Ireland on the Home Front

Since I'm still trying to sort of catch my potential followers up on my Ireland experience so far, I thought I should describe my "home life" a bit.  Dunaras, the apartment complex I live in, sometimes feels more like a port of call than a regular house.  We're all somewhat busy with classes during the week, and then are jetting off (or biking, bussing, driving, or ...training off?) to other locations around Ireland for the weekend.  So far I've done weekend or Saturday trips to the Cliffs of Moher, the Aran Islands, Cork/Blarney, Achill Island, and Newcastle, England.  That comprises 5 of the 8 weekends I've been here so far, so there's hardly a dull moment!

When not traveling, though, I've had some time to settle into apartment life.  I like in an apartment about 30-35 minutes away from the center of town, walking.  The distance was initially the worst thing about the housing, but we've all gotten used to the walk, and even occasionally enjoy it.  I've had people say "but you're walking 30 minutes in Ireland!  It must be beautiful!"  They are probably imagining pastures of sheep and rolling hills, but it's more like strip malls and sidewalks, at least on this side of town.  Once inside the apartment, however, it starts to feel more like home.  

Both of my roommates are great.  Dorte comes from Hamburg, Germany, and we have fun pretending that I can speak German.  She is the mother-hen of the apartment building, and keeps us all on schedule and occupied, and is always good to chat with.  Erin is from Albany, New York, and is hilarious and sweet and makes me tea when we are rained into our rooms.  We have a huge sitting area, with a lovely functional attached kitchen.  We have about 3 of every utensil, which forces us to do lots of dishes, but that hasn't stopped us from cooking a lot so far.  

Living in an apartment has been great, for the most part.  At the least, it's been good training for the "adult" world.  Even the apartment I lived in last year at Concordia felt like it was still kind of "independent living 101," whereas here it feels like we're actually responsible for ourselves.  However, who knows, that could just be the whole living in another country thing.

All in all, Ireland is a good experience even when we're just staying in.  Stay tuned for our  Thanksgiving feast, which has been planned my Dunaras residents pretty much ever since we got here!

Senior Slide

Today, I'm officially halfway through my semester, as far as lectures go.  We have a couple of weeks off before exams (big, terrifying, looming exams that count for most of our grades) in order to study, but classes end at the close of November.  So, halfway through the semester, that means.... yes, that's right!  Midterms!  I was up pretty late last night, putting some final effort into one of my essays that was due today.  The other one was finished last week, thankfully - one of the benefits of swine flu, I suppose.  Lots of time where you get bored enough to do schoolwork.  

Anyway, I turned in two essays today, and started my archaeology class.  Out of my four classes, I think this one will turn out to be my favorite.  It's called "Landscapes of Cult and Kingship," and it focuses on the various ancient sites of Ireland that relate to royalty.  The class is perfect for me and my humanities major, because instead of just learning a list of dates and facts like that, we will really be delving into the social construction of "landscape," looking at how the way a culture interacts with the land and their monuments creates a mythology that becomes a part of the reality of a physical structure.  That's not really well-stated, but it lines up perfectly with the paper I'm hoping to write for my capstone.  Maybe my final essay for this class will be a good starting point!

Besides archaeology, Stories of Medieval Wales is entertaining enough, and History of the English Language satisfies my etymological nerdiness.  History of Medieval Ireland ought to be interesting, but in actuality it's a nightmare swarm of annals and geneologies and scholars spending so much time bickering with each other that nobody even looks at the primary evidence.  I would actually welcome something like "This government was established in 835, under the rulership of Brian O'Donnell."  (*made up fact.*)

In the end, though, even if all of my classes were absolutely riveting, it would be hard to focus here.  I would rather spend my time in Ireland exploring towns and learning how to live independently, rather than worry about studying.  Hopefully there's a balance somewhere.  For now, I'm glad to be done with at least two essays, and I'm ready to sit back, make some dinner, and maybe watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica.  Life is pretty good.

First Impressions - a retrospective account (Is that allowed?)

It's probably about time that I put up my first real blog post.  I'm not sure how to get everybody caught up with all of Ireland so far, but I'll try to break it down to the basics.

Arrival:

I got to Ireland on the 28th of August.  My first good view of it was from when we turned around in the plane above the English Channel, and started flying in towards Dublin for our landing.  I had barely slept at all on the 8 hour flight, but I couldn't keep my feet from tapping excitedly when I saw those green hills sloping into the ocean.  As the plane got lower, we could see sprawl of buildings that is Dublin and it's surrounding small suburbs, but right outside of that, we could also see a less-populated spread of hills and farmland, green and crisscrossed with fences.  

The first thing I noticed about Ireland when I got off the plane was the air.  It was cool, fresh, and wet.  It seemed to bode well that even on the outskirts of Ireland's biggest city, the air could feel so nice.  

After an hour and a half of customs and immigration, we three Concordian travelers (Erica, Suzanna and I) stumbled our way through the airport, sleepy and lost, until we somehow managed to find a bus headed straight for Galway.  We paid our 15 Euro, and enjoyed about 30 minutes of free wifi until we completely conked out.  I'm somewhat ashamed to say that I slept across the majority of Ireland - but nearly 2 days of being awake (between packing, goodbyes, airports, and long plane rides) will do that to you.  I woke up again about 5 minutes outside of Galway.  I looked outside to see, literally, sheep in a small green pasture hemmed in by low rock fences.  Hello, Ireland.

It was still early when we got into town, so we Cobbers dragged our luggage onto a bus, hopped off where we were fortunately supposed to be, and checked into our apartments.  The day still young, we decided to walk into town.  We marched our tired bodies through the first of many 30 minute walks to campus, and beyond that 20 minutes or so to the center of town.  The walk seems much shorter now, but that first one inspired me to get a bus pass.  We saw much of the "must see" spots of Galway, none of which are really worth seeing.  Galway isn't a place where you play connect-the-dots between 5 sites that your guidebook tells you about, to pause, take a picture, and go on your way.  There isn't really anything like that.  In order to enjoy Galway, you simply have to sit back, relax, and let it be.  There are dozens of pubs on shop street alone, and thats where the real life is.  That's not to say that all people do is get drunk (though it is a college town, when it comes to that).  But the pubs seem to be the social and cultural heart of the city.  That's where you can go any night of the week to listen to live music, sample a pint, and make good conversation with anyone who comes along.  The Irish people live up to their notoriously friendly nature, and 90 percent of the time will start a conversation with you just because.  I quickly learned my first three Irish words:  "Failte," or "welcome," "slainte," or "cheers!" and "craic," or "good fun."  The last took some getting used to, and I still giggle when I hear someone say "We'll have a lot of craic."  Don't worry, they're not druggies... just looking for a good time.

I'll update soon with more of my good times!  

Starting out

Hello!  This is my first blog post.  I'm pretty much just trying to figure out how to set this thing up.  I'll write more once I master it.