Snow In Ireland

Now I know that several of the entries have focused on the weather...but today it actually snowed. In Cork. Granted it was for forty-five minutes (all of which I was in class for but that is the benefits of windows) but the entire campus was having a blast/waddling on ice. The total accumulation - rough estimate but approximately 1/4 of an inch. However I saw multiple snowball fights and one ambitious house on the way home even had a little snowman. The campus was beautiful. I took a picture about three hours afterward and a lot of the snow had melted but you can still see a little. This is the Quadrangle which my roommate affectionately calls, "the Harry Potter Quad" because it looks like some place where Quidditch is played.

Winter Has Come To Cork

So the frost and potential for snow has set in although compared to the rest of Ireland, Cork still remains a pretty snow-less city. However schools were closed in Dublin, as was the airport in Edinburgh and the Garda has warned citizens to stay off roads as much as possible.

Slight note: I enjoy how the police are called the Gardai or the official name is An Garda Siochana. It is just more fun to say.

I have been on a few "invigorating" walks these past few days. Despite the presence of heavy gloves, my hands are starting to match the Cork City colors of red and white due to the various levels of freezing and defrosting. I managed to get out on Friday night to Jackie Lennox for some chicken and chips. So my chicken and chips (ie. fries) are wrapped in brown paper and I am at the cashier getting ready to pay. Sidenote: Corkonians talk very quickly and in a sing-song manner so the words tend to run together to an un-trained ear. So I think the cashier asks me if I want a drink, I shake my head no. Then he asks me something else, I say "What?" and after about two more times of this "What is it? - What?" interchange, I finally figure out he is asking what I got. I proceed to apologize and make some line about zoning out or not being with it. The man just goes "oh it's alright, it was Thanksgiving yesterday, you are probably still hungover." It's 6:30 pm the next day. I just laughed though because really it was a very quick line on his part.

This weekend was pretty quiet. I got some Christmas shopping done. The city is decorated with lights hanging across the streets and the stores blaring Christmas music. Now with the expected snow, all you really need is Santa. From the looks of it though, Santa appears in the main city park at various times. None of this wimpy indoor mall Santas for the Irish, we like our Santas to have rosy red cheeks due to the weather.

On a different note, I think I may have mentioned that I get like seven channels. One of which features Skynews which is filmed out of London. Not offense to the British press corps but I think Skynews overuses the expression: "breaking news." Two days ago breaking news was that President Obama received 12 stitches during a pickup basketball game....Seriously, this is breaking news? Their Irish neighbor just received a huge bailout, the entire British Isles is freezing and North Korea attacked South Korea but Obama getting an elbow to the mouth warrants breaking news. I guess his lip was busted open so something did break in the whole experience but still I don't think Skynews was intending on using the word "breaking" literally. 

Regardless, I will miss the television. Particularly the fascination with soap operas and the X Factor. Although having watched the X Factor, I can understand the obsession.

Thanksgiving Dinner

This year was my first experience cooking Thanksgiving Dinner. And I chose to kind of take responsibility over the turkey. Because really what is better for someone who doesn't have any cooking experience but to tackle the main centerpiece of the biggest holiday relating to food? It's like tackling the English Channel when your only swimming experience has been passing the swim test at the local pool.

So the big turkey experience actually started the night before when we got the turkey. Slight issue number 1: the usage of kilograms in Ireland BUT I had prepared for this (spent too much time looking up conversions) and had a handy little chart ready for me at the local supermarket. Success 1: The roommates and I purchased a turkey and got it back to our apartment.

Slight issue number 2: Defrosting. Since we got it the night before, according to the handy websites I consulted it was wayy too late to consider using the traditional refrigerator method. So we left it in the fridge until the next morning when we were going to do option 2: defrost by cold water. At 7:30 I was up and got the turkey out of the fridge and then realized we had another issue. Slight issue 3: the size of an 11 lb turkey. We had no kind of cooler or large bowls. I was not going to be deterred however and found...a plastic bucket in our bathroom. You know the kind that usually collects water or you put mops in. I washed the bucket out and put the turkey in. And who knew turkeys float? Sooo I balanced a plate on top of the turkey to weigh it down.

                                                                THE CONTRAPTION


Now the handy cooking website advised me that I had to replace the cold water on the half hour. Which I did...for five hours. At 12:45, the turkey I believed was defrosted but I really had no idea. I got one of my roommates into the kitchen and we opened the turkey from the wrapper. And then this happened....

FALSE. But it would have been great if it did. No, but we did play with the turkey for a while. We may or may not have moved it's wings and talked to each other in turkey voices. Anyway we realized that it was not all fun and games and there was giblets that needed to be removed.

Except we weren't quite sure what a giblet consisted of. We looked it up on Google, and there was a lovely picture involving all possible turkey giblets. So I took one for the team and stuck my hand up that turkey and pulled out some organ or another. And we thought we were good, until we realized that the long thing was a neck and needed to come out. Conversation: "It looks like a bone, you wouldn't remove a bone right?" "I dunno, it looks like it is that long thing in the giblet picture." We ended up pouring like five cups of steaming water into the turkey. And I tried and tried to get that neck out but it wasn't coming out.

And then all of sudden, there was the shrieking girls moment as my roommate pulled the neck out. "Oh my god, oh my god, what do I do?!?" "Ahh I dunno, okay, okay, you pull the trash over and I'll throw it in" "Oh my god, this is so gross!!" And I whipped the trash can over and we threw it in there and shut the lid really quickly and shuddered for a couple of minutes. She never really got over it. And it gave my other roommate a lovely surprise when she opened the trash can later that day.

We had one more giblet removing experience. After this, I convinced another roommate to baste it. I was still recovering from the whole giblet experience. I kept repeating that my hands were so cold and I could feel turkey innards, like it was a traumatic experience.  We got the turkey into the oven and managed to cook the thing. (My one roommate had suggested naming it....until she was the one who pulled the neck out.)
We had a full thanksgiving dinner with turkey, mashed potatoes, carrots and string beans, stuffing, apple pie (homemade) and the traditional brownies. And you know what, it was really good.

After we sufficiently recovered from our turkey coma, one of the bars on campus was showing the Saints-Cowboys game so we all went down for a half. I then attempted to explain to our German friend how American football was played. I also got to talk with the fam back home as well. Overall, not a bad Thanksgiving.

Interesting Law

So I haven't been able to get this verified but it's supposedly a law that at Trinity College in Dublin you can shoot a Catholic with a bow and arrow on Sunday as long as they remain in the college grounds. I hear it hasn't been repealed either. 

Another interesting thing I read in class was MnM v. CM which is a family law case and one member of the couple was trying to get a Judicial Separation Decree (basically you are relieved of your rights to cohabit but are still married to each other and the clock starts ticking for divorce because you need something like 4-5 years of separation for divorce.) Anyway in this case, one of the members of the couple were trying to prove that what was going on was not normal behavior for marriage and accused the other one of excessive drinking, violence anddd setting off of cattle...  I'm not sure what that entails but it isn't normal apparently. The Judge told them to pray to St. Francis for guidance.

From Cork to Catalunya

This past weekend my roommate and I went to Barcelona for the first time in our lives. Friday we managed to get to the city center from the airport relatively unscathed (point 1 for us) and needed food. We ended up going to a quintessential Spanish restaurant...KFC. BUT we managed to order our dos peces de pollo en original recipe con Coke en espanol so we were both pretty excited. (It didn't hurt that the menus had numbers on it - my roommate suggested we go to restaurants with numbers on them from then on.) After our peces de pollo we were ready to conquer Barcelona...and by that, do a hop on hop off bus tour.

First stop, Sagrada Familia. This incredible church by Gaudi has been under construction since it's inception and is likely to remain so for the immediate future. It's hard to describe. It has a Christmas tree as a main center point. It has salamanders and snails as Gargoyles. The entire thing looks like it is dripping.

After Sagrada Familia we went to Parc Guell. Gaudi had built a park for his family when he was alive and the family left it to the city upon his death. It's like walking in Candyland. There are mosaic lizards, benches that curve around with mosaics, everywhere you look there is something different. In addition, it offers one of the best views of the city.

Saturday, we decided to Gaudi-it up again. First we went to the Gothic Quarter which has a bunch of little streets and as can be guessed lots of Gothic architecture. We then found the zoo by mistake. After that little detour, we decided to visit Casa Batllo and Casa Pedrera. Gaudi was commissioned by people to basically build giant apartment buildings. Casa Battlo has a scaly outside, and a fish like theme in all of the rooms. Even the center light area is blue mosaic starting at a light blue and going into a dark blue when you reach the top. Which naturally features a giant dragon. Casa Pedrera is just as neat and as hard to convey.

We also had our Spanish tapas meal on Saturday. We had ham croquettes, paella and Spanish tortilla. At night we walked along Las Ramblas which is a major street. They had a bunch of street statues who would move when you would give them money. My personal favorite was this Quasimodo looking one who would jump out at people and then mimick their laugh.

Sunday, we went to Montserrat which is an old Christian monastery up in the mountains. It was beautiful, it was really interesting and it was absolutely freezing. We took a subway-train-train to get there. One of the wonderful things about the Spanish subway is all the stops are listed in the train car with little lightbulbs which light up when you get to the stop. We ended up on the train with a honeymooning couple who were very conversive. We learned more about Mexico City/ their families / how they met / how saints are incorruptible / how there was going to be only one world government / how the Hindus apparently worship devils / how saints bodies don't bleed if you cut them and so on. Definitely made the ride more interesting. We managed to finally get to Montserrat and the views are stunning. Montserrat, I learned, is where Ignatius of Loyola had a vision of Mary and where there is the Black Virgin. So we waited in line for a long time to see the Black Madonna which was a neat experience.

We came back and had our second Spanish meal, Paella con Sangria. Then walked along the beach area and all through the waterfront. Monday morning we were up before five although we didn't really sleep due to some lovely individuals in our hostel who decided to have a forty five minute discussion in the early morning hours consisting of one girl accusing the other girl of taking her phone and not giving it to her and how she was so angry. The other girl would then tell her to shut up and go to bed and how she was going to be so embarrassed in the morning. This pattern repeated on the 30 second mark for forty minutes. Turns out the phone was on the floor lol. I heart  inebriated strangers but they were  nice people when sober. We made it to Barcelona airport which involved more tram rides than necessary to get to the right terminal. (Basically we learned the hard way that Barcelona has a lovely car park.)

Anyway back in the Emerald Isle. Barcelona was a really neat city. Kinda like a cross between San Francisco/Miami/New York. And we made it through a weekend on our Spanish which was kinda awesome.

Quick Highlights From the Day

So a much longer post needs to follow this one concerning my weekend but today was just a day filled with little highlights:

1. When I was walking to school, I was stopped at a light and all of a sudden cars started honking because one car was stuck in the intersection. They continued to keep honking however even after the car had moved. I then realized about three cars were just having fun with each other and honking a rhythm out between their cars.

2. Thanksgiving Signs. Interestingly, the Hot Beverage Society at school is having a Thanksgiving celebration with pumpkin cider, hot chocolate, Charlie Brown and "festive arts and crafts." I'm not quite sure what festive arts and crafts entails but I enjoy the effort. I'm also not sure what the Irish are being thankful for but just like we celebrate St. Patrick's Day, I guess they can celebrate Thanksgiving.

3. I was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie and was told "that my tracksuit was simply grand." I'm seriously going to miss the Irish and their descriptive adjectives.

4. The city turned on it's Christmas lights. Even the school has a Christmas tree with lights on at the student center.

5. There are sales on Christmas chocolate at the local convenience store.

6. Harry Potter comments on the female bathroom stalls. I'm not sure who is taking the time to write comments about the new Harry Potter movie while in the female bathrooms but there is an entire conversation thread that goes: "Harry Potter comes out today!" --> "Yay" --> "Voldy is mouldy" --> "Dumbledore is hot" (seriously??) and --> "Dumbledore is dead."

Ring of Kerry

This past weekend I went with the school to tour the Ring of Kerry and it was absolutely beautiful. No wonder it is one of Ireland's top tourist destinations.

Friday, we went to Kerry Bog Village. We saw little bog huts, and the Kerry Bog Pony. One of the most exciting bits was seeing these 2 Irish wolfhounds. They are HUGE dogs. We heard about their excellent hunting skills and how they basically freak out if there is a cat around. So we see these dogs and hear about them but what happened next is up for debate. We were getting back on the bus and all of a sudden we see one of the Wolfhounds taking off...with a cat in it's mouth. Half the bus thinks it was a real cat, the other half thinks that it was a decoy for the tourists. I haven't made up my mind but it certainly was interesting. We also learned about this guy who lived near by and was quite a character. Apparently he used to go in the lake and "tickle the fish." To tickle fish you have to stand still about waist high with your hands in the water. The fish come to rest against your hand thinking that it is the bank and once they do, you somehow flip them out of the water onto the bank. This guy also used to have a significant moonshine operation going on (they call it potchin over here.) He used to string the bottles of alcohol across the river but under the water, so they would be naturally cooled by the running water.

That night we got to the hotel and had a guest speaker talk about growing up on a farm in South Kerry. She was fascinating. I learned about going to school with no shoes on through peat bogs and being distracted and getting to school late but it didn't matter because the speaker would bring in peat bricks to heat up the classroom. I learned about milking cows (which is apparently pretty boring) but her brother would squirt her in the face with milk. Apparently life was full of hard work but full of happiness. People would come in and out of houses and tell stories or play instruments and dance around. After the talk, we had a caeli which is always so much fun.  We learned three different dances and while I'm not sure I have the hang of swinging people around, I had a great time.

Saturday we went to the Skelling Experience. We couldn't go to the Skellings because it is winter but we learned about them. The Skellings are two rocks. On the bigger rock there are the remains of the monastery, and on the little one there is the second largest gannet population in the world. I have no idea how monks built a monastery on this rock. It is literally 7 miles into the ocean, with no shelter and winds whipping around, waves crashing and oh the Vikings would come around every so often. The rocks are ridiculously steep as well. Saturday night we had a guest speaker who was a former professional Gaelic footballer. He was great. We got to learn about how the game is played, about rising through the levels (you are basically born into a club and grow up with them) and how Gaelic footballers put in the same level of commitment as any other professional athlete but they essentially play for free.

After the talk we had Quizzo which I always enjoy. I got a few questions right like what ingredients go into a Bloody Mary or what canal is a Greek god spelled backward. I even pulled out who Homer Simpson's neighbor is which kinda shocked me because I don't really watch that show. But anyway there was a wide variety of questions, so most people get at least a few right.

Sunday we hiked to these forts that we got to walk on top of and then drove around the rest of the Ring of Kerry. It was a clear day and the Ring is absolutely beautiful. Overall, a great Irish cultural weekend.  

Hot Beverages

The weather has gotten colder which means it is appropriate hot beverage time.

Now I've never been a big coffee person but I'm learning to appreciate it's caffeinated qualities. I went into a cafe a couple of months ago and basically stared for two minutes at the list of choices available. My thought process went something along the lines of "hmm Americano has the word American in it, that's probably fine." I learned quickly that was a faulty thought process. However it is not so bad with about five cubes of sugar in it. Last week I went into the same cafe and got a Mocha and I think I have finally found my choice of coffee. It was a good combination of being a legitimate type of coffee but not really tasting like coffee. I know this defeats the purpose of coffee but at least I can order Mochas in most cafes as opposed to Strawberry Mochachinos which had been my go-to Starbucks drink.

UCC is so big on their hot beverages that they even have a Hot Beverage Appreciation Society.

However another one wonderful thing about being in Ireland is that it is the home of Baileys. And I learned that Baileys with hot chocolate....pretty good drink for a cold day.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Winter weather has finally arrived in Ireland. Everyone thinks it's cold but expresses it differently. The Irish are more "it's a bit chilly today" whereas the Americans are more "whoa, did it become winter overnight, I'm not prepared for this, why did I pick to study abroad in the fall when I am going to come back to the United States for the winter season?" One of the quirks about having classrooms in buildings that are from 1849 is the heating systems are from that time as well. Actually they probably aren't but they aren't functioning yet, so we are going to pretend like they are. In class yesterday (where I had a jacket on the entire time), students shared stories about cold classrooms. One of my classmates remembered the time when every student in Ireland used to have to bring a brick of peat (correct terminology?) to class every day to put in the peat moss fire. It would get so smokey however that students would have to jump around and flap their arms to dissipate the smoke. One of the benefits of being in Ireland is I get to hear stories like that. They are a lot more interesting to tell and listen to than "so it was cold today at school so we had to have recess inside."

However one of the best things about Winter is that lovely little birth of Jesus Christ every December 25th. In the United States, the Christmas season is tempered by Thanksgiving occurring at the end of November. While the malls start decorating before Turkey Day, it is generally socially acceptable to officially open the Christmas season after Thanksgiving. Here, there is no Thanksgiving so Christmas decorations are already up. The coffee shop across the street from school has a lighted wreath up, the town center has wreaths and lights hung across the street. The stores put out their Christmas merchandise the day after Halloween. Christmas season has already come to Cork and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Yay For Norway!

So back in September, my roommates and I were looking at cheap flights on Ryanair and it turned out we could fly to Oslo and back for 30 Euro. The cheap flights available over here still boggle my mind but I digress. Anyway none of us had been to Norway so we went ahead and booked it... and then we looked at the weather. Well first I actually looked at the record high by mistake. Turns out that is misleading. We learned that the average high is in the low 30's. But whatever, that's what layers are for. (And I wore three socks at every point during the weekend)

So we flew into Oslo on Friday night. It is a really interesting thing to be in a foreign country where the first language is not English. I had been once to Mexico but I can understand a bit of Spanish. Norwegian is no way shape or form like Spanish. Weirdly enough, its actually a bit like English but with excess letters. So Stop becomes Stopp in Norwegian. The TV channels were either in Norwegian or in English with subtitles. Turns out you haven't watched Spongebob until it is in Norwegian...

The first night we figured out our touring plan for the next day while drinking our tap water. The Norwegians have some of the best tap water in the world so I'm told. The next morning we started out bright and early and on the public transportation system. We managed to make it to the Viking Ship museum which was very cool. I learned that when the big shot Vikings would die, they would bury them in their ship. Kinda like Egypt with the pyramids. So they would be in the ship, with slaughtered food, games, jewels etc. But then the ship would be buried in a mound of clay.

After the Viking ship museum, we hit up the FRAM museum. From what I could understand the FRAM was a polar exhibition ship which is HUGE. And we got to go in it and explore a few different levels. I have officially crossed off leading polar exhibitions from a list of future careers. It looked like very difficult work and you had to worry about tiny insignificant details like being crushed by the immense pressure of all the ice.

We then went to Vigelandsparken which is a park of sculptures. I think the pictures are worth a thousands words here.

After Vigelandsparken, we walked around the city for a long time. Went to the palace and Parliament which is called Stortinget. We walked on the Opera House roof. This was neat because it is on the water and the sun had started to set. At 2:45. P.M. Yeah. We then went to a Norwegian bar where I got the Miller Lime of Norway. After the Norway bar, we went to an Ice Bar. This was very cool. We were lent fur lined capes with gloves and you go into a room completely made of ice for forty five minutes. The tables, chairs, sculptures, even your glasses are made of ice. We had way too much fun in there.

Next day, we went to Akershus which is a fortress in the city. Awesome views of the Oslofjord. Then we went to the National Gallery where we saw the "Scream" by Munch. Oh and we also ate the traditional Norwegian hot dog...which having now eaten one, can safely say I prefer American ones.

Anyway it is now back to work but awesome weekend.

You Can't Touch This

So much to write about this weekend and I will write a longer post later but I wanted to share this commercial while I still remembered it. It made me laugh.

Music Fest

I will be attending another music fest this weekend so I thought I would do some preliminary research to see who I would enjoy watching.

And out of all the contestants, I like this guy the best. He's Russian. He came in 11th place in the Eurovision Song Contest in Oslo. I felt I had to share his music. More importantly, his video. Songs like this should not only be kept in Europe.

Keening

So today I showed one of my roommates one of my favorite clips from the Carol Burnett Show. While we both had a good laugh at it, it allowed me an excuse to look up an Irish word that I had no clue as to it's meaning.

Keening. Comes from the Irish/Scots Gaelic term "caoineadh" meaning to cry. From what I can understand it means a type of vocal cry or lament over the dead, accompanied by physical movements such as rocking, kneeling or clapping. Contrary to popular belief, it is not just wailing but a series of high pitched laments by women trained in keening. Keening cannot be practiced until the wake when the spirit is thought to have left the body.

As with all Irish traditions, there is a story behind it. Supposedly the goddess Brigit viewed her son Ruaden mac Bres being speared right in front of her by Goibnu for being a spy. On witnessing this, Brigit let out the first keen heard in Ireland and after her, all fairy women would keen for the dead in a like manner. (source: http://www.maryjones.us/jce/keening.html)

Interestingly enough, the practice of keening has been very much opposed by the Catholic Church over the years.

However, as fun and lighthearted as this blog post has been, there will be no tears of sadness over the following clip. 

Spooktacular Samhain Parade

To celebrate Halloween some of the girls of Casa Study Abroad decided to go to the Samhain Parade on the other side of the city. It was an interesting experience. There were giant skeletons, a band and people all dressed up as ghouls. In addition, there were what looked like giant skeleton fish boats in the river. The parade took place after dark to add to the scare factor. We were able to get a spot right on the road so we could see everything. There were children trying to scare us by running up to us and screaming, and people dressed up as wolves, and we just had a generally great time.

After the parade had passed, we went to the house of a Dutch friend of ours where we had traditional Dutch pancakes. Unlike American pancakes, they had pieces of ham in them with melted cheese on top. Very good.

Now it's Monday and back to work, but good weekend overall.