Halloween

This week has been a short but intense week.

I spent Monday relaxing and sleeping from a fast moving weekend.

Tuesday was my long class day. I had my theatre lecture, which I always enjoy. Each time I'm in that class I find something else I could be interested in writing my paper on. This past lecture was interesting because as my Prof was explaining something in the Catholic culture during the early 1900s, another student found it necessary to question the Catholic religion and why they change their beliefs over the years. She was one of the undergrads. Besides the fact that we were in lecture class and not seminar, the class is also on Irish Theatre, not history of the Catholic Church. My prof handled it nicely, tho. Haha! Since my prof went over, then we "MPhils" decided to skip our Research Seminar, since we'd be 30 mins late by the time we'd show up. So we hung around for several hours until our Cinema class.

On Tuesday night we met up with our Theatre Prof at the famous Abbey Theatre, which we have been studying about. It opened in 1904 by Lady Gregory and WB Yeats. It started a whole new movement in Irish Theatre and has put Ireland on the map for Theatre. The play was not too exciting. The Fay Brothers came into The Abbey Theatre soon after it was founded and created an Abbey Players style of acting: Not much movement; let the language, story and words speak thru the actors instead of what they actually do. It was a bit dull and we found out the next day from our Prof that it wasnt exactly getting great reviews. But it was still cool to be in the Abbey. After that, the 4 of us MPhils went across the street to a pub. Then we went to Johnny Rockets, which is an American Diner chain restaurant. After that I went to catch my bus, then after waiting for 30 mins, I realized that I had missed the last bus and I was waiting in vein. So I took a cab home.

Wednesday morning had a last minute library tour, which none of us were thrilled with. It made us all a little bitter. We then had our Theatre seminar. None of us were super prepared for it since we had all been out of town the weekend before and none of read what we needed to until the last minute. So we made sure to keep the Prof talking about the play from the night before as long as we could! haha... we're so sly! Then, we went to our music class, which we successfully had moved from the lonely Friday time slot to Wed afternoon, giving us a 4 day weekend.

Thursday was the beginning of the halloween celebrations. The Post-Grad halloween ball was Thursday night. I went with my other flat mates. I was the only who didnt buy a tix and they were sold out, so my flat mates talked them into selling me a tix at the door. I ran into my Chinese classmate MengYing. She was confused as to why there wasnt more to it, since it was called a 'ball'. It was like a club scene. Lights everywhere and loud music from a DJ. Wasnt too into it. After a while, I went down stairs and met up with LeeAnn in the bar below. I prefer sitting and talking rather than screaming above the music and squeezing between lots of dancing people...

Friday night, I met a friend from CU for pizza. Jen and I met up and had a slice of pizza from Ray's, then we went back to her place and I watched Seinfeld on her computer while she got dressed up. Then we met up with other kids and took a bus out to some guy's house who lived about half hour away. I think most of the people at this halloween party were CU kids, so that was kinda cool. I liked it cuz there were more Irish students than internationals, and I just sorta talked with lots of people. This fresher girl (freshman) and I stopped at a KFC on the way back to Trinity hall, then we grabbed a cab and headed home.

Today I went out to an Italian restaurant for dinner with LeeAnn. We watched all the dressed up halloweeners walk by outside. After wandering around for a bit outside, there were a couple of English ghetto guys who were trying to pick us up. The one guy was pretty aggressive and annoying. We finally broke free of him and walked away. But a few minutes later we were about to pass again, until some barely dressed halloween girls walked by and caught his attention! Then we headed to Bewley's for tea and dessert. That was a decent end to the night! Took a while til the bus came, but at least I caught the bus this time, instead of waiting around all night for no bus to come!

I have another 300 word paper due in Music on Wed, so I'm thinking about that and my Cinema essay is due in a couple of weeks, so I'll need to jump on that soon. It's after midnight so I may not worry about that tonight :-)

Galway

So it's almost a week later, but I will show some pictures of what all I saw. We took an early morning bus from Dublin and arrived in a rainy bus station. The plan was to go to the Aran Isles that day, but the weather was way too rough, if you've seen my previous posts with the wind and such...

So anyways, we chose to go to the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren. Our first stop was some sort of grave. I didnt get close enough because when I got off the bus, the cold wind and rain were so bad I wasnt off the bus but 5 minutes. The rain was coming from the side and my umbrella was getting flipped inside out and back again. So I got back inside quickly and had a talk with the tour guide, Paul. I've been learning so much in my film and theatre classes and going to these tours, you hear things that help fill in the gaps. We made a few stops to look at pretty scenery and castles. Then hit the Cliffs. After that, we went to a small town for lunch. It was a very windy day, that's for sure. We drove along the coast and got to get out for a few more pictures. There was no way that you could have good hair that day, just wasnt gonna happen!

That night we went into the city centre in Galway. We checked out a few different local pubs, got to see some traditional music - called Trad Music.

The next day we caught our 2nd tour. It was great. The B&B we were staying at was connected with our tours, so we got dropped off after our cliffs tour - this is after they dropped off the whole tour at the bus station, then preceded to take the two of us back (hehe) and then we had the tour bus waiting for us the next morning outside our B&B. Good service! That means we got first dibs at seats on the bus.

So we ended up going to Connemara. This is such a beautiful area, so peaceful, so sad and emotional. We were at the famine fields, where the English sent the Irish to live and starve. I had more one on one talks with this tour guide as well, also named Paul. We stopped at the film site of The Quiet Man and I got some pictures. Then we went to Kylemore Abbey, this amazingly beautiful castle, garden and abbey.

In the pictures you'll see Galway bay, a little road to leads into the bay with an 80kph speed limit, a rainbow (perfect for Ireland!), a Connemara poney, rare and special to see, funny signs, the cast of the quiet man and it's house, and the Kylemore castle - inside and out.

Cliffs of Moher

So this weekend I went all over the Galway area, but it might be easier just to split it up into groups. The funniest part of the weekend was our time at the Cliffs of Moher. I've been there 3 times now. I knew before our trip that I would need layers. The cliffs tend to be cold and windy. I've been there in May and March and each time I was wearing long sleeves shirts and at least two jackets, along with scarves and gloves. So I came prepared. I wore a long sleeve shirt, a fleece jacket, and a longer khaki jacket with a knit hat, scarf and gloves. This was one trip to the cliffs that I will remember.

The weather was a little rough that day, keeping us from taking a trip to the Aran Isles. The water was too rough to take the ferry over, so we decided to move up our Cliffs of Moher trip that day. The water was crazy and there were huge waves thru the water.

We started to walk up the cliffs and the wind was so strong. As you walk up the cliff, you get to a landing, where people can take pictures, then after leveling off it begins up a little more until you get to the top. Once we got to the leveled spot, it was incredibly difficult to move on. I've got a couple of videos to show what I mean. The winds were like hurricane level. The winds were 65 mph and faster. It was amazing we didnt fall. There were definitely a few times I thought I would fall.

The videos seem shaky but its because of the strong wind. Also you can hear how hard the wind is blowing. The first video is from the landing where LeeAnn and I had trouble walking forward. You can see as the video whips around towards OBriens Castle that there is a group of people trying to move forward and they arent able to. And we are walking back because we cant fight the wind.

The next video I'm in front of OBriens Castle trying to get up the stairs to the castle but am unable to do so. Again, you can see the people around me fighting against the wind. It was incredible!

Sleeeeepy

It's Thursday. My week has been relatively normal. I've gone to class, I've gone choir. We took a walking trip to the Irish Theatre Archives, which was actually really cool. I looked thru the 1742 printed book with Handel's Messiah. It was in really good condition and I hummed along with the songs in the book. I never really realized how short those songs are. They are the same words over and over and when you see them printed out once, not repeating, it's really short.

We have a paper due on Friday to our Irish Music Prof about 2 cds he had us listen to. It turned out to be really good background music when I was doing other work. And today I found a computer lab on campus and printed the paper off, so I'm good to go for tomorrow.

This morning I woke up at 5am. Some of you may very well still have been awake when I woke up. I had to go to the Garda - which is immigration - so that I could be legal! You have to get there early cuz the line gets so long way before they open at 8am and once you get there they give you a ticket and tell you to return later. the higher your ticket number, the later you have to return. then they also only give out a certain number of tickets so even if you've been waiting in line, you may not get a ticket, if they run out, and you have to try again another day. Most people i talked to told me the line at the Garda was completely around the block. And one person said how they had to return to the Garda at 10pm that night! (that's because they arrived around 10:30 that morning - slackers!) Thank goodness, when LeeAnn and I got there before 6:30am the line was just around the first corner, putting me at number 141 (there we not 140 people in front of me - maybe 50, but other ppl got to go first depending on other things - they were not students). So we got our ticket around 8am, went to Bewley's for a large Irish breakfast, went to campus to print our papers, then headed back to the Garda around 11 when they told us to return. My number finally popped up around 11:30. And that's that. Now i'm legal here. I can come and go as I please and they wont question me. If I leave the country, I'm allowed to return - up until next September, that is.

Anyways, it's almost 1:30pm - when the rest of you are up getting ready for or already at work (it's 8:30am est). And i'm going to sleep. It's time for a nap. Boy am I sleeeeeepy!

Just pictures from Cork and Kerry.

I'm not gonna explain each pix, so if you're curious, just ask and i'll tell ya. There are a couple in there that may seem out of place - like the one of Sean saluting the goat, or me and my dad outside a thatched roof house. No, Sean and my dad werent there with me. They are from last year, but I didnt take any pix of the village, so I'm using recycled photos. Sorry. Also, the statue I'm standing with is Charlie Chaplin. (what else would you expect?)