Irish anybody?

Disclaimer: I’m very bad at phonetically explaining a lot of these and I don’t believe that if I give the actual phonetic pronunciations it will do anyone any good. Also this is my way of studying what I’m learning so you get to either be confused or learn with me.

Counting to 10 in Gaielge [pronunciation in brackets]

A náid – zero [annoyed]

A haon – one [a hane]

A dó – two [a doe]

A  trí – three [a tree]

A ceathair – four [a co- tear]

A cuíg – five [a koo-ig]

A sé – six [a shay]

A seacht – seven [a shock-t]

A hocht – eight [a hawk-t]

A naoi – nine [a neigh]

A deich – ten [a day]

The Weather

Conas atá an aimsir? – How is the weather [co-nas uh-ta on om-sheer]

Tá an ghrian ag taitneamh – the sun is shining [ta on ghree-in egg ten-of]

Tá sé te – It is hot [ta shay tay]

Tá sé fuar – It is cold [ta shay four]

Tá sé ag cur báistí – It is raining [ta shay egg curr bosh-tea]

Tá sé ag cur sneachta - It is snowing [ta shay egg curr shknock-ta]

Tá an aimsir go maith – The weather is good [ ta on om-sheer go mah]

Greetings

Dia dhuit – May God be with you [dee-ah whuit]

Dia agus Muire dhuit – May God and Mary be with you [dee-ah ah-goose mare whiut]

Conas atá tú? – How are you? [co-nas uh-ta two]

Tá mé go maith. – I am good [tom go mah]

Agus conas atá tú féin? - And how are you yourself? [ah-goose co-nas uh-tah two fain]

Other

Cad is ainm duit? – What is your name? [cod iss an-um doit]

(name) is ainm dom. – (name) is my name [(name) iss an-um dum]

An dtuigeann tú? – Do you understand? [on tee-ginn two]

Tuigim – I understand [ti-gum]

Ní thuigim – I do not understand [knee hih-gum]

Tá ceist agam – I have a question [ta shesht uh-gum]

Conas a déarfá (word) as Gaeilge? How do you say (word) in Irish? [co-nas uh dear-fah ah Goil-gay]

Tá is agam – I know [ta iss uh-gum]

Níl fhios agam – I do not know [kneel iss uh-gum]

Is cuimhin liom – I remember [iss key-lome]

Ní cuimhin liom – I do not remember [knee key-lome]

Cad is duit? – Where are you from [cod oss doit]

Is as (place) dom. – I am from (place) [iss oss (place) dum]

Corcaigh – Cork [cork-eggh]

Baile Átha Cliath – Dublin [ball-ay aha clee-uh]

Cionn tSáile – Kinsale [keyon sale]

Gaillimh – Galway [gollum]

Luimneach – Limerick [loom-knick]

Gaeilge – Irish speaking language [goil-gay]

Gaeltacht – Irish speaking Area [goil- techt]

Béal feirste – Belfast [bell fear-eesh-ta]

Ciarraí – Kerry

Londain – London

I think that’s it for now. There are a lot of other things I’ve learned but to be completely honest having to figure out how to phonetically spell things makes this a lot harder than it needs to be and I’m not up to doing any more right now. So if you’re really confused right now, I’m sorry, I also don’t advise you walk around trying to say these to people. For one thing you probably won’t find very many people who even know what you’re saying and if you say them wrong then they’re just gibberish. Once you get the pronunciation though the quicker you say it the better it sounds and flows together. Have fun! 

With Love Always

Fried Chicken, Mashed Potatoes and Crêpes?!

So this past week was reading week for the English department which meant that all English classes were cancelled. Seeing how 3 out of 6 of my classes are all English classes I ended up with a lot of empty time. I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything with all of that extra time. I did thoroughly go through and clean my room though. I also started 2 of my papers that aren’t due for another 3 weeks. On top of it being reading week it was also rag week. Basically they designate an entire week of drinking all day every day and each night has themed parties and all of the proceeds go to charity. I can see why they do it, they call whiskey uisce beatha in Gaeilge which translates to water of life, and everyone goes out and drinks. It’s sort of what UConn is like during Spring Week(end) and half the students aren’t even going to class to begin with. The classes that I did actually have were pretty much empty. I have a 2 hour lecture on Wednesday and if you miss that lecture you miss a lot and there were probably 15 of us out of a class of about 50, it was sad. The teachers go on as normal though and the students who miss, well it’s their loss. The really good thing about rag week though is that the crêpe man was on campus all week and I finally gave in and got a strawberry and nutella crêpe. He made it fresh right in front of you and the strawberries were also fresh and it was really, really good. A lot of times I wonder how I’m going to go back to American food after being abroad but since I cook I make enough American dishes that it won’t be that difficult. I will definitely miss certain things from here though. Speaking of American food we got really American Thursday night and made fried chicken with mashed potatoes for dinner. I got to do dessert and I made little crêpes. We had all sorts of different toppings to put on them, I even made a marshmallow sauce which was pink because they only had pink and white marshmallows in a bag at the store. I’m guessing marshmallows are another one of those things that Europeans really just don’t use. It’s a very American thing, which considering all of the sugar that’s in them it makes sense. That’s really it for this week it wasn’t that eventful, which was nice since last weekend was really busy. I’m looking forward to this weekend though; it’ll be a good one. Well have a great week!

With Love Always   

I can tell you anything I want and it will be true as long as I say "according to legend" after it.

Day 3 in Belfast and the fun has really only just begun. We started our day off with a black taxi tour of the city at 9:30 in the morning. We ended up being in the earliest group to go but that actually worked out better because we then had the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted. I have to say our group ended up with the best taxi driver. His name was Pat and he informed us all that despite how attractive he may be he doesn’t give out his number and won’t be collecting any of our since he went the other way. The fact that he could introduce himself and give us a good laugh in the first sentence let us know that we were in for a good time. We started off on the protestant side of Belfast (the west) and we drove over to where there were some of the wall murals. There are murals everywhere on both sides of Belfast that are a huge clue as to what side you’re on and it is also how they remember the people who have lost their lives fighting for their cause. A lot of the murals are pieces of the story and of what has happened. The mural that Pat really wanted us to see is of a gunman who was painted so that no matter where you are standing in relation to the mural it looks like he is pointing his gun at you. It is a symbol of how no matter where any of them were, or the Catholics were, that it wasn’t safe and someone was always watching. It’s true there were always men out with guns killing people and there were a lot of massacres. One cool thing though that we did learn was that the way a man on his horse is painted means something. If the horse’s two front hooves are in the air it means that both he and his rider survived the battle. If one hoof is on the ground it means the rider died, if they are both down then both the horse and his rider did not survive. Now every time I see a painting with a horse in it that’s all I can think of. Once we had seen the murals on the buildings we drove over to the peace wall that separates the east and west sides of Belfast. It was built in 1969 (I believe) and it was meant to be a way for the police and army to monitor who went back and forth between the two sides. The wall is sort of like neutral territory. People have come from all around the world to write on the wall and to send messages of peace to the warring sides. A lot of very famous people such as Gandhi and Bill Clinton (they are the only two I can currently remember) signed the wall and their messages were actually engraved as part of the art work that was recently added to the wall. You can write whatever you’d like on the wall. People write ridiculous things on the wall. There was someone who wrote that their state was the best and multiple comments off of it saying that other states were better. When they say you can write anything you can literally write anything. The taxi drivers all pulled out markers and allowed us to sign our names on the wall before we left. It’s cool to think that despite how long the wall is and how many people sign it, my name is somewhere on there too.

Once everyone had finished signing the wall we crossed through the gates of the wall and were on the Catholic side of Belfast. They took us to a memorial for the people who were killed by British troops. It was also the memorial for a group of martyrs. While we were there the taxi driver who was talking to us pulled out three bullets that were used by the British troops and were known to be aimed straight at the heads of little children and fired. They were not meant to be shot at a close range. The smaller of the two bullets were longer than the palm of my hand and the biggest one looked like a little rocket. It was longer than my hand and it pulled apart into two different parts. When you’re in the middle of a major war I know that the mentality is very different but it’s horrific to think that these men were just walking around pointing guns at the head of little kids and other people just because they were on opposing sides. They were killed just for being Catholic; a lot of the people who were killed were civilians. War does some crazy things to people and I’ll never understand that, but it really sunk in that there were kids dying because of the family that they grew up in. I’ll move on from that though. We made another stop at the mural of this one guy who was really crucial to the Catholics but with all of the traffic that was around us I have no clue what was being said to us. I know he’s important, hence the mural of him, but I’m not entirely sure why. I do remember something about him dying during a hunger strike though. He was in prison when Margaret Thatcher came into office and she said that they had too much freedom in prison and they weren’t suffering enough. She took away a lot of their freedoms and they went on a hunger strike and he was one of the important guys who died during that time. So I do remember something about it. His name is Bobby Sands I just looked at my pictures. Honestly if you look through all of my pictures you will probably learn a lot more about any of this than I’m telling you. Our last stop on the tour was another peace wall (there were a lot built but the main one was the one we signed) and there were a lot of murals that actually had nothing to do with the issues in Ireland. A lot of them had to do with other political issues between other countries or were ads for different things in Ireland. One was about the black taxis. There was even one about the US and Cuba. Apparently they change that one with every president because the bottom of it now reads “The world opposes US blockade of Cuba. Time for change Mr. Obama.” It used to read something about Bush apparently. All the guy told us is that it used to say something like “You son of a Bush” which got a nice reaction of laughter out of us all. To end the tour Pat took pictures of our group in front of our taxi with some of the murals in the background. We had such a great time with Pat that we asked him to get into one of our pictures. He knew whose camera was whose because we had handed them to him so he went around and would get really close to the person who the camera belonged to. That would explain why there’s a random guy cuddling up to me in one of the pictures. It’s just Pat our taxi driver.

Once we got back to the hotel Pat shook all of our hands and then asked us what we had planned for the day. Since we weren’t really sure he told us how to get the Ulster museum which was only about 10 minutes away, and wished us a good day. We figured why not go to the museum and see what’s there. We walked towards it and on our way we had to pass The Europa which Pat had told us was the most bombed hotel in all of Europe and that it had been bombed 5 times. Why? He never told us. Why they would rebuild the hotel every time, well we aren’t really sure about that either. We happen to be talking about it as we walked past another tour guide from a different tour company and he told us we were wrong. That it had actually had 77 bomb attempts on it and was successfully bombed 33 times. By successful he means that at least the doors were blown off the place. He then told us that the black taxi tour guides were a little misguided and wrong about some things. So now we don’t know how many times the hotel has been bombed but it’s either 5, 33, or 77 times. We even though of going inside and asking at the front desk if they knew and decided at the last minute against it, so we settled with taking a picture of the front door and we moved on. On our way to the museum we came across The Queen’s University of Belfast. It looked like a castle. They really do take pride in the appearances of their universities. With UCC you will only ever see pictures of the quad and the building that surrounds it because it looks like a part of a castle and it is the oldest building on the campus. They like the way that it looks compared to the rest of the more modern buildings on campus. The Queen’s University though was gorgeous and we decided to go look around it a bit. They have a statue of the queen right in the courtyard. When you walk into the foyer of the main building there is a statue of a very pensive Galileo. We didn’t really wander too far into the university but it is very historical and they keep it that way.

The museum wasn’t too far from the university and actually past the museum there is a botanical garden and we decided to go see what was there before we went into the actual museum. Once again I’m just going to say go look at the pictures. There were so many different plants and all I can tell you is that from my point of view I saw a lot of trees, cacti, shrubs, really pretty flowers, and plants. I’m really not sure what a lot of them are and actually I usually learn what some of them are from Ash who is a plant major (aka horticulture) at UConn. After I took pictures of everything in there I wandered around the museum for over an hour taking pictures of everything in there. Maybe even a few that I was technically supposed to take but I didn’t know that and the lady never made me delete the ones I had before she asked me to not takes pictures. So they’re there. I took pictures of everything in the museum so if you flip through the pictures you will see everything that I saw, minus about 99% of the paintings. I have a few pictures of the paintings that were taken before I was told not to. Actually I filled my memory card on one camera not too long after I got to the last floor of the museum so I have a video of the rest of it. I actually still need to figure out how to put videos up since I also have the ones from the rugby match last month. By the time that we finished in the museum it was lunch time so we went to a nearby pub where we unknowingly walked into the middle of a gathering to watch the soccer game that was on that day. It was very calm and quiet when we walked in and we could see the game on the tv. Then one of the teams scored and the entire pub roared with excitement. They showed the replay of the shot like 3 times and every time the guys in the pub went crazy. I know that soccer is huge here in Europe, but that was certainly an awakening experience.

Since we still had quite a bit of daylight left we decided to go see if we could walk around the courtyard of the city hall and actually see everything that is there. Of course we end up at the rear entrance to the city hall and the guard tells us that it’s closed for the day. We’re thinking that we can’t go walk around, but he tells us that there is a café we can go into and look around all of the historical galleries in there. So we went in and of course we’re going to be curious and see how far in we can wander. So we followed the signs to the bathrooms which led us out to the main entrance of the city hall and we were able to look around a bit there. We at least walked into the bathrooms since there was a guard sitting at the desk kind of giving us that look of “you shouldn’t be here.” So what do we do? We wander even further into the building and actually end up walking in on a photo shoot for a wedding. Oops… We were very quick to leave though and we actually found an exit that went out to the courtyard of the city hall and there were people everywhere. Then we realized that the guard at the back was telling us that the inside of the building was closed for tours and walking around. We got to walk around and see all of the different statues that were out there. Once we had our fill of taking pictures of the statues we went back to The Little Cupcake Café that we had passed on our way back from the museum. It looked really cute and they had cupcakes for less than 2 pounds so we decided to get them. I got a chocolate Turkish delight cupcake which was absolutely delightful. I actually didn’t eat mine until the next day. I had also gotten a chocolate hazelnut milkshake and I drank that at the time.

We went back to the hotel because a few of the girls wanted to go watch the rugby match that was playing that night. While they did that I uploaded and went through all of my pictures which took a really, really long time. Once the match was over we all met down in the lobby and found our way out to Weatherspoons, a local pub and had dinner. Colleen and I split a warm chocolate fudge cake for dessert and it was so good. I definitely got my chocolate fix for a while that day. We went for a walk afterwards and found the lady with the thanksgiving ring. I’m actually really not sure what that statue is all about but I’ve seen pictures of it everywhere and it was really cool to see it up close. I more in awe of the bridge that is was over and just the way the water looked with the lights reflecting on to it. It was just so peaceful and a nice end to the night. The rest of the girls wanted to go out and get drinks at The Crown but I wasn’t really up for it so I went back to the hotel and actually climbed into bed and was out for the night.

Sunday wasn’t really anything special. It was just our trip back home. We did drive through Dublin though and we got to see a lot of sites while we were on the bus. I’m actually really glad that we’ll be going back to Dublin and getting to spend a few days there. Granted we are going for St. Patrick’s Day so it’ll be a little bit crazier than usual as people get ready for the parade and to celebrate. Outside of the parade St. Patrick’s Day is really like thanksgiving for them. They gather together and feast and it’s this grand celebration. Apparently because of something that happened with our program they planned a whole trip the day before, of, and after for us to be in Dublin. It’ll be really exciting. That’s everything for our weekend in Belfast. My next big trip is off to London for 5 days the first weekend of March. So far we haven’t really planned out everything that we’ll be doing there but that Saturday we’re going to a free showing of Macbeth at The Globe which I’m really excited for. We’ve also planned out a Harry Potter walk of the city to go see some of the sites that were used in the films.  Of course we’ll see the Parliament building and Big Ben and a lot of the other main sites to see in London. It’ll be fun.

With Love Always

The only difference between an Irish wedding and a wake is one less drunk.

So this weekend is the first of 3 trips our program has planned for us. We’re heading up to Belfast in Northern Ireland, the Britain side of the country. As with most countries, the British had their power struggle with Ireland as well. I’m not at all a history major so I can’t and won’t attempt to really get into any of that. All I know is that for a really long time Ireland was under British rule and there were a lot of issues. The troubles with Britain have actually only recently ended within the past decade or so, and things aren’t as bad as they used to be, but there is certainly still a sore spot. When you cross over the border into Northern Ireland you are technically in the UK. I found that out the hard way when my phone cut off while I was talking to my grandmother. Then we all got messages on our phones saying that we were officially in the UK, yeah it was great. The bus ride was about 4.5 to 5 hours long. For those who don’t know, Cork is in the southern part of Ireland. I kind of like to think of Ireland as a diamond shape (even though it is far from it) just to help me figure things out geographically. History was never really my thing so I try to simplify it for myself. If Ireland is a diamond, Cork is the bottom point and Belfast is the top point. It only takes about 5 hours to go from one to the other, if that gives you any idea of the size of Ireland. It really isn’t a big island. It also is NOT diamond shaped, so don’t start thinking that it is. So the point is we went to the opposite end of the country.

Since we spent so long on the bus they didn’t have anything planned for the first night. They fed us dinner at the hotel and then gave us free reign for the rest of the night. As with most meals here, dinner was started off by a bowl of soup. I really don’t know what it is, but they puree all of their soups. Every time I’ve had a soup here it’s a bowl with an oddly colored liquid in it, and you don’t know what it is until you try it. This soup was green and turned out to be some kind of broccoli soup. Most of their soups are actually some kind of vegetable soup, maybe because it’s easier to puree vegetables, but either way I have yet to dislike any of them. The rest of dinner was kind of buffet style. There was a burger with onions, chicken curry and rice, and salmon with a sauce on it. Those were served to you, then there was all sorts of salad things and then they had their big bowl of potatoes there (there always have to be potatoes) and there was a pan of fries and I think there was corn. I can’t really say I remember (there’s a picture). The hard thing about this weekend was that I had my computer for the sake of emptying out my memory cards and charging my cameras, that really was about the only thing I did with it because outside of sleeping at night, there really wasn’t much time spent in the hotels. So it is now the week after and I’m attempting to recall everything. The pictures help but at the same time it takes 10 times longer to write this if I’m trying to look through the pictures and remember. There are a lot of pictures and actually the girls are convinced that I have a problem and that they are going to cure me of it by the end of this semester. It’s not going to happen. I LOVE taking pictures of any and everything, even if it isn’t exactly the safest moment for me to do so. Colleen has apparently been keeping tabs on how many near misses I’ve had while taking pictures of something. Haha yeah they usually have to keep track of me every few minutes to make sure I’m still with them. I also have the tendency to stop to take pictures and I’m not worried about the fact that everyone is still walking off; it’s not really my biggest concern. As long as I can still see them it’s completely fine.

After dinner (we’re still only on night 1 in Belfast) a few of us went out for a walk to see what was in the area. We found the city hall which is massive, and very beautifully lit at night. Since it was closed there wasn’t really a whole lot that we could see of it, but it was gorgeous, and the light poles on the outside of it had little cherubs on them and each one was doing or holding something different. The Irish were certainly very detailed when it came to designing their important buildings. All of the older buildings are absolutely stunning in how they are built. Since we couldn’t go into the courtyard we continued walking down the main street just to see what else was there. We saw a bar called The Washington which Claire is convinced is historical. We haven’t been able to find out why, but it had American flags on it. Why there were American flags, we have no clue, but it seemed very bizarre to see an American symbol of any kind anywhere. We walked even further into town and found a pub called The Garrick which is definitely a historical pub; it even said so. We decided to go in and Claire and Susan got drinks. I was preoccupied by the different designs on the sterling currency that they use. Even though Belfast is geographically a part of Ireland it is considered to be a part of Great Britain, therefore they use the pound instead of the euro. So we were told that we had to do a currency exchange when we got up there even though they actually take both currencies because it is still technically Ireland. We didn’t know that until after the fact though, so we all had sterling and just used it. It’ll come in handy in a couple of weeks anyways when we go to London, so it wasn’t a total waste to end up with a bunch of it at the end of the weekend. The really neat thing about The Garrick though is that they don’t just tell you what kind of drinks they serve you. On their list of drinks they also have listed out what country the drink originates from. I would have taken a picture but I felt very awkward already just taking pictures of the flags hanging on the ceiling. Most of the drinks were beers from Germany but I do remember seeing countries like Japan and Kenya on there. Not really two places I would ever imagine making any kind of beer or wine, but I guess you learn something new every day. I certainly did while I was in Belfast. Actually The Garrick had a quote on the side of it that I really liked. It said, “A nation that keeps one eye on the past is wise. A nation that keeps two eyes on the past is blind.” With all of the struggles that have gone on in Ireland and with them recovering still, it seemed like a very fitting quote. After The Garrick we went back to our hotel since we needed to be up and ready to go by 8:30 the next morning.

The IFSA program isn’t really one for details. All they do is give us the time for when our day starts and then tells us where we need to meet them all. They tell us what we’re doing as it’s happening, meaning as we’re on the bus driving to places they do the typical “we are coming up on                              to your left/right” or “in a few minutes we will be arriving at                             .” Which is great, until 5 minutes before you find out you’re going to take a mile and a half long walk to cross a rope bridge that hangs over an 80 foot chasm. It’s one of those things that when you hear what it is that you’re going to do you have to ask for it to be repeated so that you know you heard correctly.  The really cool thing about it is that when you cross the bridge to the other little island you can see Scotland off the coast because it’s actually only 12 miles away. When we got there I did cross the bridge to the other side. It really wasn’t bad, the only slightly nerve wracking thing was the fact that the people behind us decided they wanted to shake the bridge as they crossed. I wasn’t thrilled about it, but it was fine and the view was amazing. I’m probably going to say it a bunch of times as I describe everything we did on Friday, but it was all gorgeous. Everything about being on the coast line and looking out over the water, no matter where we were, was absolutely breath-taking. I’ll let the pictures attest to that. I learned on Friday that you can take A LOT of pictures of just water and no matter what it’s all still beautiful. I found a setting on my camera that will continually take pictures as long as I’m pressing the button. Guess what I did while we were on the bus driving along the coast. I took over 900 pictures on Friday alone and I can guarantee you 90% of them are of water or land in the distance over some kind of water. It was incredible. I usually fall asleep on bus rides to places because I get slightly nauseous when I’m in moving vehicles for a long time, but I didn’t sleep at all while we were on the bus because there was just so much to see and I didn’t want to miss any of what was around me. I actually ended up having my own seat as well on the bus which was nice. Nothing against other people but it was great to not have someone next to me talking because then I would have felt really mean because I would have found everything that was outside of the bus more interesting than anything they could say to me. So it worked out really well.

Once we left the rope bridge we actually headed to lunch because our other two stops couldn’t have all 3 buses there at the same time. So our bus driver took the option of lunch first, site seeing later. So we drove out to a hotel nearby where they served us lunch. We got a really long time for lunch so when our table was done we all headed out towards the shore and went for a walk on the rocks. After a little while it turned into a search for sea shells. It reminded me so much of when I was little and I used to spend most of my time at a beach looking for the biggest sea shells I could find and I would bring them home with me. I actually think that I have a jar filled with some of the smaller shells I collected somewhere at home, but I collected quite a few while we were out on the rocks and they have added to the decoration in my room. Which actually outside of the picture that was already here I have a cork board that is now covered by paper snowflakes and the adorable picture my big colored for me. That’s really the extent of decoration in here because they’re very strict about it. If they find a hole in the wall or see a mark from tape they fine you for it, so they give you the cork board to use and that’s it.

After lunch and collecting sea shells we all got back on the buses and headed to Dunluce Castle. It is one of the most well known castles in Ireland and unfortunately when it was finally destroyed it cost too much to restore it and all that is left are the ruins. Even though that’s all that is left you can still tell that it was a grand castle. There really isn’t much I can say about the castle, the pictures show everything and it has a great view. It rests right on the coast and apparently the kitchen fell into the ocean in the middle of a dinner party once. Whether that’s true or not, the Irish have so many interesting stories about everything here. I may not be big on history, but I’ve enjoyed learning a lot of different things about what I’m seeing and where I am. It’s actually interesting to learn about and I can’t say the same thing about most of America’s history.

We didn’t spend a whole lot of time at the castle. Maybe because since it’s all in ruins there really isn’t a whole lot to see, but we headed out to Giant’s Causeway.  It is an area made up of thousands of columns from ancient volcanic activity. Most of the columns are hexagonal (or hectagonal as I incorrectly said the first time) and form different shapes that have been linked to a myth of the Giant Finn MacCool. I wish I could remember the actual myth, but what I do remember is that the Causeway was created as a challenge to Finn’s Scottish rival. The part I do remember is that it took Finn MacCool’s wife to solve whatever issue Finn was facing. She dressed Finn up as a baby and wrapped him in blankets and put him in a cradle. When his rival came to see Finn, his wife told the guy not to wake the baby. Upon seeing “the baby” the Scottish guy got afraid and said that if that was the baby he didn’t want to stick around to see how big the dad was. Point being, Mrs. MacCool outsmarted him and saved her husband. I’m sure you can all figure out why I would remember that part. When we got out to the rocks we didn’t really go walking around to find all of the different formations. Actually it had started raining at that point and the waves that were coming up were pretty big and we were all more interested in the ocean than the columns. We did walk around a little bit but I enjoyed spending more time taking pictures of the wakes and them crashing up against the shore than doing anything else. We spend almost an hour out on the rocks before we headed back. That was the end of our site seeing for the day. That night we were on our own for dinner and a group of us decided to go to The Washington and see it for ourselves. We ended up at a very awkwardly located table in the center of the floor and across from us was the man who was providing the music for the night. He played a bunch of American tunes on his guitar and sang (he was actually really good) and being a bunch of Americans, we sang along with him. I think he appreciated how much we enjoyed his performance and it was a great end to our night; well my night. I ended up going back to the hotel while the rest of the girls went back to the Garrick to split a round of half pints.

This post is really long and I haven’t even covered all of what we did on Saturday so I think I’ll put it in a separate one because we did A LOT on that day as well. I’ll get started on that once I put this up.

With Love Always

Happy Valentine's Day

Though the red heart has become the traditional symbol of Valentine's Day, there may be reason to also consider the shamrock, for there is an Irish connection. St. Valentine is known as the "Patron Saint of Lovers." And in Ireland ~ this love is honored in a very special way.

While there's no definitive written account of St. Valentine and his life in the third century, his Irish connection is more recent - and documented. In the year 1836, Pope Gregory XVI sent a gift to the Carmelite Church on Whitefriar Street, Dublin, in recognition of the work of the church's former prior, Father John Spratt, who was widely recognized as a very holy man.

The gift was a relic of a Christian martyr: a small gold-bound casket containing the earthly remains of St. Valentine. The relic had been exhumed from the cemetery of St. Hyppolytus on the Tiburtine Way in Rome, placed in a golden casket, and brought to Dublin, where it was enshrined in the little church with great ceremony.

This year, on February 14th, as it has in every year since, the casket containing the Saint's mortal remains will be carried in solemn procession to the high altar of the Carmelite Church for a special Mass dedicated to young people and those in love.

For those wishing to visit St. Valentine's Shrine in Dublin, the church is located between Aungier Street and Wexford Street, just a few minutes walk west of St Stephen's Green.If you're lucky enough to be there, this little known Dublin church also sells Valentine's Day cards. Truly, it can be said - these are the genuine article!

For the most part Valentine's Day is celebrated the same as it is the world over, with candy hearts, chocolates, flowers and cards.

Have a wonderful Valentine's Day everyone.

With Love Always

P.S.- I'll get around to writing all about my weekend in Belfast soon :-)

Oh those are pints, not cups...

So I get these random fruit/veggie cravings every once in a while and this past week it was carrots. I went through about 2 bags of full sized carrots in 3 days, granted I had to finish them before leaving for Belfast, but still, that’s a lot of carrots. I was getting caught up on super bowl ads actually before writing this and the Doritos commercial where the guy is trying to turn his wife into a dorito made me think of how many carrots I’ve had. Honestly I don’t think it would be that amusing to be turned into whatever you eat. First of all, that would be a lot of different things to turn into and also, if you turn into a food, what can you do? Yes I’ve actually really thought about that and realized that you really can’t do anything. I’m also really curious as to how the saying “you are what you eat” came about and why, because it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Anyways, besides my slight obsession with carrots this week, it has been a fairly interesting few days.

Sunday night the girls all came over and we pretty much just took over the kitchen. Rebecca lives really far from the rest of us so it’s really inconvenient for her to walk all the way over to us just for dinner and then leave. So to make it worth her while we decided to bake a bunch of desserts and stuff before making dinner. We made apple pie from scratch and then cinnamon roll cookies. It was so much fun! For one thing they use the metric system here I think (?) and when Colleen was measuring out the 2 cups of sugar, she actually measured out 2 pints. Haha it was a lot of sugar, but we’re at least smart enough to realize that and we found actual measuring cups and scooped out what we needed and put the rest back in the bag. I don’t really know what we would have done if we didn’t catch that mistake before adding the sugar to the apples. But we mixed everything together and made the pie filling before really making a mess of my kitchen and rolling out the dough on the counter. When it can be used to make a mess and end up everywhere, flour is one of my favorite things to use. Rebecca wanted to roll out the dough so she was really the only person who ended up with a bunch of flour on her, but it was fun. For people who have seen The Lord of The Rings you will understand the reference to the white hand of Saruman, which we marked Rebecca with and she kept it for the entire night. They tried to mark me as well, but I was not having it. The pie got marked though, along with Colleen’s globs of cinnamon (she is very unsuccessful when it comes to sprinkling things) and we also used the knife to make a clover in the top. After the pie was done and in the oven Rafa joined us as we were making cinnamon rolls; except the oven didn’t really seem to want to cook them properly so they turned into cinnamon roll cookies. Either way they were really good. AS the pie was finishing up Clair and Katie joined us and it was time to start dinner. I was finally going to make the spaghetti and meatballs for everyone. I don’t think that the stove is very appreciative of me anymore after that night. I had to use all 4 burners at once. One of the girls doesn’t eat red meat so instead of adding the meat balls directly to the sauce they went into a separate pot that I had put a little bit of the sauce in. So there were 2 burners with sauce on them, one with the spaghetti, and the other one I was using to make the meat balls. It was quite the cooking experience, I can’t say I’ve ever done that before, but nothing was burned, so I consider it to be a successful attempt. As much as I know how to make all of these things, I have a meal plan at school so I don’t cook, and at home I usually just assist in making meals. There are only a few times where I’ll be asked to actually make dinner on my own, which is perfectly fine, but I usually end up having to call my mom at some point to make sure I’m doing it all correctly. It was a successful cooking night though and when dinner was ready we actually set the table and did like a family style time dinner. It was cute.

After dinner we did pie and ice cream while planning our trip to London in a few weeks. We finished putting a lot of that together in time for one of the girls to turn on the super bowl. Don’t get me wrong, I watch football, but it’s really only college football that I follow because of the UCMB, so I wasn’t that interested at all in the super bowl. Actually the great part about the super bowl is seeing the ridiculous commercials that they come up with just for that one night. Ireland though does not show the same things that ESPN or US sports channels do and there were no commercials. Actually there were 3 commentators who spent the entire time repeating everything that had happened so far in the game. Being 5 hours ahead it was getting really late for us and we had school the next day, so after the first quarter most of the girls left. By half time everyone had already gone back home and I only stayed to watch the half time show because I was actually interested in who was performing. It wasn’t terrible, and I’m pretty sure that I appreciated it more for the fact that it was the only entertaining thing that had happened since I started “watching” the game. Once half time was over I finished cleaning up the kitchen and then went to bed just to be woken up at 8 am by a false fire alarm. It was a great start to Monday, a false fire alarm 4 hours before my first class. It went off for about an hour and we were all just standing outside waiting for the firemen to get there. It worries me a lot of times when an alarm goes off here because they don’t seem to have a real sense of urgency about anything. If there was a real fire I feel like the building would be going up in flames long before the firemen got there. They actually don’t respond right away. What happens is the receptionist gets a call saying where the alarm went off and she goes and finds the people who live in that apartment to see what it’s all about. If it’s nothing, well I’m not sure what happens, because the girls who lived in the apartment seemed completely clueless as to why their smoke detector was the one that went off. So the receptionist had to go back and tell the fire department that it was from an unknown cause and then they sent over guys to check it out. It just kind of blows my mind how that whole system works. Either way going back to sleep once we were allowed to go inside was not possible. So I think I read, I really don’t know, my memory has been really foggy lately.

Monday night I went out with the girls to listen to traditional Irish music at a pub. I’ll be really surprised if I’m not sick by the end of this week, so far dinner has been either fried foods, or just a lot of food. At the pub they go around and give out free finger food which consists of chips (fries), white pudding, onion rings, sausages, and chicken nuggets. Then afterwards we all went out to a kebab shop and had dinner. So a lot of fried food Monday night, but the music was great. It was so cool to see all of their different instruments. I can and can’t tell you what some of them were. There were flutes, and actually one of the guys plays left-handed and holds the flute opposite from how we are taught to here in the US. There was also a guitar player, a lot of fiddlers, a guy playing the Irish version of bag  pipes, and a few other instruments that I can’t remember or don’t know. It was really awesome though to go out and just listen to jigs and reels that they had learned. Traditional Irish music is learned orally so they have it all memorized and they actually improvise from the base tune a lot. The music is actually all about the way that it is ornamented and that’s what makes it very unique to each musician. Someone would just start a song and others would join in and they would all be playing the same tune but in their own way, and it all fit together so well. It was incredible! I’ll have to record one of the concerts I go to sometime cause they are certainly worth listening to.

Tuesday was an uneventful day, at least from what I can remember. Actually it really was, after all of my classes I went back to my room and slept for a few hours. Wednesday night I went out with the girls to celebrate Katie’s birthday. We went back to Wagamama’s because half of us had buy 1 get 1 free coupons for a meal. We had dinner there and then went back to Katie’s and pretty much demolished a little chocolate fudge cake. It’s really true that if you put chocolate in front of girls they will eat it all. When the cake was done cooking it was just put on the table in front of us and we all just kind of took some. Ironic part of the night, we were watching the Irish version of The Biggest Loser at the same time as we were eating the cake. Once the episode was over we actually all returned home because a few of us still had to pack for this weekend’s trip. We’re heading to Northern Ireland/Belfast until Sunday. It’ll certainly be a great time, but I’ve still got to pack so this is all for now.

With Love Always