Halloween...More Irish Than You Would Expect

Before coming to Ireland, I thought Ireland's only contribution to the holiday schedule was St. Patrick's Day. Last week however I learned that the Halloween is actually Irish.

What?

Yup. It is thought that Halloween derived from the Celtic Festival Samhain.

According to Wikipedia (which is never wrong), Samhain means roughly "summer's end." This festival celebrates the end of the "lighter half" of the year, and the beginning of the "darker half." From what I can understand, it involved lots of bonfires.

So where did all the creepy scary stuff come in? The ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the Otherworld was thin on this day, allowing spirits to come through. Since one obviously needed to ward off evil spirits, they would wear costumes and masks and basically disguise themselves as evil spirits.

The pumpkin carving even has an origin in Samhain. In order to commemorate souls in purgatory, you would have candle lanterns curved from turnips. This evolved over the years into jack o'lanterns. (Emphasis on the O'lantern - I should have known it was Irish).

Trick or treating is thought to have Irish (and Scottish) origins. A practice called "guising" was popular in the 19th century where children went door to door in masks, offering entertainment (usually a ghost story or song) in return for food or coins.

In conclusion, be Irish - celebrate Halloween

Low Key Weekend

So this weekend has been kind of a chill weekend. November is going to be really busy month with schoolwork and traveling, so this has been a weekend to just relax.

Friday I went with some of my roommates to see RED. It was pretty good. I figure any movie featuring Helen Mirren with automatic weapons will be entertaining, and I was right.



Saturday I went back to Cobh with my roommate. She hadn't been yet. There's not much to do in Cobh but it was nice just walking around. And walk we did. We found what is alleged to be the steepest hill in Ireland...and then climbed up it. It's called the "Deck of Cards" and they aren't kidding. Needless to say, by the top we were feeling some pain. We took the train back and kind of collapsed on the couch. I think we meant to get up and go out at some point but it just didn't happen.

So now it's Sunday and homework day, but happy halloween any one who is reading this. Hope you have a spooktacular day!

Fun Times Buying Fruit

I never know when I'm going to have a fun interaction with an Irish person. Generally it is in the places I least suspect it.

Today it was buying fruit.

The day started off productive. Went to class. Went to the gym where I learned that biking without headphones gets old real quick. Got supplies for the Halloween costume. So on the way home, feeling good about my productive healthy day I decided to stop and buy fruit.

I go in, pick out five oranges and bring them to the counter where the cashier is talking to another man in Gaelic. This is pretty much the interaction that follows.

Cashier to me: "Can you speak any Gaelic?"
Me: "Beyond Caed Mile Failte, not really."
Other Man: "Where are you from?"
Me: "Philadelphia"
Other Man: "As in Philadelphia, United States."
Me: "Yup"

(Other man and cashier at this point break into a rendition of "Streets of Philadelphia.")

Other Man: "Is that where the Liberty Bell is?"
Me: "Yup."
Other Man: "I've never been. Too long of plane ride. Like six or seven hours, right?"
Cashier: "Did you fly into Shannon or Dublin?"
Me: "Ah I went London-Heathrow to Cork"
Both of them: "Oh stay away from the English"
Other Man: "You guys managed to get rid of them. We still have six counties to go and then we will get our own Liberty Bell."

In conclusion, I had an amusing time buying fruit.

Singin In The Rain

Every year I deceive myself into thinking 55 degrees is warm weather. Coming out of winter, I get excited for weather where I am not shivering all the time that I inevitably bring out the flipflops way too soon.

Similar to my being deceived every year about the warmness of weather, I was deceived again today about the likelihood of precipitation in Ireland. I thought "oh It's nice and sunny today, I don't need an umbrella." Famous. Last. Words.

So I went into the city today in the great hunt for a Halloween costume, and was on the way back to class when the first downpour occurred. It was one of those things that there was nothing I could do but put the hood up and just continue walking for fifteen minutes. It was that angular rain as well that manages to hit the entire body. Soo class was spent slightly soaked. On the way home from class, the heavens opened again. I tried to pretend like "oh it's just a little bit of Irish sunshine, won't hurt anything" and then it started to rain harder. I ended up running back to the apartment, and my roommates just started laughing when they saw me. It was not my most attractive moment.

Regardless it's been a good day for the sheer fact alone that I got one of the Cadbury Creme Eggs that they are advertising for Halloween that has green goo inside. And Glee is on tonight. And I got my paper turned in.
And because all the rain has reminded me of one my all time favorite movie clips.

Halloween Dalai Lama

So Halloween is fast approaching and the big debate in Casa Study Abroad has been what to wear for this momentous occasion. Now I hear in the UK and Spain, Halloween isn't a big event. I'm told in Spain the big night is Carnival. However in Ireland, we are celebrating it.

Currently in Casa Study Abroad, we are half and half with having costumes planned. Because I like to figure out things with plenty of time, I still have no idea. Generally in the past minus some creative gradeschool years and one year in college where a few friends of mine all went as Julia Roberts characters, I have alternated between a witch or hippie. Not real original ideas. Now normally I wouldn't care about figuring out a costume until about Saturday but they feel the need here to have multiple Halloween events before Halloween which requires me to get on my game regarding a costume.

So this is the conversation I had with one of my roommates earlier who had just finished carving a pumpkin and baking the seeds. (I had never had baked pumpkin seeds before, they were pretty good.)

Her: Do you know yet what you are going to be?
Me: Nope. Any suggestions?
Her: You could dress in brown and find antlers and go as a moose.
Me: What?
Her: BULLWINKLE. Find a red scarf and brown clothes and an antler.
Me: Sounds more like Rudolph.
Her: Scrap the scarf.
Me: I could just wear a mask.
Her: This is true. That is easy.
Me: Ah but then I was Phantom one year, and the mask kept irritating me.
Her: You could be suicidal. They look just like everybody else. I swear I didn't make it up, it came from the Addams Family.
Me: .... I'm speechless. Was not expecting that.

Needless to say, just like how every year Linus is in search of the Great Pumpkin, I'm still in search of the great costume. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Castle Day Trip

On Sunday, one of my roommates asked me if I wanted to go to Blackrock Castle and Observatory. Never one to turn down a castle, I agreed to go and went with her and some of her friends. The castle is in city limits which still throws me off that there are castles this close by to where I live.  Like I was walking along the parking lot and all of a sudden I look up and there's a castle.  The castle was used as a fortress to protect against raiders and after being burned down a few times, was restored by the city in 2000 and is open to touring. It's other main attraction is the observatory. While we couldn't actually use the observatory, we could walk up to it (still hate those narrow castle steps) and there was a lot of science oriented fun in the lobby like learning about the planets and interactive games where you could write a message to aliens and try to guess which animals are found on Earth and which ones aren't.  In case you were wondering, giant mushroom fungi do exist whereas griffins do not. We also got to color in a spaceship or an alien depending on which page of the coloring book you managed to get a hold of. We had a picnic and after a few tries, managed to find the appropriate bus back to our apartment.

Here are some photos of the weekend.

                                                               The Swinging Blue Cats!

                                                                   Blackrock Castle!

 

And a little clip of the weekend courtesy of El Hombre Blokes

By Jazz, You Mean Swing...And By Swing, You Mean Queen

This weekend has been jazz festival weekend in Cork. My roommate and I went into the city yesterday and it was a lot of fun. First, we saw a blonde middle aged female rapper. Naturally. At the Jazz Festival. We listened to her for a few minutes. We were so taken aback when she rhymed circadian rhythmn that we forgot to actually listened to what she rhymed it with.

We then moved onto guys drumming and playing on a guitar and they were really good.

And then we passed the pub we always go to and I saw a sign for the Swinging Blue Cats. There was no way that I was going to pass that up. So we went in and listened for a while and had a lot of fun. They played Glenn Miller, Louis Jourdan, Cab Calloway, Brian Setzer, Cherry Poppin Daddies and then naturally Queen "Crazy Little Thing Called Love."

We left there and found this cute hot chocolate shop where I got milk/white/dark chocolate and my roommate got cinnamon and nutmeg hot chocolate (it tastes like fall, so I'm told) and with our hot chocolates came little mixed chocolate drops. Like tiny Hershey kisses. We drank our hot chocolates while watching the marching band that was coming down the street. After the day, as my roommate put it, she would like music to accompany her whenever she goes shopping.

Later that day, because you can't have too much jazz festival, we bundled up and went back up. What the intended plan was to find a bar and chill and listen to jazz music. What actually happened was approximately four hours of straight dancing. We found a bar with live music and although it was packed, we danced for a while. Then we went to this bar which was the same bar which had traditional music playing in the first week we were in Cork. Tonight though it was a DJ. And you know it's going to be a good time when "Doncha" is the first song you here when you come in. We had a good time dancing although we managed to bring the age down by like forty years.

Overall it's just a fun weekend. People jamming in the street and the entire city comes out. Ironically I've heard no traditional jazz music yet. There's still time though, the festival ends tomorrow.