I've been "verbed".

It's happened. I've been verbed by an Irish classmate.

At this point in the semester, I've had around 6 weeks of classes... which means I've had plenty of time to familiarize myself with the striking differences between the Irish and American school systems - or at least the differences between NUI Galway and Macalester (I'll try not to generalize here).  While I've gotten used to not having any written assignments to turn in every day (it's still weird, but I suppose it's nice to have a break), I'm still not really accustomed to the whole hyper-casual attitude toward academics. For example, I don't think I'll ever get over the fact that students rush the College Bar and start putting back pints at 2 in the afternoon... even when they still have classes later in the day.

One of the main differences seems to come from the fact that the Irish students grew up in strictly lecture-based classes that discouraged asking questions or contributing their own opinions... which is about as opposite as you can get to my own school experience growing up. It doesn't really matter in my lecture-based classes, but it's definitely noticeable in the smaller seminar courses (around 10-15 people): from what I've seen in my own seminar (Milton's Paradise Lost) and from what my friends say of theirs, it's like pulling teeth to get any of them to say anything about the reading, let alone even doing all of the reading. I mean, my instructor asks us at the beginning of each class how far we are in Paradise Lost and she's actually happy if they're only 2-3 books behind! Their concept of in-class presentations is also so radically different from ours. My friends who are taking different English seminars have told me about the presentations they've seen so far: they've all said that the Irish students just sit in their chair and speed-read a preprinted summary of the reading. For a 10 minute presentation, they often only get to 2 or 3 minutes.

Well, last night I had to give a 10-15 minute in-class presentation on Book IV of Paradise Lost, and I was the first person in our class scheduled to go. (I just wanted to get it over with and they all had midterms due this week, which the visiting students don't have.)  When I was preparing for it over the weekend, I kept wanting to put together handouts or something but I had been told that it's really not necessary or expected, so I resisted. I definitely did not plan on pre-writing a speech that only summarized Book IV though, even if that is the apparent norm. I went into class with a rough outline of notes and line references for myself, and just started talking. I offered a brief synopsis, but then spent the rest of the time analyzing Satan's character development and the portrayal of Adam & Eve and gender dynamics. I thought Book IV was an especially interesting part of the poem, so I really enjoyed analyzing it and talking about it.

At the end of the class, the two students who are scheduled to present together next week were asking how long each of them would have to talk for. They were told between 10 to 15 minutes each, to which one of then responded, "I can probably manage 10 minutes... but I definitely won't be pulling a Chelsea or anything." I said I didn't think I had talked for that long, but they just laughed and said no, it was a good presentation (the teacher agreed, so yay) but now they'd have to work harder to make their presentation like mine.

So, I guess it's nice that they were impressed by the presentation, but also supremely embarrassing. Because I mean really... I've already been turned into a verb!

My Belfast Excursion

Last weekend (the 3rd to the 6th of February), IFSA Butler (my study abroad program) took us to Belfast. We left Thursday morning by bus, arrived at our hotel in the city almost 7 hours later, when we were given a free dinner and then left to our own devices. I didn't think to take any pictures of the hotel, but if you're curious, it was the Jurys Inn. It was in a pretty convenient location (just a few blocks from the City Center) and had clean sheets and an abundant supply of hot water - so we were left with nothing to complain about. That first night after dinner, we ("we" being my core group of six friends and me) hung out in the hotel playing a few games of Mao (card game) before heading out and hitting a pub. Ian made fun of me when I suggested we find a Trad bar because he didn't think they had them in Northern Ireland. Well, he was wrong. They do. Some other friends recommended a place called Brennan's, and their directions just told us to walk until we saw a "rather ornately decorated saloon" and the bar would be across the street. We thought the directions sounded a little ridiculous, but they turned out to be very helpful - I don't think I've ever seen such an "ornately decorate saloon". We later found out that The Crown Bar saloon is rather famous and peeked in, but it was too crowded to stay. At Brennan's though, I tried a light beer called Carling (which I thought was fairly tasty) but didn't end up staying out too late... what can I say, I was lame and exhausted and we had to be up and dressed and breakfasted by 8:30 the next morning for a wild day of outdoor adventuring.

The "outdoor adventuring" began with a 2-hour bus ride out to the coast. Our first stop was to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge in Antrim. We walked a little over a mile to get down to the bridge, crossed it in sets of 8 (it couldn't hold more than 8 people at a time!) and got to enjoy some thrilling views:

After our bridge-crossing adventure, we went on to see Dun Luce (castle ruins) up on a cliff's edge. They told us a crazy story about the whole kitchen falling down into the ocean one evening during a dinner party for a couple hundred people, taking the cook and servants down with it. There were no security guards or railings or barriers, so we were completely free to roam around, go up the old towers, and climb on the broken walls. Here are some photos of the place, including one of a miniature model of how the castle used to look and one of me striking a ridiculous pose in some random corner:

We then went off to lunch at a hotel in a boardwalk-like town (which, I must say, looked very odd to have in a place that's always gray and raining). The food was pretty good - I believe I had chicken in some sort of cream sauce with rice, vegetables, a tomato-and-cucumber salad and let's not forget the garlic bread which basically tasted like toast spread with a scampi sauce. (Om nom nom.)

After the food, we headed to one of Northern Ireland's token site-seeing spots: the Giant's Causeway. It's some sort of geological phenomenon caused by volcanic activity ~60 million years ago. It's a little field of hexagonal and octagonal rocks jutting up along the coastline. It's called The Giant's Causeway because of the myth they developed to describe the odd rock formations. From what I can remember of the myth, two enemy giants, Finn and Benandonner, who lived on opposite sides of the sea decided to duke it out in a trial of strength. Finn built a causeway across the sea so the other giant could come to fight, but Finn worked so hard he passed out on the causeway when he finished. Finn wife heard Benandonner approaching on the causeway, so she took her husband and dressed him up like a sleeping baby. When Benandonner arrived the wife told him to be quiet and not to wake the sleeping baby and when he saw the size of the baby, he said he didn't want to stick around to see how big the father must be and so he fled back along the causeway, breaking up all the stones as he went. ... And apparently when giants run across causeways, they break the stones into perfect hexagonal shapes. Who knew?

I thought it would be a really awesome place to go for a picnic on a dry day - you could sit on the stones and use some of the taller ones as little tables or set up a little buffet... unfortunately, we weren't in Northern Ireland long enough to go back and give that a try. I took a ton of pictures of the place, but somehow the sheer awesomeness of the Causeway somehow wasn't translating into the photos. Here are just a few though, so you can get the idea:

I also tried taking a short video because I thought it might help to see/hear the roaring waves come crashing up against the shoreline and breaking on the rocks...but it doesn't really translate too well in film either, and my camera battery was starting to die at this point, so it's a little blurry and short. At least it's something though!

When we finally got back to our hotel in Belfast, we were pretty exhausted and decided to take it easy for a couple hours before dinner. I took a nice long bath and the water stayed hot the whole time; it was so luxurious. I looked through a few guide books to see what the restaurant options were like in the city (Chloé, I can't tell you how tempted I was to call you to ask you for restaurant advice... it's always my first inclination when I'm in a new city, even if you've never even been to that city.) It was difficult without anything like a Zagat or Citysearch or OpenTable (we had no internet) but I did find several places in our guide books that sounded pretty exciting. In the end though, everyone [else] decided we should just walk out of the hotel and see where we end up. Heading out into a new city on an empty stomach without any set dinner plans terrified me a little bit (no reservations for 7 people, ah!) but I sucked it up and just went with it since I was outnumbered. (I'm not the only one in my little group of friends who craves planning though - my roommate Katie is always very much in favor of having at least a backup plan in lieu of complete spontaneity, but like I said, we were still outnumbered.) It all wound up working out though - we walked for a little while and eventually stumbled upon a crazy eclectic-looking restaurant called Harlem Café and dinner was actually really good. I had linguine with mushrooms and smoked chicken in a garlicy white wine sauce and then a mixed berry crumble with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert:

We stumbled out of Harlem over two hours later very full and with much lighter wallets. No one really felt like make their wallets any lighter, so we opted out of hitting a pub again in favor of going back to the hotel to relax in PJs and play more cards. We wanted to get a couple bottles of wine to bring with us to the hotel, but all the liquor stores were closed by 10pm so we gave up on the wine idea. Five of us went back to Katie's and my room and the rest of the night was still pretty fun. We exhausted all of the non-gambling card games we knew how to play (Mao, President, BS, Egyptian Rat Screw, Spoons, Speed, War, Nertz, etc etc.....) and I suggested we just go ask the concierge if he had any suggestions (honestly, not having easy access to internet via wireless or someone's iPhone really complicates things!). We went down to the lobby in our PJs and socks and asked the concierge if he could recommend something new and he described an Irish version of ERS and then sent us over to the security guard hanging out in the lobby, thinking he might have better ideas. He was talking to some young guy who suggested War (boring!) and then he started describing a way to play Hearts with five people. It was a fun little lobby adventure - our friend Jessie was extremely pleased that we didn't have internet access and were forced to go have odd conversations with the Northern Irish hotel staff.

Saturday was much less structured: we had a Black Taxi Political Tour of West Belfast, but then the rest of the day we were left free to explore the city. The tour was really chilling, but also really interesting. They took us to the separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods where the Troubles began and they talked about the history and showed us the political murals that practically cover the city. I was so shocked to hear that the walls and gates that separate the Catholic and Protestant communities are still in effect: I didn't realize that they still lock all the gates to prevent anyone from crossing sides every night. Here are some photos of the murals (the purple one that has "Chloé" and other names on it is the Peace Wall - the tallest point in the wall dividing West Belfast - and everyone who comes to see it signs it. We saw messages/signatures from a bunch of famous people, including the Dali Lama, Bill Clinton, and Bono.)

After the tour, we spent several hours just wandering around the city. We stopped for lunch at a cute little sandwich place called Grüb and then did lots of window shopping. We found a really neat-looking outdoor mall called Victoria Square where they actually had a frozen yogurt place (!!!) - the first one I've seen at all since leaving the States. I insisted we take a shopping break for some dessert so we all went into the Yogen Früz which was very much like a Pinkberry wannabe. Not quite as delicious (and really, what is?) but it was still pretty fabulous. I had fresh mangoes and raspberries on the plain frozen yogurt and it filled me with so many endorphins. I really wish they had a similar thing in Galway. Oh well! Anyway, we finished the day with more city-exploring, dinner at an Irish version of Qdoba (where I had a yummy vegetable fajita for under £3) and then a pint of beer for dessert at another pub. 

All-in-all, I'd say it was a pretty full and successful weekend and I'm really glad we got to go. And now, I must be off to class (Development of the Castle in Medieval Europe!) but then I'll work on my post about my Irish immersion weekend - so check back soon! 

Slán!

Socs Stories*

*NOTE: I'm just going to make this really long and try to catch up on as much as I can in this one post. Sorry in advance for the bombardment of information!

At the beginning of the semester, we had Clubs and Socs Fairs ("Socs" for Societies, but pronounced "Socks"), and I signed up for a bunch of things. I figured that it'd probably be a lot like my club experience at Macalester - I'd see lots of shiny and exciting looking organizations at the Org Fair, sign up for their mailing list, and then delete all the emails and only go to the meetings for one or two of the groups. With that in mind, I joined the Equestrian and the Archery Clubs; the Writers Soc; the Film Soc; the Lotus Soc; the International Students Soc; and then, of course, the French Soc. And nowwww I shall share a little bit about my experiences with each:

I signed up for the Equestrian and the Archery Clubs because (a) they sounded awesome and  (b) Macalester offers neither of those things. The Equestrian Club competes nationally and internationally, but they also said they offer riding lessons and host the occasional overnight camping/trekking trip. I've no desire to compete, but the latter two sounded pretty fun. Nothing's officially started with that though, so I don't actually have any stories about it - yet. If things do get going, I'll be sure to update about my horsie adventures.

I've been to the Archery club, however, a bunch of times now. My friends/ housemates Katie and Alissa joined with me, so we all enjoy going and sort of making fools of ourselves while pretending we're pretty badass. The club meets once a week in the gym, where they set up a bunch of targets, string some bows, and hand us quivers and bracers. The members who actually know what they're doing usually alternate watching us newbies, but the last few times they pretty much left us to our own devices unless we asked for help. I can't really handle the bows that are much more than 20lbs resistance, but as long as I can draw the string back, it's pretty sweet. I got a bullseye the last time I went and I think I'm getting better with my form (I'm hoping to be able to fire repeatedly without accidentally attacking my chest with the string when I shoot - and trust me, that's actually really painful). I don't have any photos of us actually at practice, but my friends have taken several now of me randomly striking Archery poses wherever we are. Here's one of my favorites, taken on the grounds of the Kylemore Abbey in Connemara:

Epic, no? I really really want to find a place to keep practicing archery over the summer in Rhinebeck. I'd like to keep it up :)

Okay, moving on to the Socs now: I haven't actually gone to any meetings for the Writers Soc or the Film Soc, but I did submit a short story for one of the school publications. I'm not quite sure what they did with it though. Maybe I'll try going to some of the Writers Soc meetings later in the semester, if I get struck with a jolt of creative energy. (But in all likelihood, probably not.) I only joined the Film Soc because I knew that they were hosting a trip to Berlin to see a film festival for a ridiculously low price... unfortunately all the spots for the trip filled up before I could register for it. Oh well - two of my housemates are going (they left at 3am this morning!) and they can tell me all about it when they get back. The Club shows several different movies a week, so I'm sure at some point during the semester I'll end up going to see some free flicks. Hasn't happened yet though ...

I've had more success participating with the rest of the Socs I joined. The Lotus Soc is their Yoga Club, so I was able to sign up for Thursday night "Intermediate" yoga classes. I was sooo excited when I first heard I'd be able to keep doing yoga while I'm here this semester, and I actually really like the instructor. He's great, and we've already done a bunch of poses I hadn't tried/seen before. And hey, yoga instructions with an Irish accent! My only problem is the timing: I don't have any classes on Thursdays other than this yoga one, so if we ever decide to travel on the weekend it means leaving Thursday morning and missing yoga. At least I can make some of the classes, which is better'n nothing.

The International Students Soc took us on a bus tour of the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher for a discounted price (€10 instead of €15). I meant to blog about it, but never got around to it...so I guess can do a very belated recount of that experience right now. The trip was a couple Saturdays ago, on a particularly gray and rainy day. We were worried that the weather would ruin the experience, but it turned out that all the mist and drizzling added a sort of eerie and mystical (seriously no pun intended) effect to everything. The cliffs seemed especially majestic, as if they were floating on clouds. And it wasn't too brutally cold. (I'll show some photos of the trip here, but for more pictures with people in them, just look at the Facebook album)

We wound up having the same guide we had the previous Saturday for our bus tour of Connemara - Paul even remembered us, and still referred to me as "New York". He's a funny fellow, who apparently loves making ridiculous jokes to entertain all his tourists and he certainly made the trips more amusing for us. Some of my favorite and most memorable tour quotes from him include: "As you can see, we invented whiskey before we invented roads"; "They're not really speed limits, they're more like dares"; "You're college students; money's for beer, not food"; and "You get these tall, dark, handsome Spanish horses with the cute accents and a name like Miguel... the Irish horses never stood a chance"- telling us about the Connemaran ponies that are a mix between Spanish horses and native Irish bog horses.

But alright, back to the actual tour. Our first stop was a place called the Burren, also known as the Land of the Fertile Rock. I can't say I remember the specific geology too well, but I'm pretty sure he described the region as being full of porous limestone, so that all the rain seeps through the rocks and creates networks of underground rivers. The Burren is well known for its diverse flora - it contains something like 75% of the plant species of Ireland, as well as plants found in Mediterranean and Arctic regions - but unfortunately none of the flowers were really in bloom in early February. It was still incredibly breathtaking though as we hiked up the little rocky mountains:

When we finished the Walking Tour, we were led into the house/gift shop of the people who own the farmland we just explored. The guy went in, put on an apron, and told us to get some tea or coffee or some of his mother's homemade apple pie or other treats and then head into the next room to sit by the fireplace and enjoy. (How quaint!) Since I'm admittedly a bit of a snob when it comes to pie crusts (no one can top Mom's or Chloé's), I wasn't going to try the apple pie, buuut right next to it they had a Chocolate hazelnut cake with a Nutella frosting that looked worth trying. And it was definitely worth trying - not nearly as moist and flavorful as the Hazelnut cake Chloé made for my birthday a few years back, but still pretty delicious and you really just can't go wrong with a Nutella frosting. The girl who made/sold the cake came into the room with the fireplace where we were eating and asked if she could take photos of us for their website. She took a few of just me eating the cake (I think probably because I was wearing my outrageous hot pink cat hat) and asked if it was the best cake I'd ever had. I tried to be diplomatic and said it was possibly the best I've had outside of my family but she wanted to film me saying it and asked me to cut out my disclaimer. It was at least the best tasting dessert I've had since I've been in Ireland (I've been sadly disappointed with all of the scones and muffins I've tried everywhere so far). Anyway, this was the cake:

After some lunch we finally made it to the Cliffs of Moher, which were just incredible. We had about an hour to walk around and just be amazed. Here are just a few photos of the cliffs in the mist:

Alright, now before I can start wrapping up this post, I have to briefly address my experience with the French Soc. I originally joined hoping for a chance to speak/hear some French since the only language I'm studying this semester is Irish and I don't want to get too rusty. I got worried though when I heard from a friend's rather arrogant housemate that the members of the Soc don't actually speak French to one another. When I asked why, he said that he just hated speaking French with non-native speakers because they aren't good enough and it is just frustrating for him and not helpful for them (keep in mind that this guy is Irish and not a native speaker himself, though he did work in France for a year). 

Despite what he said, I figured that I'd at least go to the first meeting of the semester to check it out. The Soc meets every other Tuesday at a little trad bar (a pub where they play live traditional Irish music) called Massimo's, and the first Tuesday was an utter fiasco. I left the apartment with a rough idea of the pub's whereabouts - I had looked it up online and got some mixed and slightly confusing directions, but figured since Galway really isn't that big, I should be able to find it. Guess what? I was wrong. I wandered around in some cold rain for nearly an hour looking for this place, and when I finally wound up at our campus, I decided to give up and go home. You can imagine that I was fairly annoyed. 

This past Tuesday was the next French Soc meeting, and since I actually found the pub last week when I was walking around with some friends, I really had no excuse to not try again. I was really pretty tired and my friends were going out to a movie, so I was definitely tempted to pass it up, but all I could think was that Mom would call me lame and then be disappointed in me for not trying to meet more Irish people. I've also really been missing French this past month and a half (I don't know anyone here with whom I can really speak it) so I really wanted the chance to hear it and use it, at least for one evening. So I got dressed up and embarked on the 40 minute walk from the apartment to the pub (I found out on the way home that I had taken a longer way - surprise surprise). When I got to Massimo's I realized I had absolutely no way of knowing who in the bar was part of the French Soc so my first instinct was to immediately go hide in the bathroom. I finally decided to  just ask a bartender if she knew who the French peeps were since they supposedly meet there every other week, but she didn't actually know. After standing dumbly in the back room for a few minutes, I finally heard some French and figured that must be them (thank goodness my friend's obnoxious Irish housemate was wrong!). Once I found them, it turned out to be a really great night. 

Half of the people I spoke with were actually French people who live and work in Galway - so not students at the University, which surprised me since I thought it was a society for the University students. (But there were Irish students there, too, and their accents were actually quite good). I'm always nervous meeting new people, but everyone was rather friendly and excited/surprised when they asked "D'où viens-tu?" and I said "New York" - surprised I think because they said they haven't met too many Americans in Galway who can speak French (or Americans who speak a second language at all). Several of them, both French and Irish, complimented my accent and asked how much time I'd spent in France or if I was half-French or something (which you can imagine made me blush in the bestest of ways). We talked about what we were each doing (working/studying) in Galway, or where they had all been in the States before, or where they were from in France. It was oh so nice to just hear it spoken around me, let alone getting to use it again myself. Toward the end of the night I started talking with an Irish guy who was a student in Galway but also in the Irish military  and had spent a year training in France and then with a French language instructor who was there drinking it up with her students. All-in-all, lots of fun and I will definitely go back to the next meeting! 

In the meantime, I'm going to go work on my other belated blog-post about my trip to Northern Ireland last weekend, and then to do some laundry so I have clean clothes for my trip this weekend: we're going to stay with an Irish-speaking family in an all Irish-speaking town for some serious Irish language immersion (eep!). I'll be sure to blog about it when I get back.

Slán go fóill!