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?)