollen nodes feel like now) and a slightly runny nose and a fear that I may be carrying swine flu, but I have all of these things AND I'M IN IRELAND, GOSH DARNIT. I'M GOING TO BE SICK AND I'M GOING TO BE HAPPY ABOUT IT.

:D

And the Lord saw what he had done, and it was good.

I think I need to go do a little praying now.

Currently Stuck in My Head

2009-09-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

COUNTDOWN TO IRELAND: FIVE HOURS...

Gotta get up, gotta get out, gotta get home before the morning comes.
What if I'm late, gotta big date, gotta get home before the sun comes up
Up and away, gotta big day, sorry can't stay, I gotta run run yeah
gotta get home, pick up the phone, I gotta let the people know I'm gonna be late...

You can hear the whole song here.

Study Abroad Trips in General

2009-09-08T05:42:00.000-07:00

COUNTDOWN TO IRELAND: T-MINUS THIRTY FIVE HOURS

It is an invariable consequence of me getting up too early that I begin musing on philosophical topics to go back to sleep. And I began thinking about something kind of disheartening this morning.

My Study Abroad trip is kind of wimpy.

Yes, I can hear you wonderful folks in the grandstands saying, "No, Megan, you're going to a different country and you've never been there before and it's difficult!" But it's not that difficult, really. My cousin, Luke, is studying now in the Netherlands. He will be there for a whole year, with a trip home at Christmas. He took a semester of Dutch, and last Monday he got on a plane by himself and flew into the airport, got himself to his lodgings, which he is sharing with four people he doesn't know and is now comfortably installed (we hope) in one of Europe's most interesting and historical cities. THAT is hard.

What am I doing? I'm flying with two other people to meet up with twenty five other people I've already met to be supervised by two professors from my University to live in cottages outside a big city. I feel kind of wimpy.

But at the same time, I have reminded myself, it is what it is. Luke is a people person; I'm not. This morning I started re-reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader because I wanted something of a travel story that didn't involve a quest to save the world from an evil piece of jewelry or a trip to a new planet that ultimately ends in the main character dying. And C.S. Lewis is good for an adventure tale that's not too tough on the palate.

In a book I was reading earlier this summer,"The world according to Narnia : Christian meaning in C.S. Lewis's beloved chronicles" by Jonathan Rogers, the author points out that one of the things that makes Eustace so unbelievably unlikeable is that he's unable to take his trip aboard the Dawn Treader as what it is: a new experience that he'll be unlikely to duplicate anywhere else. Our ability to appreciate God's Creation, even when we're in a place we don't understand, makes us more pleasant people and can temper our experieince in a more positive fashion, while Eustace's inability to see anything other than how different everything is and how he'd rather do everything the way he's always done it makes his presence and his trip horrible. When he stops the hate, he begins to enjoy himself and his adventure.

So, with Eustace in mind, I'm going to enjoy myself, wimpy or not. My bags are packed, my emails have been sent, I'm going to see if I can get a few more Euros in my wallet before I go, and I will have a grand time. Aslan wills it!

Customs Part Two

2009-09-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

Having called the CBP at O'Hare Airport and talked to one of the nicest civil servants I've ever contacted by phone, here's the skinny:

You get to O'Hare airport, you check your bags, you go to the CBP office, you fill out the form, you show them your items to prove you had them before you left the country, they sign your form and you go through security. When you reenter the country, you show the form to the customs agents and you don't pay duty on it.

Simple, no? Irish customs are giving me a headache, mainly because I don't want to pay duty on the six granola bars I'm planning on stashing in my bag for rations for the first two days.

http://www.revenue.ie/en/customs/leaflets/pn1878a.html#par4

Customs

2009-09-07T06:21:00.000-07:00

COUNTDOWN TO IRELAND: TWO DAYS!?

Aaaaand today I decide to look up Customs stuff. Idiot, idiot, idiot, the blogger said to herself as she smacked herself in the head with a 64 page pamphlet about stuff she probably should have done already.

So the US Customs and Border Protection Agency advises that you register high end electronics before bringing them abroad so that you don't have to pay duty on them when you come back (because all you're doing is repatriating an item you bought in America)

I quote:

If your laptop computer was made in Japan—for instance—you might have to pay duty on it each time you bring it back into the United States, unless you could prove that you owned it before you left on your trip. Documents that fully describe the item—such as sales receipts, insurance policies, or jeweler's appraisals—are acceptable forms of proof.
To make things easier, you can register certain items with CBP before you depart— including watches, cameras, laptop computers, firearms, and CD players—as long as they have serial numbers or other unique, permanent markings. Take the items to the nearest CBP office and request a Certificate of Registration for Personal Effects Taken Abroad (CBP Form 4457). It shows that you had the items with you before leaving the United States and all items listed on it will be allowed duty-free entry. CBP officers must see the item you are registering in order to certify the certificate of registration. You can also register items with CBP at the international airport from which you’re departing. Keep the certificate for future trips.
-- from www.cbp.gov

So now I have another adventure on my hands -- calling the CBP office at O'Hare airport to find out where they are and finding about registering items. I should probably tell everyone else on my trip about this.

Book Review: Galway Bay, by Mary Pat Kelly

2009-09-03T06:26:00.000-07:00

Adapted from a post on my Village Wordsmithy Blog, 8/28/09

'Tis far away I am today from scenes I roamed a boy,
And long ago the hour I know I first saw Illinois;
But time nor tide nor waters wide can wean my heart away,
For ever true it flies to you, my dear old Galway Bay. -F.A. Fahey, Galway Bay

Too often when I pick up a book nowadays, I'm picking it up because if it's fiction I need to read it for class or if it's non-fiction I'm reading it for research. I've advanced into reading non-fiction books for fun, which is probably a bad thing, so it's not often that I read fiction books I don't have to take notes on and annotate copiously.

Over the summer I've had a chance to change that and read a little bit more fiction, probably because the selection of fiction at the three libraries I frequent when I'm at home is a lot better than the selection at school. A friend of my mother's recommended Galway Bay to her when she found out I was soon to be studying there, and like the good bookworm I am, I borrowed the book from Mom before she had a chance to read it.

It was a wonderful read. I plowed through it in three days, which is a testament to both my ability to plow through books (already aptly demonstrated) and M.P. Kelly's ability to tell a story. And what a story! It starts in a very small village in Ireland before the Great Famine, with a young woman named Honora who is thinking about becoming a nun until she meets Michael Kelly, a very charming young man with a gorgeous horse, a knack for telling stories, and dreams that are just as big as Honora's. Kelly then follows her heroine through the famine, five children, and immigrating to Chicago, a place whose history I know and love well.

This book comes highly recommended by me as well as a slew of much more famous voices, including Frank McCourt's, and it's not terribly difficult to follow or keep track of Honora's many family members. Historically interested types may want to take note of this novel as an interesting way to experience family history -- Mary Pat Kelly based the story on her own family's experience as Honora herself told it to her granddaughter, Agnella Kelly. I also loved the stories within the story told by Honora and her grandmother and the way those stories had such a centrality in thier lives.

But this book was interesting to me for another reason; Honora came from Galway and went to Chicago, and here I am, twelve days away from leaving Chicago and going to Galway. She went on foot and by boat, while I'll go by plane and bus and automobile. I'll probably see many towns that were once like Honora Kelly's, and that makes me really happy inside. I feel, in a very small way, that I'm adding to that story even though I'm not Irish and my people never had to flee a country because their crops were rotting and their government wasn't helpful and their landlords wanted them gone.

Who knows? Maybe this will inspire me to find out what the great-grandcesters of Mercury Gray were doing way back in the day in France and Germany and wherever else we came from!

Ecological Concerns in Ireland

2009-09-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

COUNTDOWN TO IRELAND: SEVEN DAYS

This is a test post for my dear friend Kay at SCARCE to show her how RSS feedreaders work. This is also a post for you, dear readers, to explain something else I'll be following in this blog.

Over the past two weeks I've realized how many things this trip and this blog are going to be for different people. For my youth group at church, I'm going to try and take some notes on being a Catholic abroad in a country where religious identity is strongly tied to political affiliation, and hopefully give a little talk/discussion on that when I return in December. For my family, it's a chance for them to see all the places I visit (hence the gift of the camera) and watch me grow up a little and develop into a globally minded citizen.

Yesterday with a trip to one of my favorite places on the planet, it became something else entirely. I've been volunteering on-and-off with SCARCE for three or four years now (they know me really well over there) and I went back to say hello and drop off a donation of books for their Textbook Recycling program. (I've talked about SCARCE's book recycling a little bit on my Village Wordsmithy blog here)

I mentioned to Kay McKeen, the founder and force-of-nature who runs this little suburban non-profit, that one of the things I was looking forward to in Ireland was adapting my lifestyle to a place where I cannot get a plastic bag at a grocery store, will end up riding a bike or walking to where I need to go, and where I have to feed a meter to get my electricity every day.

Needless to say, environmentalist guru Kay was happy as a clam about that. So this blog becomes something else for someone else -- I have to take some pictures of this little meter gadget for her so that maybe she can use them as a teaching tool for the many classes she teaches about conservation.

(And maybe this will impress her so much I can get an internship with them next summer...Mmm, the possibilities.)

Shopping

2009-08-30T05:13:00.000-07:00

COUNTDOWN TO IRELAND: TEN DAYS

Normally I don't enjoy shopping. Normally I don't enjoy spending my mother's money, either. But I had a list, there were only Mom approved items on the list, and I got everything on my list, so I felt pretty good afterwards. And for some strange reason, shopping at REI makes me think I can do awesome, amazing, adventureous things. They are really selling a lifestyle there, I think.

Look at all my cool goodies! (And some of them were on SALE! Which makes me pretty happy.)

Overland Equipment Donner Bag, from REI in Henna

I needed a purse and I needed a bag I could shove a shirt and a change of socks into for overnighting, and this bag fits the bill. There's also a nifty pocket for my camera and a waterbottle. Like my mother wanted, it has a lid that zippers shut so my stuff won't fall out, and like I wanted, it's half-way between being a backpack (lots of room) and a purse (hugs my side and looks like a purse).

JanSport Shower Abode II Toiletry Kit, from REI-- It hangs, it holds things, and it's much prettier than the one here.

Eagle Creek Undercover Neck Pouch -- sneaky sneakiness that you wear under your clothes to store important things. You don't get to see a picture of that.

REI Thermo LT Fleece Jacket -- This is something that I have wanted for a LONG time, or at least since I started doing athletic activity (snowshoeing) in the middle of Minnesota winters. (If anyone reading this blog wants an idea for a Christmas present, GET ME SNOWSHOES. Only athletic equipment I've ever asked for in my life.)

I wanted something that's light enough to move around in that keeps me warm until I want to be kept warm no longer. Until now that's been layering a short sleeve shirt, a long sleeve shirt, and a purple fleece jacket and heading out into the woods to trek around for an hour. The fleece jacket does let in some wind, though, which is something I hope to solve with this lovely thing. And it fits under my raincoat, so in Ireland (land of the unexpected rainfall) I will be both warm AND dry! (And it was so far reduced even spendthrifty me could not say no.) It was this or another jacket, the REI Muir Woods, that was on clearance, but this one was thinner and windproof. I almost wanted to buy both.

I also got some socks, but I'm not going to put pictures of those up here.

Back to School -- But Not Just Yet.

2009-08-27T08:35:00.000-07:00

So everyone else is back in school except for me and my Ireland trip buddies! Yeah, CSB/SJU is back in session, Angela's down in Chile, Bea's in Italy, my sibs are back at GBS, and I'm still here waiting for the 9th of September, which is taunting me because every day I have to say"You have until September 8th to return these books for a full refund!" about ten thousand times at work.

Speaking of work, my job is going well -- lots of money for the TTI (Trip to Ireland) Fund. I worked nearly a full week last week and I think I might go into overtime this week, which would be awesome for me but not too awesome for the payroll people, who really, really don't want to pay me overtime rates. I've also got my bank account set up and ready to go. Total balance of 122 dollars in there right now, but hey, what're you gonna do? Tomorrow's payday, so there'll be more there in a few days. And the exchange rate got worse since the last time I checked, which makes me angry. Less buying power for me, it seems.

This morning I worked on my cookbook, pasting my recipes in and organizing them according to meal type for easy use. It's the way I would write a cookbook if I was actually publishing one -- the main dishes are separated into different meats and vegetarian options, beverages get their own section, and there's lots of room in the back for more.

My family out in Massachusetts (HI, FAMILY!) sent me this year's birthday present early this year -- a CAMERA! So this blog will be all tricked out with PICTURES, too!

Still breaking in my shoes and collecting odds and ends for my trip. Also read a book last week that I must remember to review on this blog.

Money

2009-08-06T15:35:00.001-07:00

Ah, money, the elephant in the room on this study abroad trip. But someone's got to talk about it, don't they?

Yesterday my grandparents came by the house with an interesting gift for me -- 92 euros worth of currency, along with a wonderful little table my grandfather made for me for conversions. It's really a nice chart, in case I don't have access to a computer at the time (meaning most of my transactions) and I can't get to, say, XE.com for their conversions, which are wonderfully handy.

Live rates at 2009.08.06 22:35:54 UTC
1.00 USD	=	0.696468 EUR
United States Dollars		Euro
1 USD = 0.696468 EUR		1 EUR = 1.43582 USD

Needless to say it'll take a little getting used to, but the bills have large freindly letters and the coins are pretty straightforward, too. 100 cents to a Euro and so forth. What I'm not looking forward to is pounds, which just sound downright confusing. Pounds, shillings and pence, I think that's how that boils down.

My new roomies

2009-06-21T13:27:00.001-07:00

Huzzah! Doctor J has sent around our housing assignments! I'm living with...no one I know very well. Ah, such is life. I said I would live with anyone, and I'm living that out. But really, it should be good. Britta, Maggie, Catherine and Nicole are great girls.

On another planning front all together, the beginnings of my travel trousseau are beginning to take shape. I now own an electrical plug converter and some bags that are supposed to help my packing by making everything fit in a smaller space.

I've also ordered my walking shoes! Well, fun story behind those -- I bought them a month ago, exchanged them a week later for a half-size smaller, and THOSE are on backorder. But aren't they nifty looking?
And my Grandmother has said she wants to take me shopping because she thinks I need thermals. Hey, I'm not going to say no to shopping! (But thermals, Grandma, really? I'm not going to Sweden.)

Cultural Bit No. 3 -- Another Strange Map!

2009-06-15T13:16:00.000-07:00

Our friends over at Strange Maps have given us ANOTHER cultural bit! Now, I'm sure everyone's familiar with those lists entitled "If the world only consisted of 100 people..." which then proceed to break down population density, literacy rates, and average incomes.

This one's exclusively for language use in Ireland, and I have to say, it's pretty nifty. You can see the original post here at Strange Maps.

Cultural Bit No. 2

2009-06-08T18:54:00.000-07:00

Today's cultural bit is a book by Morgan Llywelyn entitled Red Branch. Don't let the author's Welsh-sounding last name fool you -- Ms. Llywelyn is very Irish in her literary productions, having more recently written five books in a series called "Irish Century" entitled for the years in which they begin: 1916,1921,1949, 1972, and 1999. I had read 1916 and 1921, books that follow fictional Ned Halloran as he shows his audience the world of the Easter Uprising and the Rebellion that would give Ireland her independence from Britain. Both were wonderfully well researched books and fun to read, and the subsequent volumes in the series deal with Ned's progeny as they, too, take part in significant events in Ireland.

Red Branch, however, deals not with history but with myth, specifically the Ulster Cycle of Irish myth that details the life of the hero Cuchulainn, the Hound of Cullen, and his various exploits as he struggles with who he is as a person (a bit like Perseus of Greek myth -- father was a god, mother never told him, expected to live up to patrimony) falls in love with various women (lots of various women) and finally comes full circle as his terrible fate as a hero is completed.

It's a hard book to follow if you're not familiar with the component stories of the Ulster Cycle like the Cattle Raid of Cooley and the Betrayal of Naoise or with the major characters like Cuchulainn, Maeve of Connacht, or the Morrigan. Certainly I'd recommend at least reading a children's version of these stories, as well as some more broad-reaching Irish Mythology 101, before launching into this novel, which at 500 plus pages is not a speed read. I was familiar with some of the episodes before picking up the book, but the novel helped put into perspective the idea that all these stories took place within the same generation of heroes. But Llywelyn does well by her source material and manages to capture a certain wildness about her characters that I think would make W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, two authors who worked very hard to preserve these myths, proud.

Overall, not one of the best books I've read so far this summer. If I were to recommend something, I'd go with Llywelyn's Irish Century novels instead. If the first two are any indicator, the rest will be fantastic.

Cultural Bit No. 1

2009-05-25T16:08:00.000-07:00

I've decided a new feature of this blog will be my encounters with anything Irish preceeding this trip, and this map from the Strange Maps blog certainly qualifies.
(You can read the original post regarding this map here at Strange Maps.

Basically, the map has been filled in with song titles by the Irish band The Pogues identifying with a particular geographic feature. I thought it was pretty nifty, even if I can't sing many of the songs and I'm not sure I've ever even heard the Pogues' renditions.

Fall Break Plans

2009-04-27T06:31:00.000-07:00

Remember what I said about planning? Yup, we have another post on the centrality of planning.

In the middle of October we have a fall break, nine days when we can get the heck out of Ireland and see the rest of Europe. Fun, right?

It doesn't help that I have to plan this around several other people's intended destinations. Mal and Katie want to go to Italy and France, and I have no idea what everyone else wants to do. I want to go to Manchester, meet up with Helen and have an awesome time with her for a day or two, and then go take trains around the rest of England.

And my mom, heaven bless her, thought it would be cool to come with me. Traveling Europe with my mother? That could quite possibly be the most awesome thing ever. I love my mother!

And then I wouldn't have to worry about finding a traveling buddy.

The Ball Begins Rolling -- orientation number two.

2009-04-19T18:37:00.000-07:00

Today was orientation session number two -- all twenty eight of us and Doctor J and six pizzas in a classroom at Saint John's. Yes, Doctor J -- We had an interesting discussion on styles of address for our FD. Acceptable forms include Professor Davis, Doctor Davis, Doctor D, or Doctor J. I may revert to something really informal like "Davis" because I'm not sure how cool I am addressing the woman who's going to be in charge of my life as Professor. But we'll see. I'm flexible, like a reed in the wind. It is imperative that I remain so.

No, I'm not developing a tension in my jaw. That's not raw fear in my eyes. I can totally do this!

Or not.

I don't think I've ever been so scared to meet new people in my life. Because these aren't just any new people, mind you -- these are the new people I'm going to have to spend four months with in close proximity. These people are going to have to like me. I'm going to have to like them.

Well, that's not a problem. I like all of them. But they all still terrify me, because they're all very different from me. I'm a strange child, and they're not. For so many years of my life I've been the oddball in my peer group and being left out in a foreign country is not my cup of tea.

Doctor J gave us homework for the next time we meet -- a history for our trip, as if we've been and come back already, detailing what kind of community we want to be and what our place in it will be. I've finished mine already -- it sounds a bit like The Things They Carried, but Tim O'Brien is a writing god, so I'm kind of okay with the parody. A sample:

We were told stories, dozens of stories, stories about men still living and men long dead and some about men who had never lived at all, except in the hearts of other men. Ireland is a land for storytellers, and even the ground sometimes speaks, strange stories out of a long past. All of us shared stories – Megan told us things on our trips we would never need to remember again and Professor Davis told us things we would, indeed, need to know for the quiz later. And we made our own stories too – like the time we got lost in Galway and found our way to the best fish and chip shop on the planet, or the time the girls went thrift shopping and came back with articles of clothing with their own interesting stories to tell, or the time in the pub when the guys…well, there were a lot of times in pubs. We drank our way through none too few good times in the city. We were kings and queens in our own age, heroes in our own time, unafraid to go out and see the world as it would have itself be seen. Not to conquer but to be conquered by the sights and sounds of Eire. We were open, and we had to be, to see everything that needed to be seen and a few things that didn’t. We went everywhere, and like good soldiers we never left a man or woman behind, though some of them might have wanted to be left.

The Devil's in the Details -- The Planning Stages

2009-03-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

Whenever I think about planning something, a very specific scene from Kingdom of Heaven comes to mind, in which the Sultan Saladin is being asked by his mullah why they stopped besieging one of the Crusader castles.

Mullah: Why did we retire? God favored it. God alone determines the results of battles.

Saladin: The results of battles are determined by God. But also by planning, and preparation -- the absence of disease and the availability of water. How many battles did God win for the Muslims before I came? that is, before God determined I should come.

Mullah: (grudgingly) Few enough. That's because we were sinful.

Saladin: (in an I-told-you-so voice) It was because you did not plan.

Well, I'm not trying to mount a seige here, but I do have to have some kind of attack plan before I go overseas. Mainly this attack plan deals with money right now, something I'd love to not worry about just yet but something that demands the attention it gets.

So I've created a list of places I'd like to go and things I want to see in the 10 day break I have mid-october. I've also created a list of what things cost, and what cities they're in. Now I need to compile some hostel reviews. (Hopefully none of hostile hostels...) I've sent away for some tourist brochures, and we'll see what turns up!

The First Posting!

2009-03-28T07:40:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Blogspace, from Saint Joseph, Minnesota, the jumping off point for what will be this blogger's first foray into the fun and exciting world of international travel!

Let me introduce myself -- My name is Megan, I'm a college student from a small Chicago suburb going to school in an even smaller Minnesotan town. I'm creating this blog to help track and record my study abroad experience to Spiddal, County Galway, Ireland, from the very beginning planning stages to the plane rides across the Atlantic and the airports to the trips with my fellow travelers and finally the journey home. Hopefully I'll get through all of that in one piece, and hopefully I'll have some amazing stories to tell when I get home in December.

This is a journey that has already started, first with an application process to the Study Abroad Program through my college (I've been told I need to call it University while I'm in Europe) and then with last weekend's orientation session, a marathon five hours of information from previous participents on the trip, the study abroad office advisors, and finally from our faculty directors, the professors who will be supervising us and making sure that all of us, going to sixteen different cities and countries around the world, will get the absolute best out of our semester abroad.

Needless to say that was overwhelming. But now we're in the personal planning stages, and the road ahead is bright and exciting and full of new possibility. I hope you'll enjoy exploring it with me.

One of the things that drew me to Ireland was its history and its long musical tradition. That being said, I'll leave you today with an excerpt from a song that gallantly volunteered its title to this blog, The Galway Rover. Hopefully the same adventuresome spirit found in the lyrics will help guide me while I'm in Ireland.

The curlew are calling, a shy form is prancing
The ferns on them bulbing by the thousand gentle eyes
All the creatures of Eireann, sing their own sweet songs of pleasure
As the rover goes a-whistling down the road to Galway town