Write It Down

I'm doing this reading challenge that my roommate stumbled across on ye olde interwebs. It's meant to be a year long challenge, so I'm a little late in starting but the good news is that I can use books that I've already read this year if they fit into any of the categories.

The challenge is to read 12 books throughout the course of a year, each one corresponding to one of the following categories:

Where does the time go? I realize that I've been a terrible blogger lately (January!?!??! Sorry!)

I don't want to do the whole "well this is what I've been doing for the past three months" thing because... well, anyone reading this has a pretty good idea anyway!!

Teaching is officially finished for the semester, meaning I've got about a month to write my final essays and take one exam... well, by now I have about 2 weeks before the first exam, three before the first papers are due.
I've been having a really hard time being productive lately. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I'm simultaneously realizing that my time here is quickly coming to and end, that I don't want it to, and that I have no idea what I'll be doing this summer.
I'm waiting to hear back about the internship I applied for... but honestly, I don't know if I'll be able to afford to take it. Augh.

Anyway, more fun topics:

I went to Paris this weekend (not really a weekend, but we'll just pretend for the sake of it) to visit Kelsey and have her show me around her lovely city... oh my goodness, I completely underestimated how wonderful it would be!!!!! First of all, Kelsey and her roommates live in this amazingly beautiful apartment... probably the nicest student apartment in existence and it's in Paris! We spent the weekend walking all over the city, seeing all the sites and popping into a couple of museums. It was tricky to get it all in because I didn't have much time, but I saw enough to know that I will definitely be back at some point in my life!

My birthday is coming up and I have really good feelings about this one :) Mackenzie and Kelsey are both going to be here in Galway and I think we might do a bit of touring around, check out the Cliffs of Moher, the Burren, etc.. fun stuff :) And of course have a yummy birthday dinner and visit a few of my favorite public houses!

I know I say it all the time, but hopefully I can follow through with posting more frequently again... not that anything terribly interesting will be happening over the next couple weeks (work work and more work!)

Unrelated to any of this, but I think when I go home this summer I'm going to try to start this.

I have a really hard time answering questions like, "What have you been up to?" "Do you like it over there? Why/why not?" "Are you having fun?" etc, etc. I understand going on a vacation and coming home to tell everyone exactly what you did: the sights you saw, people you met, food you ate. For me, though, studying abroad (and now that I think about it, going away to college entirely) is a lot more difficult to summarize because it's not a vacation, it's just day to day life. I've talked about this to a few of my friends I made last semester... it's hard to tell people "well, today I went to the grocery store and it rained a lot. I stepped in so many puddles, my shoes and socks were soaked through and then I had to carry home two heavy bags all the way from the store and when I got home I realized that there wasn't room in the fridge and somebody else JUST bought milk, so now we have too much and oh man I forgot the bread" and you get the idea. Life doesn't always lend itself so nicely to being retold. Granted, I have gone on many wonderful trips and I've seen so many things and I do have lots of great stories... it's just hard to recap them.
So, it's my goal (resolution, if you will) to now and then post little anecdotes from my traveling. I've realized it really isn't about knowing EXACTLY everything I've done, but just being able to take a little look.

So, for today, I'll share the story of my arrival in Leipzig, Germany.

Early on in the semester, a large group of us decided that we would all go to Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall in November. After just a little bit of searching, we were able to find fairly cheap flights from Cork -> Berlin and so we purchased them. There were seven of us all together, and we all had different goals and destinations in mind, so we broke down into small groups. Kelsey, Joanne and I decided to see a little more of Germany than just Berlin and selected Leipzig with little reasoning aside from the cheap hostel we'd found. It turned out that there were a lot of things in Leipzig to see and do, so off we went!
All seven of us flew into Berlin together and after finding our hub (we all agreed to meet up at the same hostel (The Eastener) when we came back to the city) and grabbing a quick bite, we went our separate ways. The three of us bound for Leipzig made our way to the main train station where we were treated with the presence of a Starbucks and a large quantity of pigeons.

Anecdote: train stations in Europe are weird. Most of the ones I've been in are enormous structures with several floors and every store you could imagine, so we had a lot to keep us busy while we waited for our train to Leipzig.

Anywho, we eventually got on the train and grabbed seats next to an old lady, who quickly adopted us even though she couldn't speak English and none of us had any German beyond "bier" and "danke." So, our Leipzig grandma gave us candy and offered to buy us hot chocolate, which we politely declined, and we made wild hand gesture conversation for a bit. It turned out that she was going to visit her grand daughter who did "tourism" in Leipzig.
We arrived to the city without any hassle and after several confusing explanations from less-than-helpful train station employees, we found our way to the light rail which would take us to our hostel.
This is where the story really gets fun. We had found the place on hostelworld.com, which is usually reliable and provides pictures, ratings, directions, etc. The info we had read about the Leipzig Guesthouse was that the owner was a real nice guy who left chocolates on your pillows and that you rooms had cable TV and all of this for 9 euro a night! What a bargain! After a long day of travel, we were quite tuckered out and looking forward to resting our heads on the chocolate laden pillows. When the lightrail train pulled up to our stop, we were hesitant to get off - we'd pulled into a heavily grafittied, under construction SUPER sketchy looking neck of the woods. Even better, when we got to the hostel, we found the door locked and all of the lights off. Luckily the owner had been gracious enough to leave us with his phone number. Being the silly American that I am, it took me a while to include all the proper zeros and country prefixes necessary to connect with Daniel (the owner) and by the time I finally got through to him, I was more than a little frustrated. The following is a rough transcript of our conversation:
Me: Hello, I booked a room in your hostel for tonight... can you let us in?
Daniel: Where are you?
Me: We're at the door...
D: Are you at the hostel?
Me: Yes, look... we're right out front
D: Do you have a car?
Me: No?
D: Did you take the tram here?
Me: Yes. Look, I don't see why this is important... can we come in?
D: PLEASE TRY TO UNDERSTAND. I will put you in a private apartment tonight. Stay where you are.
Me: What do you mean a private apartment???
D: Just listen very carefully. You will stay in a prepaid private apartment. Stay where you are, I will send a taxi.

End call.

I'm a big fan of horror films. I love being scared but with the assurance that it's all fake, nothing bad can happen to me - it's just a bunch of actors and special effects tricks. However, I've seen enough scary movies to know that being told to wait on a dark corner in a foreign city, surrounded by amateur graffiti, for a taxi that is taking you to an unknown "private apartment" is generally NOT a good start to things. I relayed the phone call to Kelsey and Joanne, who had only heard my half of things and the rise of panic and confusion in my voice. We waited in front of the hostel for about five minutes until a taxi pulled up, the driver, we were relieved to see, was a woman and she helped us put our bags in the trunk. Sitting inside the car, I tried to make small talk - and sense of the situation - but the lady didn't respond to anything I asked her. I was feeling pretty freaked out by this point, certain that we were being driven to some torture site and that we would die at the hands of a stoic, frighetening German frau.

Obviously, though, I didn't die - neither did Kelsey or Joanne, for that matter. The taxi driver pulled the car into the parking lot of a 4 star hotel where posters on the front door advertised a convention for Irish ex-pats in Germany. We found this very odd. The concierge was angry on our behalf when the taxi driver explained to him what exactly had happened (I would have liked a similar explanation...) and he began to yell, "THIS IS NOT NORMAL! THIS SHOULDN'T BE HAPPENING. IT IS NOT NORMAL AND IT SHOULD BE NORMAL!" By this point, the three of us were travel-weary, confused and more than a little uneasy and his fit made us chuckle a bit at the absurdity of the entire evening, which only caused him to say "YOU SHOULDN'T FIND THIS FUNNY. I DON'T THINK IT'S FUNNY AND YOU SHOULDN'T EITHER!!" We zipped our lips.

In the end, it turned out that Daniel hadn't enough reservations in the hostel to justify opening it for us, so he put us up in the 4 star hotel for a night before having us check in the next day. I wish I could understand the logic behind that, but hey, I'm not complaining too much - I had a nice bubble bath and slept in an enormous, incredibly comfortable bed.

Hip Hip... Hooray!

Last we saw our heroine she was headed up north for a quick visit to Dublin. Now, the trip began perfectly. I found the train station without a hitch and made it in time for the good ol' 9:30 service to Dublin. Unfortunately, I had a bit of a cold, which was only exacerbated by the fact that the cars didn't have any heat that morning. So, the trip was a little sniffly but nothing too bad; I had Neil Gaiman's American Gods to keep me company so all was right with life. Aside from the crazy crackhead lady behind me who kept yelling, "How far now!?" and the oddball old man across the aisle who would respond "Ah we've just passed ____, so."

Tangent: I love the way Irish people use the words "now" and "so". I can't really come up with a comparison in "American" but nows and sos are usually tucked into sentences as space-fillers, almost. I suppose a bit like an American like, but still a bit different. Example Scenario: You're at the local Tesco, just running in to get some OJ and eggs - the usual purchase, of course. You run it through the line with a clerk because the self check out lines are just out of this world and your friendly Polish-Irish hybrid says "Now, tree euro, so!" It's just so gosh-darned cute. /Tangent.

Anyway, so the train trip was fine going up. I made it into the city without any trouble and took the Luas (lightrail tram) to the stop nearest our hostel and met up with Anna. We decided to make the Guinness storehouse our first stop (naturally) and picked up some cheap chips en route, having not eaten for the better part of the day. The storehouse was fun, even though I'd been before. This time, all of the computers and things were working, unlike last time when half the exhibit wasn't functional. I also got to pull me own pint this time, which was fun, and mine didn't turn out half bad!

After the storehouse, we wandered a bit and found a nice place to have dinner and it was after dinner that I really began to feel like crap, so we wandered back to the hostel and bought copious amounts of Halls cough drops, OJ and and kleenex, ready to tuck in for an early night. Or what we hoped would be an early night.

We were wronnnnnng. We had decided to book a shared dorm style room at the hostel, 12 beds, mixed gender. NBD, right? We'd just be sleeping there so it's not like we were too invested in who our roommates would be. Well, when it turned out that our roommates were loud, drunken Italian men in town for the big match, it mattered quite a bit. There was a bit of a bed fiasco (everyone in the wrong beds because the first people to arrive had put their things in the wrong spot, etc, etc. not that it really mattered - there were enough beds for everyone). So of course the drunken Italian men and the high maintenance English girls had to have it out at 4 AM. Of course. After much yelling and miscommunicating, everything sorted itself out.

The next morning, we went to the Hugh Lane art museum, which was AMAZING. It was free (woo!!!) and had a great collection of mostly impressionist paintings. There was some more modern stuff, too, one of which is my new favorite painting of all time, I think. It's called Garden Green by Norah McGuinness. That link is a terrible image and hardly displays the completely vivid greens and the contrast of the bright white... It was just gorgeous!
After that, we met up with the other BC kids in town, ate lunch and then I decided that the best choice for my health would be to stay in bed instead of explore more of Dublin. Plus, the places my friends wanted to go were places I'd already been when I went in March. So, I spent another lovely night in the hostel bed, sneezing and coughing and sleeping off and on. Talk about fun trips.

Since I've been back in Cork, I've pretty much fully recovered. Both of my roommates were gone for the weekend, so I spent it cuddled up on the couch with my lovely giraffe blanket and a stack of books about yea high. I finished American Gods, Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl (a really good collection of short stories. Pretty creepy, though), My Left Foot by Christy Brown and Of Mice and Men by good ol' John Steinbeck. All in all, a good weekend - much better than the one before.

I leave Cork tomorrow night for an evening in the Dublin airport and then off to Italia! I'm pretty excited and a bit nervous too. The website for the Italian train system is complete crap, so Laura and I have just decided to wing it and buy tickets as we need them. We found a nice enough looking hostel in Florence, where I'll get to see some friends from high school! It should be a nice week away, and hopefully a little bit warmer than Cork, which shouldn't be too hard to do.

Look forward to some photos and Italian tales!

Time is flying by way too quickly for my liking. How is it already October?? I try not to think about how much time is left, focusing instead on each day.

The last week or so has been kind of mleh, taking care of a few business items and getting into the swing of classes. I finally registered with the Garda. It only took, oh, 3 hours of my life. The plus was I got some reading done for my first paper for my film class (we have to compare a book version and movie version of a story... she gave us a list to choose from and nearly all of them looked terribly depressing. Hooray for Irish literature.)
I'm still kind of confused on how to refer to my teachers. I guess professor is higher than doctor here, though that seems strange. I guess "lecturer" is the safest bet, but that seems so weird and kind of like I'm glossing over their true status. Whatever. The same thing goes for the way they talk about the bathroom. They (they being Irish people) say 'toilet' and make fun of us if we say 'restroom'... toilet seems almost vulgar to me, but when in Rome...

Cork is really awesome, there is always something going on. Last weekend (i think...?) was Culture Night with tons of free tours and activities. We went on a walking food history tour of Cork (chosen because we thought there'd be free food in it for us. There wasn't.) I think I was the only one of our group that really enjoyed the tour, though. After the food tour, we went in a "culture cab" similar to the TV show Cash Cab...what a BLAST. Everyone who knows me knows that I would do almost anything to go on that show (I plan to take a long weekend trip to NYC next year and spend the whole time hunting for Ben Bailey and his Cash Cab), so this was by far my favorite part of the night. They put five of us at a time into a vancab and it was every man for himself in terms of points, so the guide lady would ask a question and we'd have to yell out our names as a buzzer, whoever yelled first got to answer, etc. Most of the questions were easy enough, though there were some that were quite tricky for Americans and other non-Irish (i.e. what year did Samuel Beckett die, who won the Booker prize twice, etc).

This weekend the Beamish Folk Festival is on, so there's lots of live music in all the pubs and a Ceili Mor down on one of the main streets downtown tomorrow. I'm not sure what to expect from that, but the music has been good so far. We saw an old man bluesy number the other night at this place called The Corner House. They were awesome, the guitarist soloed for like, a full five minutes and dude was definitely pushing 60. They played some original stuff and some covers... all in all, a pretty good night.

Next weekend the kids from BC have to go up to Dublin to visit Fr. Leahy, who is coming to visit for some reason or another. I think I'll head up Thursday night or Friday morning (I don't have classes on Fridays) and do a bit of exploring, see some of the things I didn't get to when I was there last (i.e. The Book of Kells). I hadn't really planned on visiting Dublin again, just because I've already been there and ... well, why pay to go somewhere I've been and miss out on some place I haven't seen? Seeing as it is a BC sponsored trip, though, I don't have a problem going up.

My two papers for Folklore are due soon and I really need to get cracking on them, so my goal for the day is to finish the one I've started before I go out to enjoy the music, or, as they say here, the craic.

Trying to figure out which courses will be available this semester is nearly impossible, especially because the school hasn't yet published them. We've been advised to check out last year's courses with the warning that not all of them will be offered again. How helpful.

I've been comparing the old module book with the timetables, so I think I have some idea of what will be offered. My goals for this semester, coursewise, should be fairly easy to fulfill, though. I need to take two histories, either a natural science or a social science, and then whatever sounds most interesting as a fourth class.

For the histories, I'm tempted to take either Myth & History or Politics of Church & State. I don't want to take both, because they are both higher level courses with a 4000 word end of semester essay. I really don't want to do that to myself. If I can get into it, I think I'd prefer the Myth & History, and then a mid-level course called Information Revolutions & History. I can handle 4000 words and an exam, I think.

There don't seem to be too many lower level natural science courses available, at least... not ones that I want to take. I just can't really find nat sci interesting in the classroom, which is strange because I like Nat Geo and documentaries and that kind of stuff... blech. There's a couple of psych classes that I could do for my social science requirement, though. One is just an intro to Social Psychology and the other is one called Perception & Memory. I'm not sure if I could take Perception & Memory as it is a midlevel course and I have no Psych background.

I'm tempted to take this course designed for English speakers with no background in French. It's basically all conversation, no busy work or silliness, with the goal of giving us the basic vocabulary we'd need to survive a few days amidst the French. I don't know that such a vocabulary exists, but it sounds like fun, and it would be nice to be able to get by a little bit this Christmas.

Next semester, I'll basically be doing the same. Two histories, whichever science I don't do this semester and then a whatever. Maybe I'll take art history, because I still have to fulfill that. Assuming I'm successful in getting those three cores out of the way, and the 4 history courses tucked away, that'll leave me with ~3 history and cultural diversity senior year, meaning I would have room for four or so electives, unless I'm forgetting something huge... which I'm pretty sure I'm not.


Other than all of this planning, the past couple of days have been nice. The weekend was pretty chill, we mostly stayed in and played cards and planned our trips. I learned how to play Euchre seeing as most of my friends here are some variety of Midwestern. It's pretty fun, and kind of similar to Spades, so it wasn't too tricky to learn. We bought our tickets to Berlin. We ended up planning the trip for a week because when we looked at prices on Aer Lingus, there were 0 euro flights out of Cork to Berlin, with something like 20 euro taxes tacked on. All in all, a pretty good deal.
Last night we went to a pub called Clancy's where we heard there was going to be either swing or Irish dancing. Turns out both were going on, but the swing was upstairs and the Irish downstairs. One of the musicians would call out the dance steps, so a bunch of us would go up everytime and try our best to learn them. Our best didn't turn out so well, but it was still loads of fun.

In other news, I have become a chain tea-drinker and I'm dying for some good, or even not-so-good (i.e. Safeway) chinese food.

The past couple of weeks have been an absolute blur.

I go to class in the morning, from 9:30 - "12:30" but we're usually let out early, so I do my grocery shopping for the day. It would be nice to not have to shop every day, but the mini fridge makes that difficult. Also, I'm running out of ideas for meals that can be easily and quickly prepared with little space and few tools. Ideas, anyone?
I'm really happy with the group of friends I've made here. Most of us are in the same early start subject and live in Leeside, so we've been doing something of some sort most nights, whether it be chatting and getting to know each other or going out to some overpriced, overcrowded pub.

Our apartment building is located pretty centrally, so that's nice. It's a bit of a hike to school in the mornings, especially when it is pouring, but that's what wellies and brellies and anoraks are for! I prefer our proximity to the grocery stores, at least we don't have to walk a billion miles whilst carting our bags of food.

The past two weekends we've gone on a mini trip of some sort. Last weekend I went to Fethard to visit my grandpa one last time before he left for home. It was great fun, the town still has some of its old medieval walls and buildings and things and we went out for a nice meal and music afterward. I came back to Cork to go to the Cork City FC match against Cliftonville, where we were roped into being a sort of US fan club for the Rebels. We joined the crowd of about 50 hooligans in all the chants, including "Barack Obama loves Cork City!" and "U-S-A! U-S-A!"
The next day, a bunch of us went on a bus tour of the Ring of Kerry, which is a road that encircles Co. Kerry. Unfortunately it was terribly foggy and rainy so we didn't get to see all the beautiful views and landscapes, but it was still a good trip. We stopped in a few small towns, ate some delicious stew and brown bread, bought postcards and acted like tourists.


Thursday, our class went on a field trip to Bunratty folk park and castle, where we visited old farmhouses and cottages furnished with their traditional furnishings, which we had been learning about in class. After touring the folk park, we went to a banquet inside the castle. It was fun although a bit hokey. The food was amazingly delicious. We had this creamy vegetable soup, ribs, chicken, vegetables and a berry mousse tart thing for dessert. We came back to Cork yesterday via Adare, Kerry, and Mucros house in Kilarney.

We only have a couple weeks left of the early start program, and then we register for the regular semester. They still haven't published the list of updated modules, so I don't know what I will be able to register for. It is quite frustrating. At orientation, they talked about this crash course in French that I kind of want to take. It's mostly focused on speaking instead of grammatical rules and the like, so it sounds like it would be both fun and useful (social AND functional, as Dr. Humphreys would say!)

We've been trying to figure out where everyone wants to go in terms of European travel. My number one goal is to get to Berlin for the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the wall. There is going to be this ceremony involving 8 ft dominos set up to collapse and I think it would just be an amazing experience. A bit of searching around on ryanair and hostelworld last night tells me that it is highly affordable, so I really want to act now before it gets too expensive. I imagine there will be quite a crowd.
I really want to go to Scotland and England, too. I'm waiting to visit Liverpool until Sarah is there, but I'll probably go over to Bath at some point to visit Laura and Lizzy. I'd like to go to London as well, so maybe I can combine that into one of those trips, or just make it a trip of its own.
Barcelona is high on my list too, actually, I'd like to go all over Spain.
I'm not incredibly interested in Italy. It'd be cool, yeah, but... it's not at the top of my list.
The coolest part about all the friends I've made here so far is that all of them are just as interested in traveling as I am, so we should be able to put together a good little group of people to visit all the places we'd like to go.

I tried to upload some photos to this post, but unfortunately my internet connection is so crummy that the loading times out before it can be published. I'll try again later when it isn't being so patchy.

Today we went on a small adventure, out into the more suburby part of the city.

We had been in the computer lab, setting up the wireless connection for those of us who hadn't yet, and those who had... well, we were just waiting. Patiently waiting. Apparently, two of us had some huge issue with connecting to the internet, but unfortunately, the person who could help us was away at lunch. So, the girl behind the help desk suggested we take a little walk up to this bird sanctuary that had a nice place to eat lunch. So, after she drew us a map, away we went.

The pub was nice, they had fairly cheap lunch options though I specifically said no butter or mayo on my sandwich (they put butter and mayo on EVERYTHING here) and they still put both on. There was an old man at the table next to us and as he stood to leave he asked us if we were all Americans, then told us how much he loved America and that he had been to every coastal state. He then said that when he first came to America, the first place he went to was Tacoma!! It was all very exciting.

After we finished, we took a walk around the lake, which was quite small for a lake, but similar to the res at BC in terms of layout. There was a walking path covered in swan poo, a play structure for kids and several benches. Along the sidewalk, some kids had pitched a tent with lawn chairs and were fishing. When we walked by, they were posing with this ENORMOUS fish they had caught.

I also discovered the "Starbucks" on campus today. I use quotes because... well, they "proudly brew Starbucks coffee" only it tastes not quite as good as it should. Still, much better than the crappy crap they have in the dining hall.

Let it be known that I have officially survived my first few days here in Cork, and not only survived them but quite enjoyed them! The past coupla days have been a total blur of names and faces and places, kind of like freshman year all over again. It's quite nice because mostly everyone is new, so it is very easy to just go up to people and introduce yourself.

Anyway, the first day we got here was quite possibly the longest day of my life. Grandpa and I left Portland early in the morning, our flight took off around 8:15 AM I believe, and we landed in Newark around 4 PM eastern with just a few hours before we took off for Shannon. Too bad the dummies whose job it was to prepare the plane for a new flight slacked off and had to double back to finish things, meaning we sat on a roasting plane at the gate for about 45 minutes before given clearance to even begin taxiing. Whoa, I don't believe that I have ever spelled taxiing before. Anyway, the flights were both bearable. Quite turbulent but obviously everything worked out fine.

After we landed, we had to wait a bit for Cathy's plane from JFK to land, during which we drank tea and ate biscuits in the Shannon airport Cafe. Laura and Jen both slept a bit but I tried to stay awake so as not to completely ruin my chances at avoiding super jetlag. The drive to Cork from Shannon was very pretty, we saw loads of cows and sheep and cute little buildings. Sitting in the front of a car on the left side is quite a strange experience, especially when enormous trucks come speeding at you around hairpin turns.

We finally arrived in Cork and found our building, wandered inside and met the landlady and were given our keys! The rest of the day was spent shopping and unpacking and running around like crazy people. That night, we had Papa John's for dinner... authentic Irish cuisine.

The next day we ran some more errands and then made our way over to the university. We got a bit lost but still made it on time for our meeting with our onsite coordinator. He seems quite nice and is a professor of Archaeology. It turns out that the building my first class meets in was built on the same plot of land that used to be home to a prison. Grrrrreat. That evening, all of us BC kids and our roommates hung out a bit and a few of us went out to some pubs. The first place we went to, Preachers, had been recommended to one of us by a friend who had studied at UCC some years ago. So we show up, order our drinks, and it turns out that the place had just been remodeled and it was their first night open! So everything was on the house!

The next day was orientation, which lasted 80109201290129340924 years and was terribly boring. The student government had planned a bunch of stuff for us to do afterward, which was way exciting. We went on a little tour, hung out in the student's club and then went to a movie (I Love You, Beth Cooper) which SUCKED soooo much, I'm so glad it wasn't on my dime. After the movie we went to this pub with a couple of bowling alleys, pool tables and karaoke rooms.. so much fun! A bunch of us did karaoke (spice girls, backstreet boys, grease, etc) and then bowled. Amazingly, I was the best bowler of our group and I got spares in almost every frame! They had us set to go to a night club afterward, at which I lasted only a few minutes.

And now I am way too exhausted to finish talking about my exciting adventures, I'm sure this is all riddled with typoes and makes no sense at all. To be continued!!

Well, it is officially my last day in Tacoma until about... May 2010.

I can't even begin to list all of the things I will miss, so I'm not even going to try.

We had a great little goodbye party here last night, all the neighbors came by and a few friends from high school and work. Mom made tons of amazing food, dad grilled some delicious steaks and there were plenty of snacks and sweets to be had. Quite a good night, all told.

Now I just have to pack my carry on bag then it is bye bye Washington. :(

I've been trying to cook/bake more this summer so that I can have a few recipes under my belt for next year and just because it's fun.

So far, baking-wise, I've made some cute cupcakes, a dark chocolate cake with orange & lemon zest icing and chocolate chip cookies. Not anything too exciting, but it's all turned out nicely so far.

For my next trick, I plan on making what I've been calling a "sorting cake." A friend invited me to a Harry Potter themed party and said that if I wanted, I could bring a tasty treat. The plan is to make up a batch of yellow cake batter then separate it into four bowls and dye them red, green, blue and yellow - the colors of the houses in HP. I'll layer the different colors into the pans so that it looks like this. Once the cake bakes (and has cooled, learned from this mistake last time), I'll frost it a dark purpley with stars and moons and what not so that it looks like the sorting hat from the movies. Ideally, the cake will have baked so that each piece has an obvious main color and that would be your house. Realistically, it'll just be fun to look at because it'll be a crazy colorful mess.

I managed to catch a cold while in Ireland. This turned out to be a plus for me seeing as I slept from 8:30 PM to 7:00 AM, my body forgetting to consider the five hour time difference it had just flown through. Pretty sweet.

Anyway, the trip.
I feel like a goof because I keep saying this to anyone who asks, but it was simply amazing. Everyone on the trip (well, most everyone) were great people and I got to see/do most of the things I had gone over wanting to see/do. I slacked off on my journaling for most of the trip, I was just plum-tuckered out most nights, but I'll transcribe what I did write down. Be warned: it's pretty stupid and wordy, but whatever.

"Feb. 27. Logan Airport
The flight was supposed to leave at 6.... that didn't happen. First, they tried to put us on an earlier flight, which would leave at 5, but then they realized we wouldn't make the transfer. After sending our (mine & kelsey's) luggage down to the carousel by mistake and making us wait forever to retrieve it, they told us our group would have to split up and take two aer lingus flights directly to Dublin. (Turned out that only one was direct. The other stopped in Shannon). The first left around 6:20, ours leaves at 7:20, putting us into Dublin early tomorrow morning. Not too shabby.
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12:07 AM EST
Still awake, still in flight. Kelsey and I are sharing my iPod & book, Nick Hornby's (and others') collection of short stories called Speaking With The Angel, which is truly great. I'm powering through it, so I let her read a few stories.
They have shown nothing but bad TV so far (aside from an episode of FOTC)... the movie was Nights in Rodanthe or some BS... needless to say, I didn't watch. Kelsey, Ben and I played cards, chatted and avoided the (at best) dodgy food. So its been 20 hours of wakefulness and I've had raspberry chocolate chip pancakes, coffee, nasty Sbarro pizza and dr pepper. Yum. I'm going to be exhausted today/tomorrow but I can't sleep for numerous reasons.

1. I'm on a plane (not a boat, mothaucka)
2. I've consumed the aforementioned caffeinated beverages
3. I'm beyond excited, one of my life dreams is coming true as we speak (well, as I write)
4. I'm on a plane and don't you E'ER forget it!

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This woman today at the soup kitchen during our post meal/cleanup reflection said something that kind of confused/upset me. The reflection question was something like "What do you want your impact on the world to be?" and she said... (not exactly of course, but along the lines of...) "Well I think there are many ways to impact... me for example, I don't want to just make people happy (both Danny and I had said making people happy was one of our goals) because you can't just make people happy. It takes more than just giving them stuff. See, what I do is I try not to react. Nothing really matters anyway so why should I react to anything?"

This woman is studying Buddhism, after what I assume to be a midlife crisis (totally speculation here, but she sold her successful dance studio, moved into volunteer housing above a soup kitchen... she wears a wedding ring but you'd think her spouse would come along, too?? Whatevs) Anyway, for whatever reason, she strikes me as a little crabby and her comment about "not reacting" was kind of frustrating. She went on to say that "the people" need to be involved in government... which I agree with, but then she was like "our" community needs to be reorganized... we have to take authority away from businesses and politicians and regreen the country!!!
What happened to not reacting? Also, let me clarify: I don't mean to imply that I think this woman is dumb... I just think in her attempt to "not react" and be 'enlightened', she's throwing around the same old shtick. Who is going to organize the community if we aren't allowed to react?!?!

Okay, rant over. A term I would like to work into my daily vocab: TTPUYL. Things that Pants Up Your Life, courtesy of Colin Firth."

"March 1st, 2009
At least, I think its March first. Good news is, I'm not jet lagged. Bad es is I've just had my first sleep in 35 hours. Yikes.
Yesterday was great fun even though I don't feel like I'm in Ireland... more like Canada.
We sat in a pub for most of the evening, the Ireland v. England rugby match was on and there were people EVERYWHERE. It was fun but crowded, obviously not too many open tables and everyone was gathered around various big screens. Sarah Kelsey and myself were content to sit in the corner at a table that was miraculously empty and we sipped our Guinness as we listened to the match.
Afterwards, we went back to BC Ireland and talked with a woman from the north... I feel bad about it, but at that point I was running on about 34, 35 hours without sleep... and her voice was so soothing... I nodded off a few times. We had pizza and fries (???) for dinner. Kinda bizarre. But oh so tasty. The coke here is funny, though.

We bought lunch at a convenience store type place yesterday and the guy ringing me up said "You're not from Dublin, are you?" Good to know I look awkward and out of place.

We also went on a double Decker tourist trap tour, which was really fun. I took about a million pictures and stayed on top of the bus the whole time, despite the wind. Aside from me, Ben & Kelsey, everyone else went down below.

Last night, long after we had gone to bed (8:30 PM, woohoo) I woke up to hear yelling in the street. There was a guy and a girl out there, having some argument and it was just so tragically hilarious, loaded with F bombs, naturally.
"It's effing three AM and you're out yelling in the street!"
"You don't understand, Darren! I LOVE YOU!"
"You're drunk. That's the alcohol."
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Absolutely the worst chinese food today. Wanted to gag and die."

"March 5th, 2009 (maybe the 6th)
So I've been really bad about keeping track of my thoughts during the trip, but I've honestly been super tired every night. So I'll do my best to remember things tonight.
My placement turned out to be at the Dominick Street Community Center. Ends up Slí Eile is just the name of the organization and not an actual place at which to volunteer. So, Sarah and I went to Dominick Street where we met the director, Derek, an employee, Phil, and a volunteer, Peter, as well as a few others, including the housing rep Gerry, who asked us our opinion on "the Indian"...
The first day was hopeful. We hung out, drank tea and played video games. Some background info: the center is located on Dominick St behind rows of rundown apartments. The goal is to provide a stable, safe type place for kids, teens & adults who live within the community. They have several programs and "clubs" for the younger kids.

Anyway, the placement was okay at first. We ended up playing Wii and other video games with each other and sometimes Irish kids would play with us. It was more exciting after school hours when the youngsters would come in. They gave us some cool fleece jackets that say "Dublin City / Baile Atha Cliath / Community Development" We gave the guys BC Ireland t-shirts. We got to know some of the little kids a bit, but not much... the center seems to be more of a way for them to get away from home life stuff, so they weren't too chatty about that. In the end it just sort of felt like the directors didn't really know why we were there and didn't have anything for us to do.

So all of that meant that Sarah and I got a lot of down time and got to know each other fairly well. We walked ALL over Dublin (including what turned out to be super dangerous no-go zones...). We got to see Croke Park on our own, which rocked so much. I wanted to buy a hurling jersey but I couldn't bring myself to shell out the 60 euro for one.. so I just looked. The museum was really cool, and really cheap, and we had it to ourselves at we got there as it opened.

I've had a really awesome time on the trip but I feel like things were very poorly organized. The leaders are both very nice people but I don't really understand their point. We all have spent every day at our placements then we come back to BC Ireland for dinner (always vegetarian...) then hear a talk from some person or another who don't really seem to know why they are talking to us. And people are always making assumptions about the similarities between the US and Ireland... I just feel like most people on this trip have no experience in working with people in poverty in the US or any of the other issues we have seen here, so they assume the problems are unique... which is obviously not true. And kind of an issue I have with service trips."




Okay, if you made it through that, super props. If not, you aren't reading this either. I posted pictures on my flickr account (name: ksgilbert07) so check those out, there are more to come :)

I just saw a man peeing outside in the bushes on my way to work.

Ew.

In other news, this weekend was action packed and fun - a nice break from the crazy amounts of homework I've been doing lately.

I met a guy from Belfast at Haley House on Friday and that kind of put a downer on my morning... he was just so sad! I was chatting with him about how long he's been here, if he thought he'd go back, etc. and he said that he and his mom (he's probably just a little older than me) had come here three years ago and didn't have anything to return to. I suppose I probably should have expected something like that, but his tone of voice and the look on his face... so sad. Then he said that it wasn't really something they talked about in Ireland and I apologized for bringing it up... and he started talking about the conflict, saying it was no use for anyone to apologize anymore because it had already happened and apologizing just brought up the old feelings all over again.

The rest of my weekend was much more cheerful. We had Relay for Life on Friday night/Saturday morning... nothing too out of the ordinary happened, just a bunch of fun and exhaustion.

I got to see Katherine yesterday and we had burritos at Felipe's in Harvard Square and saw Neil Gaiman's book-turned-movie Coraline, which was amazing. And in 3D so double amazing.

One of the ladies just came into the office here at work talking about the paint she chose for her house... "Well it's called Meditative Blue... which I liked. I thought about going one step down, but that one was called Languid Blue and I thought NO WAY am I having anything LANGUID. That's such a negative word..."
I wonder what she thinks languid means?