I CAN COUNT TO 10!!!

So this week I started taking the Irish class, which I previously had called the Gaelic class, but they don’t call it Gaelic here. They call it Irish. Why? I have no clue I missed that class. Due to things with my schedule I missed the original registration day for the Irish class and then every time I went to the office the lady I had to talk to wasn’t there. Also the phone number that they gave for her, she apparently never responds to cause she never answered my calls or called me back. So I spent a week trying to figure things out and track down Professor Ni Shuilliobhain (very Irish, very cool last name, I can’t pronounce it though). So I was pretty much a week behind when I found out one of the other American student I met was taking the class and was in a group that worked with my schedule. So I pretty much just joined the class on Monday and the teacher has figured out that since I showed up all 3 days I’m another one of his students.

Monday was great. He started off the class by saying “Dia dhuit” to all of the students, it is a traditional greeting that means “May God be with you” and the response to that is supposed to be “Dia agus Muire dhuit”, which means “May God and Mary be with you”. If he were to decide to say “Dia agus Muire dhuit” as a greeting instead the response would be “Dia agus Muire agus Paedraig dhuit” meaning “May God and Mary and Patrick be with you”. So pretty much if the greeting is said you repeat the greeting and add the next saint on to the end of it. They only learned up to Patrick, so hopefully that means that we won’t really need to know anymore past him. When the teacher got to where I was sitting he said the greeting to me and I kind of just shook my head at him and he realized I was new. So he spoke to me in English for a moment and then moved on to the rest of the class. Since I already knew one of the girls I sat with her and she got me caught up on things and the teacher pretty much left me alone for the class since I wasn’t used to hearing him speak Irish to us.

Wednesday’s class I was in a bit of a sarcastic mood, but it was much appreciated and Sean got a good laugh out of it. Apparently he’s a very informal teacher and we call him Sean. I have no clue what his last name is. On Monday we had learned to talk about the weather which got really funny when he asked me on Wednesday where I was from and then what the weather was like there. I was able to tell him Is as Connecticut dom. Tá sé ana-fhuar agus tá sé ag cur sneachta. I felt pretty accomplished that I could even tell him that. It means I am from Connecticut (which he just knows to mean somewhere in America). It is very cold and it is snowing. I appreciated learning how to say that. We reviewed talking about the weather and a few other things before we got to the question of the day, which was, do you understand? (An dtuigeann tú?) The responses were either I do understand (tuìgìm) or I do not understand (ní thuìgìm). We were reviewing the question and how to respond when my sarcasm decided to come out. Sean asked us what do we respond when we understand and we all said tuìgìm, and then if we didn’t understand, and I was a little loud in saying “you give a blank stare and shake your head no.” Haha yeah Sean greatly appreciated that response, he laughed and said he appreciated my efforts but it was no longer the first day I can’t get away with that anymore. He got a good laugh out of it and I’m glad that I have at least one teacher with a sense of humor. Then again this is my only non-lecture class. It has turned out to be a lot of fun. Despite the fact that it has turned out to be my only Thursday class and it is at 5pm, but I’ll deal, it’s a class worth going to.

Thursday we learned to count. I can now say I know how to count to 10 in four different languages. I have to say that I feel quite accomplished now. I was even able to recite numbers back to him, which with the ways these numbers are said, is not easy. My favorite number is zero (a náid) because when you say it, it comes out as annoyed. I think the laughter from the class put us all in agreement that it would be the most enjoyable number to say. So we really did learn a lot in this class and now you all know some. I might take the time one day and write out a bunch of sayings and how they are said phonetically. For now this is it.

With Love Always