The First Weekend

Saturday was what you could call an excellent day. We woke up and Matt and I bought waterproof pants for hiking club/ring of Kerry trip. Then we went to the Iona society. Today’s trip left at 10am for the town of Youghal and then Ardmore. We went to Youghal first, and it was amazing. If I ever get to live in Ireland, I want to live in a town like Youghal. The air was clean. The water was not full of crap and garbage like in Cork. The town had a main street with a ton of shops. We had a tour guide talk to us about stuff, but I cannot remember too much of what she said. These stupid dumb Valley girls that were on the trip also kept talking, taking pictures of each other doing ridiculous High School Musical type poses, and generally making asses of themselves. They showed little respect to the people saying interesting information. I myself tried hard to pay attention and understand the heritage nature of the trip, but it was difficult! It was our first excursion into Real Ireland! The Ireland I had pictured all along and had thought didn’t exist when I stepped off the bus on January 2^nd. Walking around Youghal, we learned about some bastard Brit that was mean to the Irish. Then we went to Ireland’s oldest church that still functions! It was amazing to see the graveyard, with all of the Celtic crosses and all of the history. Youghal was a medieval town, and it made me feel alive and interested. I took like 300 pictures on this day trip. I could have spent 5 more hours taking pictures of the graves and church, but we only had a hour and a half. Then, we went to Ardmore. I really enjoy driving through the Irish countryside. We saw cows and sheep and goats and everything! The Irish drive incredibly slow! I bet Ardmore was about 15 miles away from cork, but it took 45 minutes to drive. I think the top speed is 60km. Then, we got to Ardmore. Here, we saw a beach and cliffs! I squealed. We walked around the cliffs and all over them. Some bolder people in the group found a hobbit hole in a cliff, but I didn’t get a chance to go in. Matt also almost lost his camera! Also, I was starting to resent the rest of the group (besides us), which as i mentioned consisted of idiotic girls. The total touristy and stereotypical spoiled rich white girls would imitate whatever we did! If we climbed up a hill, they would be like “ZOMG let’s get a picture of us running up the hill like they did!” One example of why i hated them: as we walked up the road, there was a very touristy anchor on the side. It had benches around it and was meant for tourists. I said “Not gonna take a picture of that touristy anchor” and immediately, a dumb girl behind me said “OMG let’s take a picture of that anchor it’s so cute!!” I hate rich girls. But we had to keep going and put up with their vacuous comments to see the thing Iona wanted us to, naturally. The end of the walk was at this cool old church that was 8^th century. It had “ohm” or something writing on it from pre-Christians. I wish I could have retained more information about the stuff, but it was all so cool I just wanted to photograph like a Korean tourist! Seriously, Korean tourists are everywhere. They take pictures like a chain smoker; one right after another. Of everything. I mean, I did take a picture of a pile of horse shit today, but the Koreans would have taken at least 3 of it! (With different exposures and ISO). Maybe that is a tad racist, but it is true. Anyway, the walk around the cliffs was so damn refreshing! There was wind, and ocean breeze, and the sun was low in the sky. It was perfect. I can’t believe we only shelled out 5 Euros for that trip. I finally got to experience the Ireland that I dreamed about, and I cannot wait to go see other parts of the country. The End.

Then later, Matt and the two Hannahs and I fried up some potatoes, onions, garlic, and ground beef and had a feast. It was wonderful. I went to bed, due to getting up early for hiking on Sunday, and Matt, Andy, Chelsea, and Mattie went to the pub and talked to Tom Barry*. Shit, I missed it again.

*Tom Barry is this old drunken Irishman that Matt and Andy discovered who is hilarious. Read their blogs for more detail.

Well Sunday sure started off with a bang! Andy and I left at 7:30 for the hiking club. I was concerned about being in good enough shape to climb the Paps, and that i overpacked. On the way there, we walked by this white building. I saw a dark object and did a double take. I picked it up, and it was an Iphone! Whoa! It had almost no battery and was coated with ice. Some poor soul had lost their 300 dollar phone! I put in in my bag, and we decided to take it to leeside. If we left it there, it would have been stolen. So we get to the place where the hiking club meets, and there are about 30 people there. Then the leader comes and says the bus got snowed in, so the hike is canceled! Damn! I went to bed early and missed Tom Barry for no reason. So we walked back to leeside. I defrosted the phone, and waited for someone to call. The phone was password protected, so we could not find the contacts list and call “Mom”, who had tried to call twice during the night. I waited and waited, and eventually got a call on the phone! It was someone who sounded Spanish! I figured it was n exchange student that was drunk and stupid. I told them that we could meet at the north gate of UCC at 11:30 and they could get the phone. Well I walk there and the person waiting to pick it up is a middle-aged Irishman! Guess I was off on that one. He said that it was his son’s phone that I found. His son was partying at a club last night, when someone spiked his drink with poison! The kid had to be rushed to the hospital and was currently there, recovering. Someone had jacked his phone when he was collapsed on the ground! Luckily the thief must have gotten discouraged by the password and thrown the phone on the windowsill, and then the rest is history. The Irishman sounded nervous the whole story and I would be too if my son was poisoned. He thanked me very much for being a good person, and said “have a drink on me” and gave me ten Euro. I shook his hand and walked away feeling pretty happy, and thankful that I could help. So the story turned out to have a happy ending. If I wouldn’t have gone to the bus stop before everyone else was awake, the kid’s phone would have been stolen again, and probably not returned. The End.

Irish Cultural Night

On Thursday night some of us went to Iona for an Irish Cultural Night. We had free Guinness, (which I do not think is the best beer ever) and talked to a guy named Tim from Britain. He told us about the best pubs, and the parts of Ireland, and a bunch of cool info. He said that the people from Dublin are basically just faux-British, and I asked him if there are prejudices in Ireland like the ones in the USA, where the urbanites look down upon the rural folks or the northerners think that everyone in the south is a racist hick. He said that the urban Irish call the rural people “Culchies” and said it’s like the N-word; the rural people use it to describe themselves. We talked to him about accents too, and he said people develop their accents by the time they are 7 years old. The other cool thing was that everyone we meet, Irish or other American, loves our Minnesotan accents and Minnesota culture. It's hilarious, and a good way to make new friends. The Iona society had a picture of a MN license plate with "U BETCHA" on it, and the book How to Talk Minnesotan. I am glad we are not from a boring state that nobody has heard about. We then sang some Irish folk songs with the people there, and left. One of the songs involved a mother stabbing her baby in the heart with a knife and getting hanged. I love Irish songs.

I am so cheap.

I think my favorite part of Ireland as of yet is saving insane amounts of money on food. It's awful, I know. But listen!
I got 3 frozen pizzas, a jar of honey, a large jar of pasta sauce, a pound of butter, vegetable soup, 3 bananas, a large box of deli lunch meat, a huge thing of Nutella off-brand, and two pounds of pasta tonight. And it came to 15.50 Euro. Holy crap, that's like 20 bucks. For all that stuff. I literally was squealing after leaving the store.
Tesco + Recessions = <3

Orientation

*I have been using 24 hour clock for about a year now. I like it a bunch. I had set my computer and phone to it last winter because I thought it was cool. Little did i know it would help the adjustment to Irish units of anything be practically nonexistent, thanks to the Chemistry department making me know the Metric system already.

First thing on the 4th was waking up at the ungodly early hour of 815 in order to be at orientation. Breakfast consisted of toast and porridge. The porridge was very tough, because I couldn’t figure out how to get the damn microwave to work right. Oh well. Irish appliances seem to be fickle and risky to use. Anyway, so we all marched towards ucc to start orientation. On the walk over, we saw three of the most striking stark gingers around! It was a dad with a long beard and two little girls, all of them were so ginger it blinded me. I loved it. We were paraded into a huge building that was nice by Irish standards, but meh compared to CSBSJU. I liked it. We got a bunch of talks about clubs, safety, immigration, and professors trying to convince us to take their classes. There was a Garda officer that said “My name is Ken O'Donnell…..(extremely long pause)...and I am your friend”. Very funny. Ate the soup and sandwich thing at the cafe for 2 euro. I think I may try to make my own lunches, because I am extremely cheap. At 1930, we went to a student social at this place called the New Bar. It was dumb in my opinion, because it was basically an American dance place/bar. I'm here for the dingy old pubs. The other groups from America all mingled to some extent, but we kind of sat and talked amongst ourselves. Matt talked to courtni and sarah the whole time. I couldn’t wait to leave. We went to a pub on the North Side of the Lee later that night to watch mattie play in a session. It was called the Sin E and it was really the way that I think an Irish pub should look. It was cool to watch mattie play the trad music, but we all admitted we were kind of jealous that she is having such a real experience that the rest of us cannot have. They had 8 musicians; 3 flutes, 2 fiddles, a guitar, a whistle, and a bodhran. Some drunk guy also played the spoons. The bartender told us that if he accidentally sells alcohol to a minor, the Garda would show up and shut him down. There are many new regulations that are really hurting the pubs. The smoking ban was a huge one! It drove away many long-time customers. Another big problem is Tesco, which sells beer for 1 euro a pint. At a normal pub, a pint is about 3 to 5 euros. Matt said that apparently 1300 pubs closed down last year across Ireland, they cannot keep up with the cheapness of Tesco, and the recession, and the new rules. If the pubs die, it seems like the heart and soul of Ireland will, too. Sad…..

First Pub Visit

Yesterday we woke up at 1015 due to arrival of roommate from New York, named Billy. I would have liked to sleep for more, but i suppose 13 hours is enough. We went and walked around for a bit later, and found UCC. It is very large and very nice! The quadrangle is not as big as you would think from the pictures, but the Boole library is really big! I may have to spend a bunch of time in there reading books that I cannot find in America. Matt and I were standing outside of a food place when we were approached by a British girl for directions on how to get to the city park! She must have thought we were irish. But hey, that’s a good thing I guess. Also, when we walked towards UCC, we saw a pub that had a sign that said “No darts until the thongs are returned”.  It was really funny. I made some tesco brand pasta with tesco brand sauce, and it was actually pretty good. The whole dinner cost probably 1.2 euros. After dinner I saw Marybeth in the hall. She told us about going to a church where an irish guy was telling us about how barrack obama is destroying the usa. Seems interesting that the irish are up on American politics. Then we all went to the Franciscan Well for a pint. It was awesome. They had a guy on fiddle, one on guitar, and one on accordion that played live music. They mainly did blues and classic rock, like clapton’s crossroads, but we got to hear a couple irish tunes. It was really fun to sit and bs with the group, which actually consisted of all of the csbsju people except for 2. We decided that every Monday night we are going to hit up the Fran well. I had a Friar Weisse, one of the beers they brew at the Well, and it was really good! There was a hint of banana flavor, which added a nice touch. Right as we were getting ready for bed, Billy stumbles in completely trashed. We talked for a few minutes about our pub experiences, and he told us about how the Irish get pissed off if you tip them. And, they get offended if you order an irish car bomb. He then stumbled out to go get kebabs, saying “Damn European mother******s, don’t take a tip…”

I Arrived Without A Hitch

The "Day" of Jan 1st/Jan 2nd was quite a day. After lunch at an overpriced café, said goodbye to the family. Found out later they got a flat screen TV ten minutes after I left. Damn. So I found my way through the TSA, which was made me nervous. We boarded the plane to Amsterdam at 3pm. The sun set so quickly! My friend (and a soon-to-be recurring character of this blog) Mattie and I watched Despicable Me on the TV screen and then listened to the annoying sounds of Norwegian babbys crying. Also, I could not sleep. So we got to Amsterdam after a very long, leg-numbing break. They gave us really crappy cheese-in-biscuit sandwiches. We were there at 6 am and since only Andy and Matt slept on the plane, we were all varying degrees of tired. Our bodies told us to go to sleep even though our minds said that a full day was ahead of us. Crap, that sucked. So after wandering around the Amsterdam airport for 3 hours marveling at the 45 euro food places, we set off to Cork. I was trying to fall asleep the whole time, but to no avail. The damn radio was playing Christmas songs before and after takeoff/landing, so we had "Rockin around the Christmas tree" stuck in our heads. At last we got to cork! The best thing was, though, as we were landing, we got a glimpse of the beaches of Ireland and the curvy farms. It was very pretty. Then we unloaded our bags. Everyone must smoke in Ireland, because the airport employees instantly smoked after they exited the plane. Then, we paid 4.50 euro for a bus into the city. I couldn’t use the plastic card, so I luckily had that 5 euro bill with me. As we drove towards cork, I noticed something. There were palm trees occasionally scattered throughout the town. I thought that was interesting. But I also noticed something that my uncle mentioned earlier- Ireland was very commercial, like the United States. We saw Michelin, McDonalds, and Floor to Ceiling store. Later on, we saw GameStop and a bunch of familiar brands of cereal in Tesco, like Frosted flakes (called frosties). We got off the bus in Cork city, and I was immediately nervous. The place was freaking huge! The tallest buildings were only 10 stories or so, but the city just sprawls all over the place. I was thinking that this was going to be terribly difficult to adjust to. We found and ATM and I withdrew 150 Euros, which showed up as 200 dollars on my account. I guess that is a pretty good exchange rate, at 1.33 to 1. So then we started walking to the apartments. I noticed something about a bunch of the buildings in Cork- they seem to be kind of shabby and dingy. Is this because the Irish are poor, or do they just not take care of them? Huh. When we got to leeside, we met Josephine. She looked kind of like Joy Hemmesch! Mattie, Matt, Andy and I then decided to go get some groceries, as we were all starving. Tesco was just like a Cub foods here. A supermarket. The only differences were the huge liquor aisles and the brands of course.  I was pleasantly surprised at the prices! Milk was 1.44 euro for 2 liters, and bread was 1 euro for a loaf. I bought Peanut Butter, Jelly, Bread, Hand Soap, Hot Dogs, Shampoo, Pasta, Pasta Sauce, and Oatmeal. It came to 13.55 Euro! That’s like 18 bucks for all that stuff. And they weren’t even small sized things. I think the prices here may be even cheaper than the good old USA. After shopping we decided to get our phones activated. We wandered around looking for the store, and I noticed just how big and expensive the city center was. Cork is not different than Chicago in this regard; there are plenty of stores for rich people to go to. Walking around the city center may not be too high on my radar; I didn’t see much that appealed to me. If I am going to not be bored during this trip, I may have to go to the pub every night and volunteer/do University stuff a ton, along with take buses to other towns. I hope the outer parts of Cork are more interesting than the center, because it was all shops and expensive pubs that I don’t see myself going to, or taking pictures of for that matter. I hope my first impression is wrong, but Cork doesn’t seem to be the most photo-worthy place!