Homework, boo.

I know, I know, it’s been awhile. But we actually had homework to do! Believe it or not that’s kind of a big deal here. I wrote an Irish history paper this week worth 50% of my grade! Yikes! And to follow that up I got to write ANOTHER essay for my Middle Ages class. “Critically discuss Judaeo-Christian influences on Medieval geographical though.” I know. You’re all dying to read it. I’ll be sure to get copies in the mail soon. (In all honestly I’m kind of proud of that paper, I was TERRIFIED to write it, but maybe I’ve actually learned something about the Middle Ages in the last month and a half.) And at least that paper isn’t worth so much…I just have to take a final in May for that class worth 80% of my grade. No big deal right? Kinda like my Shakespeare final worth 100% of my grade won’t be a big deal? Yeah…now I get why they give us a month to take finals. Nothing like the US that’s for sure. The good news though, is that I will have NO 7:30 am finals! Whoever created that finals block is just evil, thank goodness the Irish don’t believe in making you take exams worth 100% of your grade at the crack of dawn. And hey! Our Shakespeare professor DID tell us exactly what’s coming. We’ll be identifying and explaining quotes from King Lear for a good hour on May 9th. He read us one of the quotes from last year’s exam, and then told us that “anyone who missed that question deserves not only to fail but to be stripped naked and made to run about the quad.” Thank you professor, that’s semi-comforting. Sort of.
So anyway, I’m done with two of my papers, but still have a HUGE government project and a paper for that class to look forward to. Jumping for joy over that one. And two days after we come back from Spring break…another Irish history paper, worth the other 50% of my grade. Yuck.
So anyway, with all the paper writing and project doing that has been going on we haven’t gotten out to do a whole lot of fun stuff lately L bummer. But this weekend we’re getting the heck out of here! Watch out Cobh! The crazy American students have gone stir crazy writing papers and we’re ready to go DO something.
Valentine’s Day came and went in Ireland and I barely noticed. It’s just not a big deal here? Looks like Hallmark hasn’t taken over the WHOLE planet. A bunch of us got together, donned our pink and red and celebrated as a group. We had chocolate, I baked brownies, and the Irish kids were totally and utterly confused as to why we were making such a big deal out of it. “Valentine’s is only for people in a couple? So why?” Why? Because we’re silly Americans and we’ve decided to let Hallmark dictate which days on the calendar cannot pass without fanfare. Notice the red outfits and the paper hearts on the walls....
We also kind of sort of attempted the Barrack Street Challenge. There are 13 pubs on Barrack Street. I’ll leave it up to you to decide what the Barrack Street Challenge might involve. A few in our group did the whole thing properly, hats off to them. We just showed up in the middle to laugh at the damage.
So, despite the lack of super exciting stuff happening lately, we have a lot of stuff coming up! March 5th I’m going to Dublin for the day to check out a few Grad schools! Ahhh! How scary is that? It’ll be good for me though, I’ll have to be all independent and stuff J I’m taking the train up by myself and checking out Trinity College and that afternoon is University College Dublin.
That weekend we’re going to Galway for the Trad Fest there. And the week after that my Mom and Christine are coming over! Yay for friends and family from home. I’m SO excited to see them. We’re going to be in Dublin over St. Patrick’s day, then they’re coming back to Cork to see what I’ve been up to here! I think they both have to kiss the Blarney stone while they’re in Cork. Although, I’ve been told that “having kissed the Blarney Stone- doesn't make you more eloquent, it reduces the chances that you'll ever be quiet- which for you, may be a problem!” Thanks Evans.
When Mom and Christine head back to the states Beth and I are heading home with her roommate Siovhan for the first part of our Spring break. Siovhan’s from Galway and has a mile long list of things she wants to take us to do, the beaches, the Aran Islands, the Cliffs of Moher (google Cliffs of Moher. Really. Do it. SO pretty.) Stay tuned for details on the rest of Spring break.
Our break is March 20- April 21st, and after that it’s one last week of class and then a month of finals! I ended up with a big break between exams, so one more friend is flying into Cork for a few days and we’re going to London for a few days after that!
And the scariest part of today’s blog…it’s almost March. Which means my time here is going SO much faster then I ever thought possible. So, mentally, I’ve been making a list of all the things I’ll miss in Ireland. (In no particular order)
-Irish accents
-9 am is REALLY early
-if you have a 9am class no one really expects you to be there
-Getting packages, or anything in the mail, it’s seriously like Christmas. No one sends stuff by mail at home, and we really should.
-Cadbury chocolate is EVERYWHERE
-Trad sessions
-The free notebooks they hand out while you’re walking to class
-My Shakespeare professor and my Middle Ages professor. They are completely hilarious.
-Irish slang (eejit, for example)
-The Old Oak, and everything else on Oliver Plunket Street
-Most of all, the people. If you can look at this picture and not smile there’s something wrong with you.

Gold star for you if you actually read through all of this!

That's Quay with a K

Turns out cash evaporates in big cities. Cities like, oh I don’t know, Dublin? And being poor little study abroad students we don’t have a whole lot of cash to begin with! So, no grand adventures this weekend…we decided to lay low and hang around Cork. Which was actually a great idea, because last week was Trad Fest 2008! And now you’re all going “Great Alyssa…what the heck is that?” Trad is Traditional Irish music. And Trad Fest is a week of concerts, dancing, and something they call Trad Disco. This week I went to one big concert, several “sessions” (aka a bunch of students get together, hang out, and play their instruments) and I got to try Ceilí dancing! But let’s not talk about my Ceilí skills. The Irish kids grew up with this stuff…I did not. Overall though, Trad Fest gets an A+ in my book.
Other big stuff going on this week…Rugby! Ireland vs. France! Ireland lost, but I think you could have gone just about anywhere in Cork on Saturday afternoon and found the game on. Turns out soccer is not the biggest sport on the Emerald Isle. It’s Rugby all the way over here. Soccer is big too (and they actually call it soccer) along with something called Hurling that I’ve only ever seen a few minutes of on TV. Gaelic football is big too…from what we can tell it’s a combination of volleyball, soccer, basketball, and American football. Our Irish history professor showed us part of a game in class last week…it looked like fun! Now only if we’d had any idea what was going on…
After last week’s wacky half hour of snow fall we’re finally starting to get nice weather over here. I haven’t seen it rain for a few days (and now that I’ve jinxed myself I should go put my umbrella in my backpack). Last night we got ice cream and took a walk around Cork after our movie. Yup. It’s that nice out.
We also discovered that sometimes movies come out in theaters here before they come out in theatres at home…hooray Ireland! But before you get too jealous - keep in mind that with the exchange rate going to a movie costs us about 1.5 times as much as it costs you. Oh wait…everything costs us about 1.5 times as much as it costs you. That includes groceries. Unfortunately. We've finally started to cave though and we're shooting for doing "family" dinner once a week. Yup. That means actually cooking. Turns out study abroad students cannot live on peanut butter and cereal alone. As hard as we might try. So once a week we cough up the money to make a real meal and try not to gasp at the exchange rate. Darn dollar. I even read an article last week that some stores in New York have started taking the Euro. How crazy is that?
Oh, and my last thought, how cool is the internet? Not only does Skype let me call home…but I found out yesterday that Skype does conference calls. I got to talk to my Uncle Brad in Kuwait and my Aunt Julie in Connecticut at the same time. Calling home is kind of tough when you're this far away, so you appreciate things like that more then you can imagine. My little cousin Hailey made it even better by typing messages to us while we were talking. “ggygyuyuguuuuhyuytgyyuuuuuuuuuuuuttgthjyggyg” She’s getting pretty good at the typing thing :-)

*pictures are of the big concert we went to, an Irish group called Beoga, look them up on youtube…the Irish kids weren’t lying to us, they’re awesome. And the other picture is the street I live on – Bachelors Quay. Which is pronounced “key”. Don’t try it any other way or the cab drivers will laugh at you. Just trust me on that one. My building is the pink one on the right (the taller, lighter pink one. Have I mentioned that the Irish seem to enjoy painting their buildings fun colors?)

Four star floor space!

New study abroad lessons for this week...

1. You ALWAYS need your passport
2. The world is smaller then you think
3. You’d be amazed how comfy the floor can be when it’s free
4. Your tram ticket does not work forever.
5. While your tram ticket does not work forever, the stupid American ticket just might.
6. 6 girls, 4 sleeping bags, and 1 couch means that someone is going to be cold.
7. 9 college students and 1 shower means you just do not get to wash your hair. Deal with it.
8. You can watch the Super Bowl in Ireland…but it won’t have commercials!

We went to Dublin this weekend! I might have a new favorite city. It has a really cool mix of historical stuff, literary stuff, and fun stuff. Literally one of those places that has something for everyone.
We decided to Ryan Air it to Dublin this time around…arrived about an hour before our flight to check in…and learned a very important lesson about our American drivers’ licenses. They are NOT a valid form of ID for Ryan Air. So…in the midst of the small snow storm that was taking over Cork (yes snow, don’t get me started on the snow) Beth raced from the Airport to Leeside back to the Airport via taxi to get her passport…and managed to check in just in time to make our flight. So let’s review, one forgotten passport and the first snow Cork has seen in years. And we’re still at the airport. Yes this seems to bode well for the weekend ahead.
We got into Dublin safe and sound and grabbed the bus in town, from there we checked into our four star accommodations. Otherwise known as Buckly hall…otherwise known as my friend Ryan’s apartment. Aka… we brought blankets, pillows, sleeping bags, and had a slumber party in the living room. Ryan and I haven’t really seen each other since high school…but we realized we’re both studying in Ireland for the semester! Like I said, the world is smaller then you think. He offered us a place to stay in Dublin and…well...study abroad lesson number 3 of the week. You’d be amazed how comfy the floor can be when it’s free. I can’t even begin to explain how lucky we were to have such amazing hosts in Dublin. Ryan and his roommates were great; I’m still amazed at how willing they were to put up with all six of us taking over their living room.
We went out for lunch after we dropped our stuff off and then Ryan and Mike went with us to “The Old Jameson Distillery”. The tour is cool, but at the end of every tour a few “volunteers” are subjected to the unimaginable torture of being forced to sample a few different whiskeys (please note the sarcasm). I’m fairly certain Ryan has never raised his hand faster for anything in his life. After that we went back to the apartment for dinner…only to realize every traveler’s worst nightmare – one of us had lost a wallet. So- again with the fabulous host thing, Ryan took us back to the tram station to look, we took the tram back to Jameson to look there, and while we didn’t turn up anything, we learned a lesson about how the tram works! Every so often officers get on board to check tickets…well…we hadn’t seen them do that yet. Turns out the tram tickets we bought after lunch were not still good at 7:30 at night…especially since we bought one way tickets…and were going the wrong way. Hence, my next lesson. Your tram ticket doesn’t work forever. But, we explained what we were doing, they believed us that we didn’t know exactly how the tram worked, punched the tickets we had, and let us keep going…they even took down information about our missing wallet and promised to call if anything turned up. So, while your tram ticket does not work forever, the stupid American ticket just might. Nothing like nearly being thrown off a tram to bring old friends back together right? (Yes, I did keep the ticket, it’s going in my scrap book). So…no wallet, but a good lesson about the Dublin tram system. Thankfully credit cards can be cancelled, debit cards can too, and the time change meant it was still business hours at home, and in a few weeks we'll be able to sit back and laugh and go "hey! remember that one time, in Dublin? When they almost kicked us off the tram and gave us a huge fine?". (We’re silver lining kind of travelers). So, all things taken care of, the boys took us out for the night in Dublin, we met their friends studying here and got to see more of Dublin, always exciting.

We woke up the next morning sprawled in various corners of the living room and Maggie announced “I don’t know whose sweatshirt I’m wearing, but I was cold so I put it on!” Okay…so team UCC was a little short on sleeping bags when we headed up north to take on Dublin. We’ll work on that. The logistics of 9 people and 1 shower with European hot water supplies just aren’t great either. I think I timed my shower at about 3 minutes flat. Impressive right? And I’m not even sure I set the record for fastest shower on Saturday morning.

The boys went on their school trip to Belfast and the girls set out to conquer Dublin. We went out for breakfast, headed to City Centre, and started exploring. We went to the Guinness Factory, Dublin Castle, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and then hit Grafton Street for some shopping and dinner. After dinner we did Dublin’s Literary Pub Crawl. Two actors take you to four pubs in Dublin where some of the country’s best known writers hung out. They do skits along the way and the goal is that you’ll come out a little smarter in the end. I can now say I’ve been to the same pubs as the likes of Joyce, Beckett, and Wilde. Cool huh? Maybe some of their talent rubbed off and you'll all start seeing a drastic increase in the quality of the blog. (Uh huh, sure Alyssa, you keep telling yourself that.)

Sunday we went to the Dublin Zoo, Modern Art Museum, out for dinner, and then it was Super Bowl time! You have no idea how funny it is to see Tom Brady running out of the tunnel while listening to an Irish announcer saying “The match is about to begin! The players are taking the pitch!” They’re taking the what to start the what!? We had a good laugh that the Irish attempt at explaining American Football. No wonder it hasn’t caught on over here, they had us confused about the rules and we knew what was going on! At about 3:30 the game finished up and the few troopers who made it through headed for bed. And when I say bed I mean our sleeping bags. Did I mention we had to leave at 6:45 to catch our flight? I might be nuts. I stayed up for the whole thing and they didn’t show one commercial!
It was a crazy weekend, and we might have had a few setbacks, but we had a blast. I cannot say enough good things about our hosts or Dublin in general. And now I'm totally excited for round two in Dublin- St. Patrick's Day!