Week 7 - LET'S GO MUNSTER!!!

Tuesday(02/17/2009):

On Tuesday I finally made my way to a Knights of Columbanus meeting.  I ended up taking a bus this time, as their Grand Knight Seamus had suggested, so I didn't end up getting lost again.  I ended up finding Bru Columbanus (their meeting place) with no trouble this time, as I now understood that the hospital that Seamus had mentioned in his initial directions was the UCC Hospital in far West Cork, and not the general Cork hospital in far East Cork.  So being in the right section of the city helped a lot.  Bru Columbanus is a pretty interesting place to begin with.  It's a three story building, that has around 50 rooms in it that are all fully furnished and functional for indefinite living.  See Bru Columbanus is a sort of hostel, which is run, maintained, and paid for by the Cork Knights of Columbanus and whatever donations they receive, where anyone who lives more then 25 miles away from the UCC Hospital, and has a relative in the hospital can stay for €10 for as long as they need.  Whether it be a day, a month, a year, or till the world ends.  When I made my way up to the conference room of Bru Columbanus on the third floor, I was greeted by Seamus, and a man who immediately told me to call him "Pat" as soon as I called him Sir.  "I haven't got the money to be called Sir" he told me.  They were incredibly hospitable and eager to have me, and as the other members of the council showed up, I could somewhat understand why they seemed surprised by my presence.  There were only about 8 council members that showed up that night, including myself, and I was easily the youngest person there by about 45 years.  So needless to say the KOC council of Cork is not as young and thriving as the Knights of Columbus Illini Council 2782, and we most likely won't be having any paintball outings/bonding time with the Limerick Council (Illini Council guys, if you don't destroy Notre Dame I don't know if I can return to the U of I, but I'm incredibly jealous of how much of a good time you'll all have.)  The meeting was also a little less interesting then the U of I council meetings generally are, as the majority of it was discussing where would be the best places to put crucifixes in Bru Columbanus.  So I felt very proud of Illini Council 2782 as we are very active in the community at the U of I and really do some good work, so props to our great leadership and Grand Knight, Mr. Schallcross.  That being said, I was also very impressed with the Cork Council as we took a section of our time at the end of the meeting to read the Gospel reading from that day's Mass and pray a decade of the Rosary before we left.  So it was good to get a dosage of Catholic fraternal fellowship, that I'd been missing for the last three months.  

Friday(02/20/2009):

Shawn and I had both been missing BWW pretty bad, so we decided to have a wing night on Friday.  We went to the English Market and found that one of the butchers stands there was selling 20 wings, that were already marinated in spicy BBQ sauce, for €2.00.  So we decided that we'd just buy 100 wings for €10.00!  After we picked them up I went to the Mardyke Gym to go rock climbing for a while to get some exercise.  We then promptly got out the cooking pans and found that we could only stuff 24 wings on each of them.  So we each took a pan, put our 24 wings on them, stuck them in the oven for 50 minutes, turning them once, and then presto!  we had beautiful, delicious, hot, fantastic BBQ wings!  We heaped them on our plates, stuck the other 52 in the freezer, grabbed lots of paper towels and a beer each and dug in.  Giorgio seemed to be both horrified and amazed by the sight of us with each of us having a huge pile of wings that we were eagerly digging into.  He ended up getting his video camera and taking pictures of us digging in.  He may find it weird to eat 24 chicken wings at once, but Shawn and I find his mayonnaise sandwiches odd too.

Saturday(02/21/2009):

Saturday evening Giovanni, Margherita, Eugenio, and I went to go see Munster play Edinburgh at Musgrave Park.  It was really quite exciting, as it was my first real rugby game that I'd ever been to and it was a professional one with two of the best teams!  We showed up pretty early, and were able to see the Munster players drive their really expensive cars into the arena.  We walked in and were given complimentary Munster flags, which was pretty neat and made our way towards our seats in the South end of the stadium.  I was amazed though, as the players just walked right thorugh the crowds once they got out of their cars to the locker rooms.  You could walk right up to them and ask them for their autograph (Giovanni got one) and talk to them, and these guys are the equivalent to of NFL football stars!  There were a lot of kids at the game too.  They were all running around with their Munster jerseys with autographs of their favorite players on the back trying to get pictures with them and everything, which was kinda cool to see.  Oh, also the stadium had its own bar, and you could bring your beer or whatever you got with you into the stadium.  Security was ridiculously lax.  They didn't even search Margherita's backpack.  The stadium was also kinda "small" as the seats were basically just about 10 rows of concrete steps where you would stand, so you were at most, about 40 feet from the pitch, and you could see the players warming up right in front of you. 

                                                    

The weather was really pretty nice too!  It wasn't raining and it was only a little windy and in the upper 30's.  Munster ended up beating Edinburgh 28 t0 14, but it was a really exciting match.  All of the players were in incredibly good shape, and crazy strong, even the wings looked like they were bulging with muscle.  After the game everyone stormed the field, so Giovanni and I joined 8,000 Irish in running onto the field, waving our Musnter flags, taking pictures, and yelling.  It was epic.  After we got back to South Mall, I video chatted with Eric and Alisha, which was great as I hadn't seen them in a long time!  Eric then picked up his computer and carried it around with the Skype video chat still open so I could see Brian, Scott, Nick, Will, Ryan, and everyone else who was down at dinner which was great!  (It was so good to see you all, Newman!)  So I had a pretty good Saturday.

Sunday(02/22/2009):

 Today I've just slept in, done homework, done some music swapping with Shawn, wrote the weekly blog, and now am doing homework and waiting to watch the Oscars online.

Week 6 - DUBLIN!

From now on I'm going to just write about the days that I actually remember something interesting happening, as during the week I'm pretty much just doing homework and such.

Monday(02/09/2009):

 I've started to get rather annoyed with the Irish educational system.  I think it's rather subpar.  I mean, it's great if you never need to see examples or anything, but otherwise it seems to lack any real form of instruction.  Lecture is generally just having the lecturer literally read the chapter and examples in the book to you.  Also tutorials seem to be a waste of time.  I don't have tutorials for my physics classes, which I would actually like so I could see more examples worked out, and my math tutorial is especially annoying as the professor there refuses to actually work any problems out as he claims we won't learn then.  

Friday(02/13/2009)

On Friday after I got out of PY2103 at 2:00 PM and had packed Shawn and I made the incredibly short walk to the Cork bus station to take the 4:00 bus to Dublin.  One really nice thing about Bus Éireann is that when you buy a return ticket, it's good for a week after the day you depart, so you can come back whenever you want to.  Which is pretty neat.  We got into Dublin around 8:30 Friday night and luckily the hostel we were staying at, Isaac's Hostel, was literally just around the corner from the bus station.  We checked into our hostel, got our room and our beds and then settled in and went to get some dinner out on the town.  The hostel was really nice though.  The beds were nice, and long enough for me, with pillows, blankets, and a comforter.  We were in a room with 8 beds, but Shawn and I were the only ones in our room for Friday night.  We ended up going to some Italian place, La Pizza, for dinner and getting lasagna.  It was around €11, but that was pretty much the cheapest place we could find, besides Burger King and McDonalds.  It was pretty good though.  After dinner we went to the pub district, which is called Temple Bar district.  We went into The Temple Bar, and got a a pint.  I took a picture of the back of bar behind the actual bar, which caused the man next to me to muse aloud "Why does everyone do that?" .  I responded that people back home wanted to see where we went, and this started an hour and a half conversation with this guy.  We never actually did get his name though.  It turns out that he was a 40 something engineer who was in charge of the eastern area electrical grid, and he loves whiskey, so every night of the year he comes to The Temple Bar and has two shots of whiskey (which are small drinking glass sized, not shot glass size).  He always comes to Temple Bar as he loves the atmosphere so much more, even though he says that the whiskey he likes is much more expensive at Temple Bar then any other pub in Dublin.  He also told us that he comes from a very musically gifted family, and he is basically the only one that doesn't play an instrument in some form of professional way, and that his aunt, who is a nun and Mother Superior of some convent in the North, taught Enya how to sing and is good friends with her.  Apparently, a limo will come to the convent every once in while with a dinner invitation from Enya, and it then whisks this Mother Superior off to go party with Enya for the night at all the really expensive places in Ireland, which I personally find really funny and cool.  

We then went on to go look for The Porter House, which Giovanni recommended to us before we left.  We found the place, and it turned out to be as awesome as he had claimed.  The Porter House has three floors to it, and you can order drinks from two of the levels.  There are half levels along the way up, where there are tables and places to stand and such.  Porter House is also a brewery, so they have their own slew of beers that they serve and the ones that I had are pretty good.  The atmosphere in there is great, the decor is pretty interesting, and the attitude of the establishment is enjoyable as well.  For example, on the bottom of the receipt that they give you with your drinks it says, "Latest surveys shows staying at home causes death.  Come in, drink, and live longer!" They have live music 7 nights a week, starting at midnight, and it's great.  They have a tiny stage on the half level between floors 2 and 3 and you can hear and see it from most of the pub.  On Friday night they had this one guy who was playing acoustic guitar by himself, but he was incredible.  He was pretty much a one man band, and played a whole slew of stuff.  The Beatles, Radiohead, Led Zepplin, Lynard Skynard, pretty much anything and everything.  

 After that we went back to the hostel, found that no one else was in our room, and went to bed.

Saturday(02/14/2009):

We woke up around 8:00 and went down to get the complimentary "light breakfast", which was really just toast, but we took it and went.  We started walking to the Guinness brewery and made it there just when they opened at 9:30.  

The self guided tour was pretty impressive, just on a matter of scale of how big everything is.  The size of the machinery used, and how big some of the old casks were (like 729,000 pints big) was staggering.  They also had some barley out for tasting.  I had never had raw, fresh barley before, but it tastes just like coffee.  We finally made our way though the self guided tour of the brewing process, where you are guided by automated screens, and then spent a very little amount of time browsing through the museum section of adverting and shipping (which made me realize that 19th and early 20th century barrel makers had a tough job) as we really just wanted to get to the top of the building an have our pints at The Gravity Bar.  When we finally did get up there we found that we were the very first people of the day to make it to the top (score!) so we took our time to admire the view, which was phenomenal, read the James Joyce quotes on the windows and then finally turned in our tickets to get our pints.  Once we let them settle, and toasted to our girlfriends (it was Valentine's Day after all) we went ahead and enjoyed our pints, and that pint of Guinness that I had, has got to be the absolute best pint of beer I have ever had in my life, and maybe ever will.  It was incredibly fresh, and had a flavor, freshness and taste that far surpassed anything other pint.  When you combined that with the view of Dublin sprawling out before us towards the Wicklow Mountains, both Shawn and I agreed that it was the happiest moment since we had arrived in Ireland.  After savoring our pints, we promptly stole our glasses (they were nice pint glasses, and I had been told by the Newman guys that it was my duty to do so), and made our way out of the Brewery on an incredible high and smiling ear to ear.

Our next stop was St. Patrick's Cathedral which had a very nice grounds.  We didn't actually go in to the Cathedral as you have to pay, but the grounds were pretty big and they had an nice fountain.  We made our way back to City Center, grabbed some Subway for lunch, and then headed out to St. Stephen's Green.  Along the way we passed Trinity College Dublin, so we stopped by and showed ourselves around.  The actual college campus, as far as building and such, was rather small (to my standards).  It was all centered around one main quad, that had a bunch of really old looking trees with some funky bases and roots.  To prove my point about Trinity being small (the building part of UCC is bigger by far) the rugby and soccer fields took up more space with their surrounding greens then the actual college seemed to.  However, they did have this pretty crazy "sphere" sculpture outside of their library which I was a big fan of.

After we left the college we continued on and finally reached St. Stephen's Green.  It was beautiful.  It was basically a 22 acre park, laid out in 1880, with a lake inside of it with Swans swimming around in it.  All throughout the park there were statues, monuments, and memorials to people who had died in war, the fight for Irish independence and between fighting between Catholic and Protestant militia.  There was yet another bust of James Joyce in the park.  The Irish really seem to be proud of him and his writing(Shawn's a big fan of him too).  The park also had its fair share of pigeons in it that reminded me a lot of the U of I squirrels; fat, hungry, and not willing to pay any attention to you unless you have food or are about to step on them.

As I had never seen the ocean before we decided that after exiting the park we would walk back down to the river near City Center and then walk East along the river until we made it to the harbor and out to this one lighthouse on a peer that stretched into the ocean, and appeared to be the part of Dublin that extended farthest out.  Along the way to the river though we ran into several street musicians.  One group was composed of three older people, who were playing traditional Irish reels on a fiddle, hand accordion, and harp.  About 100 feet down from the street from them there was a guy in his 20's playing a didgeridoo.  Again, Dublin is crazy.  We made it to the river and started walking.  Turns out the walk to the ocean is a lot longer then it looks on Google Earth.  We finally made it to the harbor and the docks (which is still way inland from the ocean) where we saw a three masted sailing ship (think Master and Commander) and this one crazy modern boat that was sitting totally up out of the water, so that just two long, massive pontoons were actually submerged.  Along the way we passed "The O2" arena, which is not where I thought it would be.  It looks like by the time that I get into Dublin from Cork after my final on the 5th, and catch a bus all the way out to the docks to actually get to The O2 that I'll be cutting it close to seeing Bob Dylan.  I'll probably miss the opening act (hopefully he'll have one), but that's ok.  I just want to see Dylan.  We finally got outside of the city area and past the docks, but the only road that led went through a maze of electrical and power company buildings and compounds.  After a lot of dead ends, and possibly walking through areas that were most likely company private property, we finally saw some dunes, and after making our way through some brush and mud we climbed over the top and were rewarded with a view of the ocean!  We climbed down to the rocky beach and skipped some stones, and I finally got to put my hand in the ocean, so that's another thing off my list of things to do.

We then found a sign that had a position marker on it and a marker for Poolbeg Lighthouse, so we walked about another mile or so to the peer of the lighthouse, and then walked out onto the peer, which in all seriousness was probably another mile unto itself, out to the lighthouse (Go ahead and Google Earth "Dublin, Ireland" and then find the main river and follow it all the way out to the ocean, and you should see a peer that goes out there.  Where that peer ends, is the lighthouse).  By the time we got out there, we were pretty tired.  We had easily walked close to 10 miles to get to the lighthouse and we had been walking around the city all day too, so after taking a few pictures we just sat at the end of the peer with our legs dangling over looking out to sea.  After a good rest, we got up, much to the resistance of our legs, and began to walk back to Dublin.  We made it off the peer and started back on the road, but at this point we were tired enough that we did not want to walk all the way back to City Center, so I started sticking out my thumb every time we heard a car coming.  After about 2 miles and about 20 cars, a car finally did stop (I was beginning to wonder if the Irish knew that a thumb meant "I want a ride"), and a guy said he could give us a lift to a bus stop where we could catch a bus back to the City Center for about a €1, which sounded awesome to us.  We got in and in about 5 minutes we were at the bus stop resting our feet and waiting for the bus, and decided that Chinese food sounded like an excellent idea for dinner.  When the bus did come about 15 minutes later, it was a double decker, but we didn't get a chance to sit up top as the bus started moving as soon as we paid.  As soon as we got back, we headed straight for Chinese buffet, and ate delicious Chinese food and rice until we were fit to burst.  Once we got back to Isaac's Hostel, I climbed into bed and sunk into a comatose state for about 3 hours.  Once I woke up, and Shawn had checked his email we once again headed out to Porter House (it was about 10:30 by now).  We got a few pints and then headed up to the top floor and waited for the band that night to start playing.  This time they managed to fit a drummer, guitar, bass, and singer all on the tiny stage, which was impressive.  The band was pretty decent, and they played some great Police and Clash covers, although their singer was more then a little drunk by the end of the night, and was doing some pretty crazy stuff.  We left around 2 and when we got back to our room, we found that it had become occupied with 6 sleeping people, who started speaking some language that we couldn't decern when we opened the door and woke some of them up.  It sounded like some form of Russian, or at least something from an eastern block region.

Sunday(02/15/2009):

Upon waking up at 8:30 AM, I was able to see that our roommates all had large tattoos, wore biker boots, and had a few bottles of Russian vodka on the floor, so yeah, my assumptions from the night before still hold.  Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral started at 8:30, so I knew I wasn't going to make it on time, as it was about a 20 minute walk there and the Mass would probably be close to done by the time I got there, judging by the speed the Irish go through it.  I still went and inquired about any other local Catholic churches that would have a Mass soon, and the people working the desk kindly directed me to Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church that had a Mass conveniently at 9:30 AM (which was good as we wanted to catch the noon bus back to Cork), and which I later figured out is also the burial place of St. Valentine (which I thought was pretty cool, as it was St. Valentine's Day weekend).  We caught the noon bus back to Cork, and I slept for most of the way back.  Once we did get back, we immediately started doing laundry, uploading pictures, and making dinner.  I did a little bit of homework, but I was pretty tired, so I went to bed relatively "early" for me.  So all in all, it was a great weekend in Dublin, and I'm going to have to go back before I leave.

Week 5 - Seeing Ireland The Right Way

Monday(02/02/2009):

 Unfortunately, as I'm writing this over a week later, I don't remember what happened on Monday, which means I didn't get free food on that day.

Tuesday(02/03/2009):

 On Tuesday, I had officially been in Ireland for one month.  It's weird, in the sense that it doesn't feel like a whole month has passed already, but at the same time it feels like I've been living in South Mall Court forever.  I'm so used to everything, that it seems odd to think that a month ago I was surrounded by beautiful fields and now I'm in the middle of a valley of the purest green, surrounded by mountains.  

Wednesday(02/04/2009):

 Yeah, apparently I didn't get free food on Wednesday either.

Thursday(02/05/2009): 

 Today I talked to Giovanni about politics during lunch.  I mentioned to him how Blagojevich had recently been impeached and would be put on trial for criminal charges as well, and he told me about how bad the corruption of the Italian government was as well.  He said that he thought that most of the government officials in Italy were just as corrupt as Blagojevich, and that they had numerous dealings with the Mafia, but that the difference is that none of them ever get thrown out of office.  We also talked about how it seems that the corruption in other poorer countries seems to be even worse then some of the more "developed" countries, and how bad it's getting, especially in some places in Africa and South America, where the country itself has lots of natural resources, but they are held solely by the country's government/ruling class, while a majority of the country's citizens live and die in extreme poverty.  While we were talking about these things Giovanni made us Italian coffee with his little mocha maker.  It's this little kettle basically, where you just put water in the bottom and then a little bit of coffee in a strainer over it and then wait for it to boil up into the top pouring section.  It only makes an itty bit of coffee, but its very strong.

Friday(02/06/2009):

Giorgio made dinner for Shawn, myself, Andrea, and Fedrico on Friday night.  It was pretty good.  We had meat and potatoes in a stew and then we had this potato porridge stuff.  After Shawn and I had been talking the whole week about how great it would be to have a blender, and with my search for the epic milkshake continuing, and with Beamish in the fridge, I decided that I would try and make a beer shake.  So I got some vanilla ice cream, and using a pint glass and a big spoon I managed to make a Beamish beershake.  It was actually surprisingly good.  It tasted like an incredibly thick, and very creamy, beer in sludge form.  However, while it did taste good, I think I prefer my Beamish and ice cream as two separate entities.  Their tastes just seem more profound when separated.  We kinda needed some more pint glasses in the apartment, so Giovanni and I went to the International Student part at Liquid Lounge, and after getting two pints and scoring some free wings and "chips" we left with our glasses.  I then read for the rest of the night, as I was going to be gone on Sunday, and needed to get some work done.

Saturday(02/07/2009): 

On Saturday, I got up early, made breakfast, did some wash, read some more, and then went out to do errands.  While out and about I realized it was getting close to noon, and I was getting hungry and near the St. Patrick's Street McDonalds.  Now, I am in no way a fan of McDonalds, but David Wetzel has raved about how awesome the McDonalds in Spain and France are, so I thought I would give it a go in Ireland.  So I went in and ordered the first Big Mac I've ever had in my entire life, seeing as how David has mentioned how the Spanish version of the Big Mac is awesome.  My guess is that the Irish McDonalds are closer to the American ones, as I was pretty disappointed with my Big Mac.  It was kinda tiny to have the word "Big" in it, but for €3, it wasn't too bad.  I did find it somewhat ironic (I don't know if it was actually ironic, but "funny" at least) that the first time I, an American, had a food that was what you might call an "American icon" it was in Ireland.  That evening after studying I went to a local pub to watch the Irish national rugby team play France.  To be honest, it was the first time I'd ever seen most of a whole rugby game, and the first time I'd seen Ireland play.  It was awesome though!  I love rugby.  The game is like taking American football, soccer, and wrestling and throwing them all together.  It's so fantastic, and pretty freaking hardcore as well.  It's also very exciting as thing get going pretty fast paced at times, and when you're in a pub full of Irish people with beer, with a game being projected on 5 screens and 6 TV's, it's pretty epic.  Plus, more free food.  Ireland won that day over France; 30 - 21.  Also, TESCO was having a sale that weekend, where all beer was 25% off.  So, for €50 I got enough beer to last me till after I'm supposed to leave Ireland, if I ration myself to 2 pints a week, and I can totally do that.  While that may seem like a lot of money I'm spending on beer, it's actually an insanely good deal if you think about the fact that just one pint at a pub will cost you over €4.

Sunday(02/08/2009):

 So today I woke up bright and "early" (6:50 is kinda early...right?) to make it over to Gaol Cross just outside the college campus to go on a trek to the Knocklamena mountain range, that lies between Killarney and Kenmare in Co.Kerry, with the UCC Mountaineering Club.  About maybe 40 of us showed up, so that the charter bus that took us there was pretty much full.  We threw all of our stuff in the back trunk of the bus and got on the road about 8:20 or so.  Everyone was pretty quite until we stopped in Killareny.  There people got out and went into a local supermarket and got a bunch of breakfast food and stuff to eat on the trek.  Afterwards, people were a bit more awake and talkative.  The guy who was sitting next to me was named Dung-Gill Kim.  He was doing his post doc at UCC over environmental climate change, and was originally from South Korea, but had done his Ph.D. at Iowa State University, so he was very familiar with the midwest.  He also thinks he may have met Jennifer at a conference sometime.  We finally got to the farms that border the Knocklamena mountains and we all got out, got our gear, left our change of clothes, and got our boots and stuff on.  The bus then left to go wait for us at the other side of the range.  We had to walk along the road about 2 miles or so, before we could finally hop a wire fence to get into the fields and walk over to the mountains.  The fields were incredibly wet, and more boggy in some areas.  We finally got to slightly firmer ground and our club officers/guides decided that we would split into two groups.  One group, would continue on the original trek and go up the first main mountain that we were in front of, then descend it, cross the valley and climb the main mountain ridge.  This was for the more "extreme" they said.  The other group, would skip the harder first mountain and just go straight for the ridge.  Myself, and 6 other guys decided to go with the "extreme" option and started walking towards the base of the mountain with a guide, while everyone else followed the other guide to the main ridge.  Getting up to the top of the mountain was hard.  The base was pretty steep to begin with, and the grade of the mountain side got progressively steeper.  Also, there was no trail.  You had to make your own trail, which meant walking through bushes, brambles, and whatever was in your way.  We would take periodic rests, but it was slowly going, wet, and very slippery (I ended up falling a lot today).  In some areas you needed to use your hands on the rock face in front of you to haul yourself up, or to help stabilize you on the wet grass and rocks, as there was 60 foot drop offs about 3 feet away from you in some areas.  The views on the way up got more and more incredible though.  Unfortunately, my camera doesn't pick up things that are in the very far distance very well, so my pictures don't really do them justice.  We finally made it to the summit where we took some photos and took the opportunity to take a quick bite and get some water.  It was really windy up there.  Oh yeah, I should mention that one of the Irish guys who was with us had found a small log of wood at the start of the hike and had named it, and had been carrying with us.  So we took some pictures with the "Annie Bloggy the Log" and started the descent.

                                

The descent was incredibly slippery, and in many times it was more like sliding down the mountain in a somewhat controlled manner, then actually climbing down it.  Again, I fell a lot.  We finally made it to the valley below and walked through the very flooded fields, where we spotted some wild mountain sheep, and around the lake to the base of the main mountain ridge.  We then made our way up the first peak, which took a long time.  The temperature differences from the base to the top were rather extreme, and so you had to modify what layers you had open as you went up, and due to the wind at times, you really needed a hood up to shield your face.  Once we got to the top of the main ridge, we were able to walk along the ridge, switching back and forth over the fences as needed, for a few peaks until we got to the 3rd ridge where it sharply fell off and we needed to gingerly make our way down.  If you slipped, you were going to be tumbling down a while on some uncomfortable rock.  We were rather excited though, as we could see the other group working their way up the big ridge in front of us, and so we really wanted to catch them as we had done a whole other mountain compared to them.  

On of the guys *NOT ME* mentioned that this seemed a lot like The Lord of The Rings, where Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli are pursuing the Urkhai to rescue Merry and Pippin, so we all laughed at that and started saying things along the lines of "We're going to rescue those hobbits!"....yeah.  We continued down and then up the very step next ridge, and were rewarded with finding the other group resting.  So we instigated a snowball fight on the far side of the summit.  We continued on from there as one big group, but not before the guide from our group and one of the other Irish guys we had with us produced a tarp and sledded down about 200 meters of the mountain before us.  Crazy Irish.  

The rest of the trek was just downhill, and very wet.  I again fell a lot, and everyone was pretty tired when we eventually reached the bus.  It's rather evident that people form Ireland don't have a very good idea of where Illinois is in the US, or what its geography is like, as they would all ask me if we had mountains in Illinois.  Ha, yeah right.  When we reached the bus, we all changed clothes, which felt really good, and then got back on and headed into Killarney.  There, we got off and stopped for an hour and got food.  Myself and a few people ate a little at a small "Chipper", as the Irish call them, which is like a generic fast food restaurant.  Some other people went to pubs, but water seemed like a far better choice then beer at the moment.  I slept for most of the bus ride back into Cork, and then walked back to South Mall and made myself some pasta and beans and had a Beamish, started washing and drying things out and then resumed homework.  I'm pretty tired, and my left hamstring is going to be rather sore in the morning as it got banged up a bit, but I had an amazing time, and everyone in the club is incredibly nice and are fun people to be around. 

You Know You're In Ireland

This will just be a post that I will continue to update throughout the semester as I find more and more things that are unique to Irish/Cork culture and/or are radically different from American/Illinois culture.

1. People talk about fantasy rugby, not fantasy football.

2. 0 degrees Celsius is "Siberian conditions" yet 2 weeks of nonstop rain is just normal weather.

3. Beer is cheaper than pop.

4. People say "Cheers" as often as the Germans would say bitte.

5. Munster ruby or DIE!

6. There are large student protests on the campus every day.

7. You walk 5 feet and see 5 people smoking.

8. Smarties = M&M's

9. You find yourself saying "zed" not "zee" when you pronounce "z".

...more to come

Week 4 - The Rain Continues

Monday(01/26/2009):

Monday was really the only interesting day of the week.  That evening the U of I Study Abroad Director, Ryan Lorenz, was in Cork, so he sent an email to the four students (including myself) from U of I studying here inviting us to dinner that night.  He told us to meet him at Milano pizzeria at 7pm which was pretty nice for me, as Milano is literally about 400 feet away from South Mall Court.  We showed up and met him in the lobby where he cordially greeted us.  We got seated at our table and Ryan told us that we could order whatever we felt like, as the U of I would be picking up the tab on everything, except alcohol (ah tuition money at work).  I finally decided to go with the Romana Etna pizza, which was a spicy pizza with peppers and spiced ham, along with a large glass of Merlot (which was quite good, but then again, I was at an Italian restaurant).  While we waited for our food we (the other 3 students were girls, 2 were English majors and the other was a Chem Engineer, I can't remember their names at the moment) Ryan asked us about how we were adjusting, how we liked Cork, UCC, our housing, and how we were enjoying our experience thus far.  By the sounds of it I am extremely luck to be living at South Mall Court, as I seemed to be the only person who was truly happy with their living conditions and flatmates.  Ryan was a very friendly guy who seemed genuinely interested in our experience here and seemed to want to ensure that we enjoyed it.  He said that he was going to be going to other campuses soon and I mentioned that I knew Ann when he said he was going to Aberdeen and he said that she was on his list of people to talk to (I had to correct him on the proper way to pronounce Pataky though) and it also came about that he knew Michael and Kristin, which I thought was kinda cool that he knew all of us Champaign folk by name.  After dinner Ryan asked if any of us would like some desert, and we all almost too quickly declined the offer, so he went ahead  and became the catalyst that we needed ordered desert for himself. We all then followed suit and all ordered some desert as well. I got the Chocolate Fudge Cake, which was incredibly good (although rather small). It was a small piece of tripple layered chocolate cake with thick layers of fuge with a scoop of vanilla ice cream next to it and melted chocolate drizzled all over it. After that we talked a bit more and then departed with Ryan saying he hoped he would see us all in London on March 5th for the U of I SAO London Weekend. That night I went home did some homework and bought my tickets to London.

Tuesday(01/27/2009):

Tuesday I went to the Mardyke pool after class and did a swimming workout.....and then got an ear infection. So I don’t know what was up with that, but I won’t be swimming again until my ear stops hurting and filling up with fluid. However, dinner that night was good as Giovanni found some buy-1-get-1-free vouchers for Milano online so we all got pizza that night. One of the pizza’s we got had an egg in the middle of it, which was different from what I’m used to, but it was still really good.

Wednesday(01/28/2009):

Don’t remember anything, maybe later...

Thursday(01/29/2009):

Thursday I don’t really remember much either but it had been raining for about two weeks straight by this point. I did find organic peanut butter which is much tastier and healthier than Panda (this stuff, SUMA, only has peanuts and sea salt in it), so that made me happy.

Friday(01/30/2009):

On Friday Giovanni, Giorgio, Margherita and Laura left to go on a trip to Galway for the weekend so the apartment was rather quite for the weekend. After class, and after making myself a rather large brunch I went ahead and took Sarah Treece’s suggestion and made my way over to Butler’s Chocolate Cafe to try one of their milkshakes. As Sarah advertised, it was indeed delicious. I got a chocolate milkshake, which tasted like pure chocolate with hints of espresso in it, so it was very tasty, however it was also very small, and not very thick. For €3.95 it seemed like I should get something larger then a milk glass and I’m still wishing that it was of a thicker consistency. So so far in Cork, Butler’s has the best tasting milkshakes, and as much as it pains me to say, McDonalds has the milkshake with the best consistency. I had to wait until I could walk back to South Mall to actually drink it.....maybe I can get ice cream at McDonalds in Europe without feeling that I’m supporting a sub standard fast food company.....actually, the food at McDonalds in Cork looks much more appetizing then any McDonalds in America. Later on that night we got a text from Margherita asking us to let her cousin into her apartment when she got into Cork that night around 1am or so. So Shawn and I walked down to O’Donnovan’s and got some alcohol and then came back and watched V for Vendetta on my computer using Giorgio’s speakers. I decided that I would get some wine for the week, and I also realized that I know nothing about wine. So I ended up getting an organic red wine from Spain, which was quite good despite the fact that it was only from 2006. After a minor scavenger hunt for a cork screw, we were able to watch the movie, and then just hung out until Margherita’s cousin showed up.

Saturday(01/30/2009):

Saturday was the first day we woke up and it wasn’t raining for the first time, so that was quite refreshing. With nothing much planned though, we just took advantage of being the only two around and spent the better part of the early afternoon doing laundry and cleaning the kitchen/common room. After that I did homework, and video chatted with my mom, dad, Jennifer, Greg, and Maureen. Which was nice, as its always nice to talk to family and I really hadn’t gotten to talk to Jennifer or Greg since I left. I also started working on the website I told IPENG I would make for them about my study abroad experience, in exchange for 80% of my airfare, and it’s a good thing I’m starting now. I’m going to cheat and make a quick version using google’s engine, and then during the summer I’m going to code a good website from scratch using the first draft website as a model.

Sunday(02/01/2009):

Today I slept in till noon, got up and went to Mass at Holy Trinity Cathedral. It was nice to once again and have Mass with a priest who spoke slow enough to be able to understand him, but they apparently don’t have any music at the 12:30 Masses there, so that was kind a bummer. Looks like I will continue to cathedral hop next week. Tonight I made myself a huge dinner of penne pasta with a meat sauce along with some chicken parmesan that I also infused with sage. I was pleasantly surprised with how juicy and tender the chicken turned out, so I think I’ll have to make it again. I really love the English market. Currently Shawn and I are watching Superbowl XLIII online (probably illegally) on our respective computers. It’s 12:15 on Monday morning over here, but as Shawn is a huge Steelers fan I’m sure he won’t stop watching it till the game is over, so I’m just watching it and doing some work in the meantime. Hopefully, the next blog I write will have some information about the UCC Mountaineering Society, which I joined.