Weekend of 2/20-2/22

Last weekend we headed over to the east coast for a 3-day tour. The tour was hosted by the Galway Tour Company. They wanted to run a tour that was specifically for visiting students to get to see other parts of the country. It was nice because everything was arranged for us, all we had to do was wait outside our accommodations at 11AM friday morning and we were set for the weekend.

We wound up leaving a little later than expected on friday and that, in conjunction with some traffic (traffic in Ireland, it was a shocker), brought us to our destination a little later than planned. We got to county Wicklow around 5 and set off on a hike in the Wicklow Mountains. The Wicklow mountains are quite small as mountains go, but by Irish standards they're fairly substantial. They even had quite a bit of snow on them last weekend.

The hike, as I mentioned, was a little later than the tour guides had planned, especially considering the sun sets around 6 these days (our days are starting to end a bit later than they do in New York but the sun still rises significantly later). We set off during a beautiful sunset, which was quite the sight to see against the mountains and valleys. Our group had about 24 people in it so it was impossible to stay all together for the whole hike. At some points I actually got concerned that we wouldn't all make it back to the bus at similar times, but it did eventually work out. The tour guide, Declan, had sent out an email with our itinerary the day before, stating that we should all bring torches if we had them. Unfortunately, while we did eventually figure out that torches were flashlights, we're all visiting students, so none of us have flashlights with us!

It got darker and darker as we went along, but for the most part it seemed like an easy hike with well cleared trails. Along the way I got to stop and pick up some snow, which was the first I had really touched since December (I am aware that the NE is getting a Nor'easter as I write this...sorry!). We got to a certain point where we had to turn off the main trail and on to a less clear path, and Declan told us that it would be about five minutes "of complete pain". I consider myself to be outdoorsy to a certain extent, and in decent shape, so I wasn't terribly concerned. Some of the other people on the tour were not as...wilderness-friendly, we'll say.

The path was muddy and steep, and the sky was dark. The only thing helping us up to the top was the light of our cell phones. At that moment I was very grateful for modern technology.  When we got to a certain point along the path it turned into what they referred to as "railway steps" or something of that nature. These were wooden steps, about a foot wide, with nails on them to give your feet better grip. The steps were raised above the terrain and for most parts there wasn't anything to hold on to. People started to get very frustrated-- which wasn't helped by the fact that we had a few complainers on the tour-- and by the time we we got to the top tensions were a little high. On a clear day you can see across the Irish Sea to Wales, but by the time we got to the top it was pitch black so there was no view in sight. 

I think at this point our tour guide felt a little bad for us, so he passed out shots of whiskey to the group to liven our spirits a bit. Little did we know that the trip back down the mountain was almost entirely made up of those railway steps. We made our way down in small groups, with those of us with cell phone light saying "step" each time there was a step down. Overall it wasn't that bad of a hike at all, but it served as a lesson that darkness can really change things. Plus side: it was so dark that I couldn't really see the several hundred foot drop that was next to me part of the way down :)

We spent that night in a hostel and woke up the next morning to head into Dublin for the day. We got into the city centre just before lunch time and Sam and I headed to a restaurant called Nude for some much needed nourishment. They're known for their hearty stews, but it was a tad to early for me to partake, so I went with the old standard, a bagel and a cup of tea. As Sam and I sat there I looked out the window until suddenly jumping up in shock. Rob Polizzo, my crew coach from high school and good friend had just walked passed the café. Now, admittedly I knew that Rob was supposed to be in Dublin for the weekend, but at the time that he told me I didn't plan on being in Dublin for the weekend, so I had simply wished him a good weekend. I ran out the door and caught up with him and got to chat with him and his girlfriend for a few minutes before they went on their way. For the record, Dublin may be a small city but not small enough that you would expect to bump into anyone you know. Also, last time I was in Dublin I wound up bumping into a bunch of Tufts kids. It seems Dublin is a serendipitous city for me!

After Nude, Sam and I went across the street to what looked like a cute shop, named Avoca. What a find! This store was started in County Wicklow as a producer of wool blankets and scarves and morphed into a well-known Irish chain. The Dublin store is complete with women's, men's and children's fashions, housewares, a café, specialty foods shoppe, and a restaurant. It's one of the cutest stores I've ever seen, and I can't wait to go back. Erin: go there immediately! Hayley: the only one in the US is in Annapolis. When I come to visit we're making a detour over there! Their mixed berry scones are heavenly, and inspired me to buy one of their cookbooks (titled "Tea Time"). I'm anxious to try out some of the recipes! (The stores website has an interactive tour of the stores, for those with good internet connections.)

That afternoon we were scheduled for a Guinness tour. We knew in advance that there was a strike of the public sector workers going on, what we didn't know was that there was a demonstration going on that day. And that the demonstration happened to be right around the time that we were supposed to be headed to the Guinness Factory. And that the demonstration was going to be made up of 100,000 irish people. Needless to say, we had a bit of trouble getting back to the bus and getting to the Guinness Factory, but we did ultimately get there...about a half hour after our scheduled time. The Guinness people were very understanding and took us in anyway. The tour was very informative and at the end we got two tickets for pints of Guinness. All I can say is I tried it, but I'm still not sold. I'll take a Bulmers over a Guinness any day.

That night we stayed in a really nice lodge in County Meath and then awoke the next morning to go see the Newgrange tomb, a UN protected site. It's an ancient tomb that's older than the pyramids in Egypt. It has a small light box (an opening in the stone) that lights up the whole interior of the tomb at sunrise on the winter solstice. For the other 364 days of the year the tomb is black other than some flashlights that the tour guides bring in. It's not the prettiest or most majestic historical sight I've ever seen, but the history behind it is pretty cool.

After that we went to the Hill of Tara, which was the ancient site of the Irish government, basically. The hills themselves aren't that pretty, but from the site you can see 20 counties of Ireland, nearly the whole country. It was quite the view.

After the Hill of Tara we headed home to Galway. Didn't really do much of anything exciting this weekend, but on Thursday we're headed to Northern Ireland for a long weekend! I'm going to try to add as many pictures to this as I can, but I can't guarantee that they'll work. The internet here is pretty slow.

25 things you wanted to know about Ireland

I may very well make this a 2-post day, but I figured I'd start with some fun facts about Irish life:

1) Teachers are way more lenient about cancelling class here than they are in the states. If they get to the classroom and not enough people are in it they'll just send you home. I was supposed to have 3 hours of classes today but wound up with just one.
2) People here pronounce the letter H as "hache".
3) While we're on the topic, good humor is called HB here. Or Hache Bee as they say. Noone can tell me what that stands for.
4) Lays potato chips are called Walkers
5) The main brand of potato chips here is called Tayto. As a result, Tayto has pulled a Kleenex. Everyone calls any brand of potato chips Tayto.
6) All vacuums are called hoovers, even if they're not made by hoover. Hoover is also a verb.
7) All outlets have on and off switches. To make an appliance work you have to plug it in, flip the wall switch, and then turn on the appliance.
8) Electric kettles are the greatest invention ever. Especially because...
9) Ireland consumes the most tea per capita of any country in the world. I'm down to 2 cups a day, but I had been doing 3 or 4.
10) Sandwich bread is bigger here. It's just all together taller. As a result:
11) Sandwich bags are larger. This is nice. But,
12) Toasters are not taller. the top of your bread will usually be untoasted.
13) General sandwich bread come in two varieties: white or brown. Brown is whole wheat.
14) I still have no idea how the showers work. You pull a string at some point to make the boiler heat the water. Our is always pulled. The shower will not start without it. However, only so much hot water is heated a day, so if you're not on of the first 3 (this is an estimation) people to shower that day your shower will be cold. This is all theory. Sam and I still don't have it figured out.
15) Traffic circles are everywhere. And they're named. Much like the squares in Boston.
16) Traffic circles are dangerous. Especially on bikes.
17) As much as I thought pale-ness would be embraced in Ireland, it's not.
18) All young women use fake tanner. They go overboard. They are orange.
19) Soccer is called soccer.
20) Football is Gaelic Football. Not quite sure how this one works yet...
21) All Irish people associate California with The Hills (a show on MTV)
22) They love American comedies, especially ones we don't like, like 2 and a half men.
23) They sing when drunk
24) They are aware that everyone thinks Irish people are alcoholics, and they do nothing to squash this "rumor".
25) Cider is alcoholic. The cider of choice is Bulmers. It's like beer except that it tastes good. It's on tap at every bar in Ireland and it's produced in England. It can also be found in pint bottles, so that it can be poured over ice in a glass. This is very refreshing.


More fun facts to come some day soon! Oh, one more:

26) The beer is not warm. No matter what anyone tells you, it's all about forty some-odd degrees. Even Guinness.

Killarney National Park

Just wanted to upload a panoramic I made of the national park. It's four or five regular photos put together.

Killarney Part 2!

Saturday morning we woke up nice and early and got breakfast (a bagel with preserves for me) and then enquired at our hostel about tours for the day. They have arrangements with a local tour company so that they come to the hostel and pick us up and bring us to the tour site and also give us a discount. While most tours of the ring of Kerry run about E28 we paid E17.50, which was a lovely discount. Our tour guide was the owner of the company and he had brought his nephew along for the ride. The ring of Kerry all in all was very beautiful, but I would venture to say that Killarney National Park was significantly more impressive (though the park does make up a small portion of the ring). The Ring of Kerry itself is a loop of secondary road that goes throughout the county of Kerry. It is known for it’s majestic views, which, I imagine, are more majestic in the spring and summer, or when it’s sunny. For a large portion of the tour there was some drizzle going on and it didn’t make for the best photographs.

I’ve come to realize that Ireland has various kinds of beauty in its landscapes, and not all of those are appreciated by every kind of person, myself included. My favorite kind of landscape is one filled with bright colors: green green grass, some scattered bright wildflowers, and blue skies. Often when the sun isn’t out you lose the blue skies but the colors simply show up brighter against the grey sky. Being on the west coast of Ireland, an area that is known for being rocky, this isn’t always the kind of beauty you come across. A large portion of the Ring of Kerry is very rocky and not as green. The interesting part is that a lot of the water that the ring passes by is a tropical-looking turquoise color, very out of character for the water in Ireland. One example of the areas that include this kind of water is the area surrounding the dingle peninsula. While these areas are very beautiful, as are the mountains surrounding them, unless it’s sunny out they don’t photograph as well. So, while the Ring of Kerry was very beautiful, the lush greenness of the Killarney National Park made for far more incredible photographs.

We had a lot of fun playing around with our cameras this weekend. I always wished I had taken a photography class in high school, but in the age of point-and-shoots, there’s so much that amateur photographers can do that previously was left to the experts. My camera even has a mode for “light skin tones”. It helps me to not glow as much in pictures ☺ .

One nice thing was having the room in the hostel to ourselves last night. No more of the midnight-yeller (who, we determined, was claustrophobic, which may have explained his yelling).

We had the opportunity to watch a couple of traditional music sessions while in the pubs in Killarney. I hadn’t spent much time at any trad sessions previously, so it was nice to just sit back with a pint and enjoy the music. I equate trad sessions to the jam sessions of jazz musicians. They’re the coolest thing to watch because all of the musicians just jump in as they arrive and drop out whenever they please. Everyone knows the standards and they will occasionally say a word or two to one another to make each other aware of when they’re moving on from one section of the song to another, but other than that the only thing keeping them all in sync in the stomping of their feet. They also have remarkable intonation for non-classically trained musicians; they can tune their instruments in the midst of a handful of other musicians playing with no problem at all. They also improv very well with one another. The group we saw Friday night included to violinists, one of which was jumping all over the place with melodies, counter melodies and just chords.

The All Ireland Irish Step Dancing Competition was this weekend in Killarney, so the town was filled with teenage girls, the most noticeable ones being the Americans. There were a ton of them out at the pubs both nights that we went out (though I’m 99% sure that most of them were not 18). Last night was adorable because a group of them was step dancing while the musicians played. At one point they were dancing with a group of old men doing Irish dancing that’s done in pairs (think of the Titanic scene with Rose and Jack dancing in steerage). It’s nice seeing a culture that embraces its heritage so much.

I’m writing this Sunday night, though it won’t be posted until Monday due to the aforementioned lack-of-internet. Cross your fingers for its prompt return! (Though at this point we’re pretty far past prompt…)

Killarney!

So yes, I know I'm missing large chunks of my time here, but my mom is getting impatient for an update, and I happen to have internet access, so why not?!

I am currently in Killarney, a town in County Kerry which is in the southern portion of Ireland. Kerry is known for its beautiful mountains and views, and so far it has lived up to this idea. Today we spent the day biking around Killarney National Park. So I will start at the beginning:

We hopped on a 6PM bus last night in Galway headed to Limerick, though "hopped on" is a huge overstatement. We ahven't yet mastered the Irish bus system yet, and for this there are a few reasons:

1) The bus usually has the final destination lit up on the front of it, but sometimes the bus driver forgets to turn the sign on, or sometimes when you look at it it is written in Irish so you're not quite sure what it says.

2)There may be more than one bus going to your destination and the drivers of the buses may disagree about which one you should take. This happened to us last night and resulted in me almost leaving my bag on the wrong bus more than once.

3) If you're lucky the bus driver will shout the name of the town as you arrive in it. So far I have only been lucky about 16% of the time. Bascially it can be really dark and you may have no idea what town you are in and wonder if you missed your stop. This is an even bigger issue if you are not the most outgoing person in the world and would prefer not to speak up to the driver...

Moral of the story: We made it on time, and in one piece. We arrived at our hostel at shortly before 11PM and made our way up to our room. Two of our roommates were already asleep and the other one was not in the room at the time. The three of us (Sam, another girl named Yin and I) are in a 6 person en-suite room. Needless to say I survived my first night in a hostel, though things were touch and go when one of our roommates started shouting in his sleep. (Just kidding, it wasn't really touch and go...though he was shouting in his sleep).

This morning we woke up early and got some lovely scones and tea. We then made our way over to a local bike shoppe which has discounts for people staying at our hostel (euro 12.50 for a full day rental). We chatted with the old man in the shoppe (though admittedly could not understand him) and got a map and some guidelines from him.

Then we biked, and boy did we bike. As we speak the three of us are in very fragile states. If butts can bruise, then mine is certainly there. The ride was a reminder that I should take my dad up on his offers to go bike riding more often, because if I went I wouldn't be so out of shape. Rough estimates are that we rode somewhere between 15 and 20 miles over about 7 hours with some breaks for food and bike adjustments. We went to a castle, an old mansion, a waterfall and a bunch of spots with great views of the mountain range in the area. I will add pictures to this blog as soon as I get home.

We just went and had chinese food for dinner, which was good, and in about an hour we're headed out for some traditional irish music in some of the local pubs. Hopefully I'll update tomorrow with more about our killarney adventures.

In other news: it seems our internet is out again at our apartment. I just got an email from our program director with lots of complex info saying that the server has another virus. If you would like to attempt to decipher this language, please let me know and I'll be happy to forward it on to you :) .

Home-stay

So, as you may have noticed, I've been MIA for a bit now. I lost my internet connection in my apartment last tuesday and haven't gotten it back since. As a result, my free time has been passed by making trips to university to use the wireless here. Apparently the Irish do not feel the same sense of urgency towards having internet access that Americans (or at least I) do. Either that or they are not good at fixing internet-y things.  Some may say that the latter is hard to believe because of the large quantity of Dell computers that are manufactured here, but I would venture to say that that fact only reinforces my point...I digress. I'll pick up where I left off:

Two weekends ago was my home-stay in a town called Tuam (pronounces Tomb, I believe) in County Galway. My host family was a family of 6, two parents, named Liz and David, and 4 children aged 3,6,11 and 16. Their house was significantly larger and more modern than I expected. I was there with another girl from my program, named Meghan, and she and I stayed in a guest bedroom each with a bed to ourselves and our own bathroom. The house ahd about 7 or 8 bedrooms and 3 or 4 bathrooms. They had a beautiful kitchen with a fire that we spent a lot of time standing in front of.

We arrived friday evening and settled in before sitting down to dinner. We had chicken, potatoes and some vegetables followed by tea and lots of cookies...and then more tea...and then chocolates. Needless to say we were well fed. The first night was a little chilly because, as we later found out, the skylight in our room had been vented so cold air was coming in the whole time. The next morning we woke up to very stormy weather. The wind was howling so loudly you felt like it was in the house and it was pouring. Liz drove Meghan and I to a bookstore in town but came to pick us up after less than an hour because the weather was getting so bad. She and her sun had actually gotten stuck in the grocery store for a short time because it had been struck by lightening. We went home and dried off by the fire and had more tea and cookies, before David offered to take us to a rally.

We certainly had no idea what a rally was and later found out that it was car racing that took place on the backroads which were closed off for a short period of time for the races. From what Dad tells me it's huge here in Europe but not so much in the States. Apparently they tried to bring it over for a little while but it didn't catch on. I guess I can see why, because it involves a certain amount of patience in finding spots to watch from and changing position to follow the race, but it certainly seems more exciting than watching cars go in circles on tracks. They have marchalls standing on the sides making sure you don't get to close, but in essence you always have to be ready to run. By the time we got to a spot to watch from it had cleared up, but ti wasn't long before it started hailing, and then raining. David kept asking Meghan and I how cold we were on a scale of 1 to 10, and by the time we got to 7 we decided it was time to go. We made some friends while we were there though! Some of the marshalls huddled with us under our umbrella. They had been standing out there since 7 AM and were starting to feel the effects of the elements. After the rally we headed over to Liz's sisters house to warm up with tea and biscuits. 

For dinner we went authentic...burritos! With french fries! The irish don't really care how they eat there potatoes, they just have to be there...with every meal. Saturday evening we went to mass with Liz. One of the children was in the choir, which was lovely. The Irish like their mass short, and the older woman sitting with us kept getting frustrated that the priest was taking too long. Not much congregating post-mass either. Everyone pretty much just gets in and out as quickly as they can. 

Overall the weekend really was lovely. It was nice to be able to sit down and chat with Irish people and really get a sense of how they live. It was also nice to get tips from Liz on the best places to go shopping and what's good at the different grocery stores. It was also really cool how integrated their family was. Over the weekend we met all three of Liz's sisters, visited David's family's farm, and heard their cousin talking on the radio. That type of close-knit family makes me want to move to Ireland. But then I realize that my family isn't in Ireland...oh well.

By far the most entertaining part of the weekend was their 3 year old daughter, whose name escapes me at the moment. She was quite a piece of work or in their words "a monster". It was funny because she would climb all over Meghan and I and eat off our plates, and drink from our glasses, and spill puzzles all over us. It kept things light, to say the least.

My mom wanted me to write here about the lack of daylight in Ireland this time of year. The sun pretty much rises at 8:30 and sets around 4:30, although it has been getting better. What's more, the sun pretty much stays at that awkwardly-in-your-eyes angle all day long. That being said, I will not complain about the sun in any dimensions any more. Something about being in the land of cloudy-ness names you appreciate it a bit more. Let just say that whenever the sun does find its way out from behind those clouds I am positively giddy.

I'll try and get as many of these in this week as a I can, for real this time.

One of the cars at the rally...for you, dad.
Meghan and I at the rally.