*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:
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!
Slán go fóill!
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