I Blame the Romans

Hey guys!

I know it has been a while since my last blog, but I hate to tell you that you're going to have to wait another day or two to get an update on what I've been doing recently.  This week is sorta crazy as far as the study portion of study abroad goes.  I have one 2500 word essay about how the Romans viewed Ireland in the early medieval times, and an essay test to study for on Friday.  I'm hoping to get a short post up tomorrow or Wednesday, but rest assured you haven't been missing anything too exciting.

I miss you all! And thanks for sticking with me!  I'm so happy that there are people reading this.

Amelia

Breithlá Sona Dom (Happy Birthday to Me)

I have an hour for lunch today because I’m skipping Irish Language class (the only one I’m not required to attend), so I decided I would take the time to write a quick update for the blog. I’m sorry for the recent delays in posting and getting pictures up. Now that classes have started I find I don’t have as much time and even less access to internet, which is incredibly frustrating. I will get caught up eventually...hopefully.

Classes are going pretty well. We’re in the first week (out of two) of Irish history lectures. Right now we’re focusing on medieval Irish history and the Christianization of Ireland, if that’s even a word. We’ve had lectures on the Roman Empire, St. Patrick, and St. Brigit in particular. I enjoy most of the lectures and the subject matter is very interesting. I’m getting my first essay subject today and that’s due next Friday, the same day we have our history exam, so we’ll see how that goes.

I’m getting to know the people in my classes a little bit better, and finally starting to be able to put names to faces. I met a large group of people at the Washington Inn (which is actually a pub) to watch the Uruguay/Netherlands game on Tuesday night, which was a lot of fun. I’m starting to feel more comfortable talking to people and everyone seems really nice so far. I think I’ll have some friends by the end of the trip. *crosses fingers*

For my birthday yesterday Mom, Carla, and I had planned to go to a town called Kinsale to get some dinner. The Kinsale area is sort of the cooking capital of Ireland and the restaurants there are supposed to have some of the best food in the country. Unfortunately there was a Clipper Festival there yesterday so we were advised that the town might be too busy to make the trip worth it. Instead we walked to a restaurant called Fenn’s Quay Restaurant by the southern channel of the River Lee (quay is pronounced “key” and it is another word for dock). I had a tomato risotto with prawn that was delicious and we shared some feta and vegetable spring rolls that were quite tasty as well.

We also had a mini birthday party back at the hotel (I’m going a bit out of order, this happened before the dinner) complete with cake and a “Happy 21st Birthday” banner, though it wasn’t hung. It’s the thought that counts, right? From Carla I got a book light, a very cute reusable bag to use to carry groceries, and a very nice UCC sweatshirt (apparently students don’t wear school paraphernalia here, it’s considered snobby. I like to think about it as pride, but I’ll wait to wear it until I’m at home all the same). Mom got me some Euros, a scarf I had been eyeing in the Avoca store in Dublin (she wasn’t very subtle about getting that one past me though), and a sticker with my name on it that can go in my car window. I was really excited about that last one because in the states they NEVER have my name on key chains or anything. Just another reason to like Europe, I suppose

After I finished my birthday celebrations with Mom and Carla I went to the Washington Inn again to watch the Spain v. Germany game and start the “real” celebration. I was very kindly purchased two ciders, one was original, the other was berry (which was tasty), and both were Irish. Then a couple others and I went around the corner to a bar called The Classic that was jam-packed and played very loud music. I got a couple more drinks there and was home safe and sound by midnight. I woke up feeling just fine, if a bit tired, this morning, so I’ll count yesterday as a successful 21st birthday!

I would like to say thank you for all the birthday wishes I received on facebook and otherwise. As much fun as I had yesterday, I wish I could have celebrated this big birthday with everyone at home as well. We’ll just have to make up for it when I get back huh? Finally, happy late birthday to Rachel and Jeff! I hope you both had great days!

Amelia

Dublin City and Orientation

We woke up fairly early on the morning of the fourth and drove to the train station with almost no difficulties. The 8:30 train to Dublin was running on time, so we grabbed a snack and headed to gate 5 where we encountered a rather fierce little old Irish woman (she was upset because the queue changed directions and she was at the back now, rather than the front. So she fought her way back to first, only to be passed by almost everyone getting onto the train). We found our seats and settled in to hopefully get a quick nap on the way when a group of twenty or so high school students from somewhere in Spain loaded onto the car. Needless to say the volume raised a notch or two, but we did get serenaded by one of the boys. About an hour and a half into our journey the train stopped and we were informed that we would be delayed an hour due to the death on the tracks somewhere ahead of us.

Guinness Storehouse Gate

As terrible as that news was, we were still excited to get to Dublin, though our schedule was a bit delayed. Our first stop was the Guinness Storehouse, which we took the long way getting to by accident. I just popped into the store quickly to buy some souvenirs as it was expensive to take a tour and we didn’t have the time. After the storehouse we walked through a more down-beaten portion of Dublin on our way to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The front of the cathedral was surprisingly dull, but the inside was gorgeous. There were tons of very elaborate tombs in the walls and some beautiful stained glass windows. We went to the park around the back of the church and were glad to see a much better view of the architecture. I was, however, surprised that it was not bigger.

St. Patrick's Cathedral

We were very close to the city center of Dublin at this point, so, after a stop at the Chester Beatty Library near Dublin Castle to look at some beautiful illuminated manuscripts from ancient India, we headed in that direction. City Center was probably my favorite part of Dublin as its close location to Trinity College and many shops and businesses lent it to being rather busy and full of fun things to see. We made a stop at the Avoca Handweavers shop, where they had three floors full of colorful knick-knacks and woolens, as well as a café. We also made a quick stop at the Hard Rock Café to buy some souvenirs.

Dublin Castle

Our last stop in Dublin was at the Porterhouse, a microbrewery in the Temple Bar district. Temple Bar is an area very close to the city center and Trinity College. It is, as its name would suggest, filled with pubs, but there are also restaurants, shops, and great opportunities for people watching and seeing live music. The Porterhouse had great Irish pub food and I tried a delicious cider there. I can’t remember the name off the top of my head as it is, I believe, Swedish (it might have been Kopparberg). It was strawberry lime flavored, pink, and it tasted like summertime. It is by far my favorite drink I’ve had here, the only flaw I can find is that it’s not Irish.

Our train ride back to Cork was just as eventful as the ride to Dublin. We sat in the same group of chairs (four chairs face each other around a table on these trains) as an older Irish gentleman named John and across from another, not quite so old, and certainly less gentlemanly fellow named Liam. Liam and John had both gone into Dublin from Cork to watch a rugby match, Liam, it seemed, from a pub. Liam proceeded to drink more beer that he had smuggled onto the train and regale us with tall tales, drunkenly wise advice, and Irish songs sung in a loud, deep, and very slurred voice. John helped to translate and generally balanced out Liam’s exhibitionism with a quieter sort of entertainment. He talked to us for the whole trip (including, unfortunately, another delay due to ANOTHER death on the rails. Suicides due to the recession in Ireland, according to John) and was an endless fount of stories, information on Irish culture, and jokes.

The ride was enjoyable, but the delay caused us to get back to Cork almost two hours late. The subsequent drive through Cork’s city center and confusing one way streets in the dark took another half an hour. When we got back to the hotel, exhausted, it turned out that our keys to get into our hotel room weren’t working. Once we were let in by the security guard we also found that our plugs weren’t working. I had to be up early the next day for orientation at UCC, so I went to bed rather frustrated.

Orientation yesterday went rather well. There are between forty and fifty international students all of whom seem very nice. Being in such a large group of people who I don’t know is a little stressful and uncomfortable for me, but I’ve met a couple of people and I’m living in a townhouse with seven other girls. Hopefully the situation will get better with time. We finished the day by going to a very nice restaurant in the east of County Cork where they served us wonderful food (there was a strawberry meringue pastry that was AWESOME). On the way out there we stopped at a place called Ballycotton on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and got to take some pictures of the pretty landscape and lighthouse.

More to come on classes and such later, but right now I have to get this posted and get to seminar.

Amelia

South-Western Ireland and the Ring of Kerry: How Mom Became a Driving Champ

We started the day off bright and early yesterday morning and, after a quick breakfast at the hotel (my editors wanted me to tell you that I had my first experience with Irish sausage), we headed west toward Killarney and County Kerry. It took us about an hour to get to Killarney from Cork (with only two wrong turns!). The road was very narrow and it got curvy once we got close to Killarney and into the mountains. We had several moments of panic when mom was caught between getting hit by on-coming traffic on one side or scrapping the side of the mountains (“Rocks! Rocks! Lori, I can handle trees coming in my window but not the mountain!” - Carla).

Our first stop was Killarney National Park. This area is heavily wooded (the largest remaining natural oak forest left in Ireland) and has two lakes, a monastery, a myriad of hiking trails, a waterfall, and a Victorian mansion called Muckross Estate. The best way to see the park is by jarvey, a horse drawn cart, so we hired Dan (the driver) and Molly to show us around. Riding through the woods by horse is a completely different experience than driving. It gives you time to take in scenery and takes less time than walking. Dan was very friendly. He had a lot of information about the park and life in Killarney.  

Muckross Estates is a very old, very large house on the shore of one of the lakes in the park. We didn’t pay for the tour to see the inside, but the gardens are expansive and wonderful to walk through. We discovered a beautiful rock garden that you could walk through on mini hiking trails and some huge old oak trees. We only had a half an hour to spend there, but we probably could have wandered around for a whole afternoon. We got back on our jarvey and took a ride through the rest of the park, including taking a quick hike up to Torc waterfall.  On the ride back to our cars it started to rain, but between our rain jackets and the blankets provided by Dan we stayed warm and fairly dry.

Our next stop on the Ring was Kenmare where we stopped for a couple hours. We had lunch at a nice little restaurant called Purple Heather. Carla and I had some excellent local crab and mom had an omelet. We took a quick walk to a druid circle located near the city. Think Stonehedge but smaller...alot smaller. The history behind the site is interesting, it’s 4,000 years old and is positioned (they think) to match the location of the setting sun on a solstice, but the sight of it was less impressive than we expected. We also spent some time in a store called Quills that sells, among many other things, Irish woolens.

We drove through the next portion of the circle, only stopping for quick pictures of the landscape (they have castle ruins just hanging out on the side of the road here! And the area was gorgeous. At this point we were still in the mountains.) Mom was going pretty slow because the driving was difficult, so a lot of people passed us, but no one made rude gestures at us so they must be used to slow tourists. After a little while we got to the coast. The road started to get a little less curvy and there were TONS of photo opportunities (I forgot how much I love looking at the ocean). There was a stop along the road with a statue of the Virgin Mary. The area was hilly with a view of the ocean, so I took a quick hike up to get a better view, Carla calls it my “walk-about”. We also saw a lot of sheep, some were even grazing on the side of the road! They’re braver than I am...

We made one last stop at a town called Waterville that’s located right on the shore of Ballinskelligs Bay and the ocean for a quick snack at the Bayview Hotel bar. The bar window overlooked the beach and a statue of Charlie Chaplin, who apparently spent his vacations there. We finished the Ring of Kerry in another two hours and drove the rest of the way home to Cork. The total driving time was something like ten hours. Needless to say we were pretty wiped out, so we decided to have a relatively relaxing day around the Cork area. We did a little shopping, visited St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral, and got the key for the room I’ll be staying in once classes start. Tomorrow we’re taking the train to Dublin! Updates soon.

Amelia

P.S.  Here's a few more pictures I didn't want to leave out!

I tried to make captions for the pictures but it didn't work so here's what they are from the top down:

Mackross Estates, path in rock garden at Mackross Estates, Me at Torc waterfall, the Druid's Circle, castle ruins on side of road, me by the ocean, path in rock garden, arch in castle ruins, and the Atlantic coast of Ireland.

Day Two- Tour of Cork

We decided to sleep in and catch up on our sleep today since yesterday was such a crazy day. We ended up sleeping until ten and missing the complimentary breakfast at the hotel so we just snacked on leftover granola bars and dried fruit. We had decided yesterday night that we were just going to stick around Cork today and had discussed going to a place called the Old English Market. The weather today was pretty nice (60 degrees and partly cloudy. I even got a bit of sun!) so after a bit of a walk and only one minute of being turned around (we’re improving!) we found the market, which is one of the world’s largest covered markets.

Being in the market was a little overwhelming. There must have been fifty vendors selling fresh fruit, meat, fish, sweets, and spices. The place was packed with people on lunch breaks stopping to get an Irish sausage (they look like really long brats, and you eat them on buns with tomatoes and onions as toppings). It was loud, smelly (sometimes in a good way!), and crowded, but it was a lot of fun and there were some great people watching opportunities. We tried to eat at the Farmer’s Café on the top floor, but it was packed so we ended up getting a sandwich at one of the vendors and eating it outside.

Then we headed to the Cork Tourist Office and got information for a tour of Cork City. The bus was a double-decker, so of course we sat on the top! The tour lasted about an hour and a half and was really good. It gave us a much better idea of the surrounding area and had some interesting historical information to go along with the beautiful sites. We saw several cathedrals, some old buildings, and a lot of the city center where all the shopping and pubs are.

After the tour we went to St. Patrick’s St. where all the shops are. We wandered in and out of stores and bought some souvenirs. My mom bought me a claddagh ring as an early birthday present. It is silver with a blue gem as the heart. Some of our purchases today were a bit unconventional; we bought a shirt for me in the men’s section of the department store and a washcloth for Carla in a maternity store! We also stopped at a really nice café called the Idaho Café for an afternoon snack.

We finished out the afternoon with a walk through the University College Cork campus on the way back to our hotel. The campus is beautiful. There are lots of old buildings with vines crawling up the sides and plenty of wide open spaces with gardens to relax in. The main quadrangle is impressive with a large building that looks like the castle framing the grass. The campus is quite large though, so hopefully my classes are close!

Once we made it back to the hotel we were pretty tired. We had been walking around for eight hours! So we decided to eat in the hotel bar, which is very nice and has good food. Tomorrow we’re attempting to drive the Ring of Kerry. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Amelia

Weary, and Slightly Hysterical, Travelers

Dad dropped Mom, Carla, and I off the Des Moines International airport at roughly 5 PM CST Tuesday June 29th and we arrived at the Brookfield Hotel in Cork City at 5:30 PM local time (11:30 AM CST) on Wednesday June 30th. That’s just over 19 hours of travelling. I had to count that out on my fingers, that’s how exhausted I am. The flights were pretty standard, the longest being the one from Chicago to London which was about 6 hours long. It was easy as pie compared to the 18 hour marathon my family pulled in a car driving to Maryland earlier this summer though. Also, I got to watch the new Clash of the Titans and play Sudoku on the little screen on the back of the seat in front of me. You should probably be jealous Rachel. :D

The real entertaining part of the traveling didn’t come until it was time to load up our rental car and drive to the hotel. After we spend 10 min figuring out how to load all of our luggage and the three of us into the tiny car we proceed to spend 15 trying to figure out why the gas pedal isn’t working (emergency brake...it was kind of like that part in Star Trek when Zulu can’t get the Enterprise to go into warp speed...geek out finished) and then performing a several point turn in order to get the car out of the itty-bitty parking space. Once we finally had gotten on the road we managed to take about an hour and a half to get to the hotel, a drive that should have only taken about 20...tops.

Here’s the scene in the car: Mom is becoming reacquainted with driving a stick shift, except now she has to shift with her left hand (as she said “Thank god all the pedals were in the same place!”) and navigating narrow roads and roundabouts while staying on the left side of the street. Carla is in shotgun alternating between having her head buried in the map and screaming at my mom to stay in the right lane and not drive off the road. I am sharing the backseat with the luggage sleeping, as my attempts at helping to navigate were really only hindering progress. All of us at one point or another were terrified because a huge bus is hurtling towards us IN THE WRONG LANE. Did I mention that none of the streets are clearly marked? They are definitely not in grid formation!

We did finally make it to our hotel in one piece and spent a little bit of time resting, recuperating, and unpacking. We went down and got a map and some directions from the very nice lady working the front desk of a hotel to City Center, the area where many of the pubs and restaurants are located. She assures us that it’s just a 15 min walk. After walking for about 30 min in the rain we finally decide on a restaurant called Soho which, and I list only some of its many charms, can boast of a bright blue neon bar, some excellent deserts, and toilet paper that comes out in squares like Kleenex.

But now it is absolutely time for me to get some sleep. Tomorrow we plan on going to the Old English Market and discovering all the other delights that Cork City has to offer us. Night!

Amelia

PS. I ordered my first drink in a bar tonight!!! It was called the Hurricane Soho. Also there are tons of snails in Cork. Just FYI.

Two Days and Counting!

Hello all!

Just thought I’d do another post before I head off on my grand adventure. As you can see the packing is going well (no thanks to my cat Scooter!). I was a little bit afraid that my suitcase was going to weigh more than the allotted 50 pounds, but I somehow managed to keep it down to 40! It’s a good thing my roommates helped me narrow down my clothing selection. Haha

This last week at home has been both incredibly long and not long enough. Not nearly enough time to see everyone and do everything I would normally do in a summer spent at home but still way too long to wait until I leave! We had a nice going away/apartment party on Friday night to send me off, though. It gave me the chance to say bye to everyone in Cedar Falls. I’m spending this weekend in Des Moines with family and friends before I leave on Tuesday night! I was excited to get to go to the Des Moines Art Festival with Jeff and Kyle today. That’s one thing I won’t be missing while I’m gone!

Not much else to report. To all of those whom I won’t see in the next two days: I’ll miss you! Try not to have too much fun without me. :D

Amelia