Irish Lessons

Dia duit! That's how you say hello in Irish. Actually, I think it's more literally translated as "God with you", maybe? Irish seems like it's a very poetic language, rather than literal, when it comes to what its phrases actually mean. In any case, I started my Irish lessons today and I really like it. I mean, I've only learned to say really basic things so far, like go raibh maith agat (thank you). And it's more about speaking than reading and writing so it's kind of weird to try to spell things out, but I'm sure we'll do a little of everything. I think it's really cool to say things in Irish. There's a whole building on campus that's not bilingual, everyone speaks in only Irish all the time and all the signs and stuff are in Irish. So neat. Also my friend Charles from Sailing club is in the class, which is pretty cool. We hung out with sailing club last night at the meeting, although they were mostly talking about the trip this weekend that I'm not going on. I felt a little bummed out because it sounds like the trip is gonna be awesome, but I'm still psyched about going to Cork this weekend and there are other sailing trips. My friend Dierdre is already getting me hyped up about the trip for regionals in March. I guess it's like the biggest sailing competition and all the sailing teams from all of Ireland compete and some guys come up from Scotland too! So I'm already planning on that

Also, I don't mean to rub it in to my friends back in Buffalo, but it's really starting to feel like Spring here. I mean, it's definitely not super warm yet or anything, it's still more or less winter coat weather. But it feels like life is starting to come back to this country. Like, when we first got here, when it rained (which it is wont to do), it was still cold enough that the rain was really unwelcome and uncomfortable. And now, it's not like the rain is ~warm~, but it feels more... hydrating. Like it's nourishing the ground. And it smells like Spring, it smells like... life. I guess I'm not too surprised because here they celebrate the beginning of Spring on 1 February, which is coming up. But I'm really glad because the days were awfully short when I first got here and they're already starting to get longer.

Anyway, we're trying to cook chicken goujons in crappy Niland House stove.

Why Spar is Better than Number Ten

There are a number of cornerstores all over Galway... originally we thought Number Ten was the best one because it's open late, but recently it has come to our attention that ACTUALLY Spar is WAY BETTER than Number Ten, so here are some reasons:

-Number Ten does not even sell wine!
-Spar sells classy Bulmers!
-Number Ten's batteries are more expensive than Spar's batteries
-Spar has TIM HORTONS
-Spar has sparkling apple cider in plastic bottles!
-The lady who works at Spar is really nice and definitely likes us
-Spar sells Reeses' AND Reeses' Pieces!
-The only thing Number Ten has going for it is that I like the name "Number Ten"
-But everything else about Number Ten sucks!



Also I'm cool because I have a sonic screwdriver

My Week in Review

Well, I've been here for three weeks now and I guess I'm still adjusting. I've done some cool stuff but it has also been hard in some ways. Meeting people is easy, I've met a lot of people who seem really great and who I really like. But making friends is tougher. I don't feel like I've really made a lot of friends yet, because I don't really have a mastery on that awkward transition where you move from saying hey to someone when you run into them in the hall to calling them to hang out. There's lots of people I like, but there's not really anybody yet who I really spend time with outside of the allotted time we're supposed to spend together for a club (sailing club) or a society (FanSci). That being said, I'm still hopeful for this changing. I was supposed to go sailing yesterday and I didn't make it, partly because I've been feeling sick the past few days and partly because it was freezing and raining and going out on the lake sounded really awful. But once I really jump into things with them, I'm hoping to get to know them better. FanSci especially has a few members that I just think are really great, and they invited me to come up to Cork with them this weekend for a gaming convention, so I'm hoping that'll be kind of a turning point for me. Like, after going up there and living with them all in a hostel for a weekend, we'll be more apt to do stuff together afterward. Hopefully! Another thing that has been frustrating and really bringing me down is my internet situation over here. The internet at my house is really hopelessly bad. Even on a good day, I can barely use Skype and on a bad day, I can forget about even being able to check my email while I'm at home. It just kills me because internet is the only way I can get a hold of people from home. I was hoping with Skype I'd be able to call people whenever I wanted and the fact that I can't is making me feel really homesick. I've been using the wireless internet at school, which is a lot better, but with the time difference it's kind of awkward to walk all the way to campus at midnight to be able to call someone at home when it's 7 for them. So I guess I'm not sure what I'm gonna do about that. And while I've definitely started to get a hang of the food situation, my eating habits are still far from being back to normal and I think it's weirding up my body a little.

So no, it isn't a cakewalk over here but in the past week, I have definitely done some fun stuff too! Last weekend I got invited to a house party with the sailing club and, like I was saying, everyone seems really nice and I want to get to know them better. After the sailing club meeting last week, me and Melissa got to hang out with Charles and Aidan for a while and chat and it was a nice time. Aidan started to teach  me some basic stuff about sailing, like some of the fancy lingo, and it got me really excited to try it out. So it sucks that I didn't go yesterday, but hopefully I'll get another crack at it soon.

On Wednesday, I had to register for my seminar classes and it was pretty much a huge nightmare. I've only ever done online registration... but we had to actually queue up, outside in the cold. I got there hours before registration opened and there was already a huge line in front of us. The people who worked at the college seemed really irritated that we were queuing up so early, but I don't know what they expected because there were only three spots available for visiting students in each seminar. So once registration did open, the more popular classes were filling up within seconds. Luckily, I got the classes I needed - an English seminar called "Film and Shakespeare" and Irish language for beginners, which I'm really excited about. Wednesdays are also good days because FanSci has game night in the evening, so I went there and hung out for a while and played some board games with a cool guy I met named Barry. And after game night, another friend of mine, Fergal invited me out with them to the pub so I was pretty excited that they wanted me to come along, and that's when they convinced me to come to Cork with them! We had a couple drinks and talked about Science Fiction, it was a pretty good time too. (A lot of people here are pretty into Doctor Who so that gives me something to talk about people with. Melissa's friend Peter is also really into DW and Torchwood, he's like a closet nerd, and we like to chat about it. We're trying to get Melissa into it, he had us over one day earlier in the week to watch a few episodes and it was fun.) But overall, that's kind of what we do. We go out to pubs a lot and talk to people and listen to music.

Saturday there was also an anime convention at the school. It was a small one and I didn't really know a lot of people, but it was pretty fun. For one thing, I met LittleKuriboh and MasakoX - which I'm sure means nothing to anyone reading this blog but they're internet personalities that I look up to, so that was exciting. And they're awesome guys and really funny!

I also got to play video games and wear my Amy Pond costume! Not a lot of people recognized it - I guess it is pretty obscure, especially when I don't have a Doctor to go with it... but I think it came out well anyway.

And yesterday and today I've been feeling really sick so I haven't been doing much other than sitting around at home, playing my banjolele. Yes, I just wanted to brag that I have a banjolele now. It. Is. Awesome. I've been practicing a lot but I haven't started busking yet. But I'm planning to do some street performing and some open mic nights. It's SO COOL. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of me with it yet, but expect one soon. And maybe something extra special too. But yeah, my banjolele is awesome. It plays the same as a ukulele so I don't have to learn anything, but I want to memorize a pretty good portfolio of songs and hopefully I can go out and busk with it soon. Can't wait!

Anyway, I'll try to blog more regularly in the future. I guess that's about all I have to say about the past week, other than it's foggy and I can prove it.

Filler!

I'm sorry I haven't written anything in a week, and I promise I will soon. But in the meantime, here's an awesome picture of me and Melissa battling with a lightsaber and two sonic screwdrivers.

Photos from the Burrens

The Burrens, made of limestone

The Cliffs of Moher

The Burren

So, things have been going pretty well across the pond! I've taken a few nights off from going out to let myself recover. I've had small bouts of homesickness as far as that goes, but I've also had a couple fun evenings in. Wednesday was the Societies fair and I joined a few. I think the ones I am most excited about are Photography Soc and FanSci. I haven't done anything with Photo Soc yet but they seemed very nice and they liked my Nikon. I guess they do photography trips and have like little photo challenges for different weeks, where you have to like take a close up picture of hands or something specific like that to practice your technique, and you can put your pictures in your own little online gallery for the soc. It seems cool and I've been getting pretty serious about photography since I got here. I went to a meeting of FanSci on Wednesday night, which is like the Science Fiction and gaming club. They were awfully fun, I played some games with them and it was a great time, and this one bloke wants to run a game of Dungeons and Dragons next week and he invited me, I'm pretty excited. Last night I also just stayed in and had a girls night with Melissa... we ate pizza and chicken fingers and just sat around and talked about boys and, y'know, stuff girls do haha. It was really relaxing and we're gonna try to do it once a week. My classes have also been pretty good, although only half of them have started yet. Celtic mythology in particular is going to be really awesome. We're learning about all the classic Irish legends and the popular folklore here, like fairies and the banshee. I am so interested, I can't wait to start reading the book and everything.


Theoretically, though, this blog entry is supposed to be about my vacation adventures! I've started exploring the country of Ireland and it's absolutely beautiful. Nicole and I don't have classes on Fridays, so we're trying to spend some of our Fridays doing mini trips around Ireland. Today we took a tour through the Burren, which is an area around Western Ireland in County Clare that's very rocky and it has all these rocky mountains. They're all made of limestone because apparently like 4 million years ago, the entire area was underwater and it was like a huge tropical sea! I think that's so cool. It made me wish that I had a way to go back and see what everything here was like back then. (Where are you, Doctor??) But anyway, it was really pretty and we stopped at some pretty impressive places. The best one, obviously, was the Cliffs of Moher. It was just breathtaking. I felt like I was literally on the top of everything. It's difficult even to describe, but I took some awesome pictures. I was told that like everyone hops the fence to get a closer look at the cliff, so I did it. I got really close to the edge, like a few inches away, and it was amazing. (Can't yell at me now, I already did it and I didn't die! When I told Gabe about it, he commented that you don't normally hear the phrase "I could have died today! It was awesome!") We also went to the top of O'Brien castle, it was so windy I felt like I was just gonna blow away into the ocean. It's probably good I didn't, but it just felt so alive to be up there! The cliffs were so tall and the moss was so green and the sun was so bright and the ocean was so, so blue... the bluest blue ever. And the whole trip got me to thinking about how old things are. We went to a Stonehenge-esque burial ground called Poulnabrone that was 5,000 years old. And in the Aillwee Cave, the stalactites had been forming for about 10,000 years. Let me say something about the Aillwee cave also. It was pretty impressive... not really because it was impressive to look at, after seeing the cliffs being in the cave was almost like "why are we here looking at this rock." But I went from being inches away from a cliff face 400 feet above the ocean... to inside a mountain, standing underneath 370 feet of solid limestone. Actually I was probably at around ground level and it was a mountain above me, but it just felt like I was standing in the center of the earth. The whole thing was just... something. It made you think about how old things are. And it was gorgeous. I'll be anxious to put up a few of my pictures once I finish going through them all.

Candy Bars

Yorkie: it's NOT for girls

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

Settling in

I've been mostly spending my time getting settled and getting to know the city of Galway. It's awfully nice here. Everything is nice to look at. I love just walking around. The shops and houses are quaint, colorful and close together and there's always interesting people on the streets. Galway bay is beautiful. The rivers are peaceful. I haven't explored the campus as thoroughly yet as some other parts of the city, but it's awfully pretty. Some of the buildings are really old and nice. The quadrangle in particular is viney and really awesome looking. There's also a really nice path that you can take to walk to school that kind of winds right between two of the rivers and I just love it. I thought that walking to school would be kind of crappy because it's like twenty minutes away and I'm not used to that, but... I love walking to school, haha. This morning I was walking next to the rivers with my english muffin and I felt so great. Classes started yesterday but my first class was today. The whole class schedule thing is kind of weird here. I haven't actually signed up for any classes yet, but some of them have already started, and some of them don't start for another couple weeks. I'm kind of just going with the flow.

But I'm definitely starting to get used to living here. Knowing the routes, things like that. Even grocery shopping is getting easier! I had to pick up bread and milk today and inadvertently found FRANKS HOT SAUCE. So obviously I am extremely excited about this. For lunch today, I had a sliced chicken sandwich with gouda cheese and Franks on a french baguette. I am probably going to eat this every day for the rest of the semester because I feel like it enhanced my entire life.

We have also just been generally having a fun time! Like I said, I've been hanging out a lot with my friends from St. Joe's. We also have a friend Patrick from California but he has already lived here for like six months so he is pretty Irish. Like last night, a few of the girls (me, Melissa, Shannon, Kelsey and Christine) went over to Patrick's house and met his roommates and he and Shannon cooked a really tasty pasta dinner! We are calling this tradition "Family Dinner", haha. 

Patrick also took a couple of us down to the bay the other day. I got some really nice pictures. (Click for slightly better, but these aren't full res.)

The last one is from Shop St. I'm going to take loads more pictures while I'm here, though. Galway is so photogenic, I'm getting great shots.

And as much fun as I'm having with my friends right now, I'm also looking forward to making some Irish friends! Tomorrow is my first big step towards that, I think, because tomorrow is the societies fair. (Societies are like clubs, because here clubs means sports.) Galway has a couple socs that look really cool, there's like an anime one and a science fiction one. Also like photography and film. So I'm excited to see which ones look cool at the fair and all the kinds of cool people I'll be able to meet! People here seem really nice. I met a few fun Irish people at the pub last Saturday, they were just so friendly and happy to talk to me. So I might also text them (Shona and Tadhg) sometime soon and see if they want to hang out with us too.

But in the meantime, it's really starting to be like I live here. I posted a letter today! It's for Gabe. He posted mine yesterday so we'll see how long they take to get delivered. (Actually, Gabe doesn't post letters. He mails letters. I post letters.) Keeping in touch has been pretty easy, I got to video chat with Gabe last night on his new netbook and I was very excited to see him! But I do miss everyone, and I'm sure I'll miss them more once they go back to Canisius together. But I'm so excited to be here, meeting a new city!

Why Irish People are Nicer

This is the first in a series of posts called "How You Can Tell Irish People Are Nicer Than Americans"

How you can tell Irish people are nicer than Americans #1: There is no "close door" button in elevators, only an "open door" button.

Look what I found

Hey guys, look what I found in Galway.

Grocery Store Blues

I feel like I am starting to get used to many aspects of life over here. I think I've got a pretty good handle on the time difference. I know how to use the boost to get a nice hot shower. The euro system really isn't that hard. I can order a beer without embarrassing myself and I can order a panini at my favorite sandwich bar without even looking at the menu.

But grocery shopping still feels like an exercise in futility and painful tourism.

It's bad enough that I still can't figure out what kinds of snacks I'm interested in eating. (Other than chocolate, which I've pretty much mastered.) But I decided to get stuff for making sandwiches and it is like making sandwiches is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE over here. They don't seem to have grape jelly. Okay, no big deal, strawberry is fine too. They also don't have any cheeses that any normal person would put on their sandwich, such as provolone or swiss. I don't want sharp cheddar on my sandwich and I don't even know what Edam tastes like. As much as it makes me feel like a dumb tourist, I buy American, although it is not labeled as American or in fact anything other than "CHEESE." Okay, cheese it is. I go to the deli to get meat and realize I don't know how much I want to order because it is priced by the 100 grams and I have no concept of how much ham is 100 grams of ham. There are also like three choices of meat at the deli so I cut my losses and decide to get packaged meats... which are sold by the slice?? There is a sale being advertised, €4 for 14 slices of ham. (?) Then the cashier lady speaks at me in an accent that barely sounds like she is speaking English and suddenly I just want to go back to sleep even though I just slept for like twelve hours.

Moral: Apparently grocery shopping is the bane of my existence.

Kicking the Crack in Galway

Before you get worried, "kicking the crack" is slang here for having a good time. But it's not just any good time, or so I've been told. It's referring to the BEST kind of good time, the uniquely Irish kind, that you can only have when you're in Ireland. Or at least that's how the Irish explained the phrase to me.

So, I spent my first couple days here pretty much asleep in bed, but since then I've started to get some time to explore the town! It's pretty wonderful. Shop St is a few blocks away from where I'm living and it's pretty much the city center as far as I can tell. There's this whole series of walking roads with loads of cute little stores and sandwich shops and pubs. One of my friends commented that it looked like what Disneyland is trying to be like, haha. But I guess it's kind of true. It's just so... quaint! I haven't explored the entire city as much as some of my friends, but I've got a pretty good handle of the four block radius or so around Shop St because I've spent a lot of hours walking up and down around there. I'm sure the bay is really pretty but it's so exciting to walk around where the people are. There are street performers a lot of the time and I love them. There were african drums and one guy slumped against a building playing Bad Romance in a thick accent. There was a full band playing original music on the street yesterday. The band consisted of a guitar, a double bass and a banjo and they were awesome, I hope to run into them again. Also there are bands in all the pubs like every night. There are so many musicians! My favorite band so far plays at the Spanish Arch twice a week. I think they're called Alale and they played like pretty traditional Irish music, I liked it so much.

I've been trying to try out a lot of places because there are SO MANY places and I want to see which ones are good! Although the atmosphere seems pretty good to me everywhere here. Also the Guinness is good, hee hee. Some of my friends don't like it but they are obviously not MEN'S MEN like I am, hahahaha.

Speaking of my friends, I have been making friends! So far I have not made any Irish friends, I have only made other American friends. Obviously I've been hanging out with the other people from Canisius and we're all having a good time. But one of our roommates is from St. Joes in Philly so I've been hanging out with the group of girls from St. Joe's too and they are really fun.

So I'm pretty pleased to spend time with them, but I'm hoping to meet some Irish people soon! I mean, I've talked to Irish people at pubs and stuff and so far everyone seems really friendly, but I'm hoping once school starts I will make some good Irish friends who will want to go out and do stuff with me. I had a few orientation things this week but school starts for us and the local students next week. So I'm more or less looking forward to it starting. The campus is really nice, though I don't have as much of a grasp over the sense of direction within it as city square. But I can get there and back effectively. It's not too far and the walk is nice.

Took that on my morning walk to school. I decided to take Irish language and I'm pretty psyched about it. It's more bilingual here than I expected, actually. And the professor who teaches the beginners Irish seems really amazing. Here's a story about him. I've been welcomed to Galway about a billion times, but when this professor started to welcome me, he stopped and asked me if I was Irish, if my family was from here. I told him yes and he said, "Well in that case, welcome home." (b'awwwww) There's still stuff to get used to, obviously, but I'm starting to feel kind of at home. A bartender last night told me it seemed like I'd been here a while. I thought that was a pretty good compliment actually.

Now it's time to see what a weekend in Galway is like!

Arrival

So to put you out of your suspense, I did make it to Galway! The process was kind of painful but in theory everything went pretty smoothly with my flights being uneventful and on time and everything. I'm still kind of confused about the days, because I didn't leave yesterday, I left two days ago. So on Monday I was headed up for the airport. In a final homage to my city, my mom and I stopped on the way to the airport at the Albright Knox to see the Stanley Cup, I couldn't help myself. But then we got to the airport super early and I had a couple hours to hang out with my parents and Gabe, who came to see me off. They couldn't go through the security. It was really hard.

I made it to New York City and met up with the whole group of Canisius people going. We had a pretty long layover so it was low stress. The main problem for me was that I didn't sleep at all on the international flight. And it landed at like nine in the morning local time. So I was just pretty exhausted and we had to wait in this really long line for customs and trying to change our money over and everything. And we landed in Shannon and had to take a bus to Galway, but we missed the first bus because it was full so we had to wait for another hour. Eventually we made it here and found Niland House with its orange balconies and made it up to our room. Which is very nice but I don't have any pictures yet, maybe tomorrow.

Pretty much I was just tired and miserable and angry at everyone else even though they didn't really do anything wrong. So I didn't go out last night or anything, I just slept. I saw a couple streets of the town only so far but it seems really cute. I want to do some more exploring today but there's a lot to get used to. Like how I woke up at 7am and it was still completely dark. It's a little after 8am now and starting to get a little brighter but I guess the sun doesn't rise until almost 9. Also yesterday I went to the grocery store for the first time and it was just stupidly overwhelming. I can't figure out any of the food. I ended up buying yogurt only. Everything is weird brands and all their chips are weird flavors like bacon or chicken. I mean crisps. See what I mean? I'm hoping if I go back today after having a night of sleep, simple tasks like picking out food will seem less overwhelming.

I just feel very far away from everyone I know.

Happy New Year in Buffalo

I have to admit how pleased I was with 2010. Yeah, it certainly had its ups and downs. Spring semester certainly brought some difficulties, but even during it all, staying up for all hours every night in the Palisano computer lab, I was happy. A month in El Salvador was horizon broadening. Summer in particular was the best on record, loving every minute in Elmwood Village. And this semester, though it's been pretty rough academically, has also made me feel very lucky, mostly because I've had such fantastic people to spend it with, between George Martin House, Phi Sigma Sigma and a certain special someone. Now I'm eating my Coldstone ice cream (cinnamon, butterfingers and raspberries!) in my room surrounded by all my crap and reflecting on the past year. Yeah, it was pretty great, but so far 2011 has been pretty darn great too. Rang in the new year with my boyfriend Gabe and all my stranger-neighbors in the city of Buffalo downtown at the ball drop. Damn, I love my city.

So that's two things I'm going to miss. There's loads of others. I said goodbye to my beloved roommate yesterday morning too...

I'm excited though. Preparations are well underway. As they should be, I guess, since tomorrow is my last full day at home. Woah. I packed my suitcase today. It's huge and I could probably fit my whole house in it but it has to be under 50 pounds for the plane. So I just stuffed a bunch of stuff in it and figured I'd weigh it and then take stuff out when it was inevitably over. But it weighed in at 49.9 pounds! Hahaha. I still have to pack my carry on suitcase, which is small but gonna weigh about a million pounds. At this point, it's a lot of little things I'm trying to think about. Like finding both of my sonic screwdrivers and putting my Kairos cd in my laptop and charging my DS so I can play Pokemon on the plane. And spending tomorrow watching movies.

I'm still nervous but on the first day of the new year, I feel like the luckiest person in the world.