Travelogue

Sunday morning we woke up early and caught an hour-long bus to an hour-long ferry to reach the Aran Islands, specifically the island of Inis Mor. After checking into our hostel, we rented bicycles and trekked our way across the countryside. In all fairness, it's not much of a trek: Inis Mor has a population of 900 on an island a few miles long by a few miles wide. While not very difficult, the ride was very scenic. We saw old buildings and hundreds of freestanding stone walls, always with the vast Atlantic ocean at our side.

After some riding, we arrived at Dun Aengus, an ancient rock fortress. We posed with the rocks, 300 foot cliffs, and built a pyramid.

That evening, we hung out at the hopping pub in town, somewhat ironically called "The America Bar." The following morning, we woke up early took the ferry, bus, and another bus back to Dublin.

Posted by Ryan at 11:18 AM | Permalink

Today we took an outstanding bus tour of the Burren (pron. "Bern") region near Galway. Desmond was our guide aboard the O'Neachtain bus (pronounced O-nawk-ten, with a hacking noise at the end of "nawk"). He's been doing these tours for 7 years, and "hasn't killed anyone yet."

The Burren region was once a green countryside covered with rocks. Thanks to the work of thousands of peasants, it is now covered with freestanding (no mortar) rock fences that are a sight to behold.

After stopped at some castles and ancient burial tombs, we finally arrived at the Cliffs of Moher. They are amazing. The winds are very strong, making it is intimidating to be close to the edge. I crawled to the edge of the cliffs on my stomach and looked 600 feet straight down to the Atlantic Ocean below. Next, at a pub in Doolin, a small town famous for its traditional music, I ate beef stew in Guinness for lunch. Finally, we made our way back to Galway.

I saw my first Notre Dame football game of the season at a pub in Galway. American football is almost never shown here in Ireland, but this was a special case because two prominent Catholic school were playing each other (ND and Boston College). Thankfully we had the other amazing events of the day to distract us from the (disappointing) final score.

We spent some time at another pub before retiring to our extraordinarily sketchy hostel. It was a night to remember. I can summarise by saying we had 8 beds for 10 people, my clothes smelled, and even the hostel owners described our room as a hellhole. But, every sketchy hostel has a silver lining: the spectacularly incompetent management didn't charge us for the room. That was a good thing—if they did, we wouldn't have paid anyway.

Posted by Ryan at 11:49 PM | Permalink

Yesterday I turned in my first paper of the semester. Who knew you could write 3,000 words on the structure of conversation?

Today 9 friends and I took Bus Eireann for 5 hours to arrive at Galway, a city on Ireland's west coast. Travel literature I have read say Galway is the fastest growing city in Europe — I will research the matter further and report back with the whole story.

This evening we had dinner at a fantastic restaurant called Couch Potato where every meal is served in a potato. They have pizza potatoes, pasta potatoes, and others. I had the Hawaii 5-0 potato, stuffed with shredded ham, pineapple, peppers, and cheese.

In the next few days we are going to see the Cliffs of Moher and the Arran Islands: scenic Ireland at its best.

Posted by Ryan at 10:56 PM | Permalink

This morning I saw a few of the major sights in Dublin.

Kilmainhem Gaol (Jail) is a prison near the downtown area. It is both a monument to the famous patriots held there and a museum about the social institution of prisons. Kilmainhem held famous political prisoners including Irish patriots Robert Emmet and C.S. Parnell, as well as common people jailed for petty crime during the Great Famine. (During the Famine, many people committed petty crime in hopes of being jailed and fed.) It is also the site of execution of 14 members of the 1916 Easter Sunday rebellion.

I really enjoyed visiting the Jail. It is exciting to have the opportunity to interact with the Irish history we are learning about in class. Just a few weeks ago we learned about Robert Emmet's role in the United Irishmen, his part in the 1803 uprising, and his imprisonment in Kilmainhem. On the eve of his execution, Emmet gave a speech from the docket that is regarded as a masterpiece of rhetoric. (U.S. President Lincoln studied it and could give it from memory.)

Later this morning we visited the Book of Kells, at Trinity College. The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript from 800AD, considered to be one of the finest in the world. It is quite a sight to see. Also at Trinity is The Long Hall, a two-story room with vaulted ceiling and 200,000 rare books. Believe it or not, The Long Hall was the inspiration for the Jedi Library in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones.

Having done the "abroad" portion of studying abroad this morning, it's time to do some research about conversation structure for my linguistics class.

Posted by Ryan at 3:17 PM | Permalink

Today was a great example of what it should be like to be studying abroad. Yesterday I decided on a whim to buy a bus ticket to Waterford online. This morning I woke up, made my way to city centre and walked about 15 minutes from St. Stephens Green to the Busaras station. By 10:30, I was riding across the Irish countryside.

My only plans for the day in Waterford were to see the crystal factory. Using city buses, I made my way to the Waterford Crystal visitor centre and did just that. Here are some interesting facts:

Although Waterford Crystal has been around for over 200 years, their current primary factory in Waterford has only been in operation for 36 years. In that time, the 1400C furnace has been turned on the entire time. If the furnace were to be turned off, it would take 6 weeks to cool properly and an additional 6 weeks to heat again.

Training as an artisan to work for Waterford is a long process. Learning to blow crystal takes 3 years; learning various cuts takes another 3 years. To become an engraver takes another 4 years, totaling 10 years from inept crystal oaf to masterful crystal artist. When cutting crystal there are no patterns on the piece. Each cutter memorizes up to 80 intricate patterns.

Blowers and cutters are paid by the piece. If a piece of crystal doesn't pass the rigorous quality control inspections, it is shattered, reused in the furnace, and the workers are not paid for the piece. Engravers are paid by the hour, but a mistake still means no paycheck for the time spent working.

Most famous crystal sporting trophies are Waterford crystal. So is the Millenium Ball dropped in Times Square on 1/1/2000. Replicas of these pieces and special commission works are kept at the Waterford factory just in case replicas or repairs need to be made.

After the tour, I browsed downtown Waterford, ate dinner and listened to live music at The Bank (which, contrary to its name, is a pub), and caught the bus back to Dublin.

Posted by Ryan at 11:16 PM | Permalink

Ah, the blessing of being a foreign student.

Today in my linguistics class of about 60 people the professor isolated me as "a student from America" to confirm examples of American college slang words. I responded that, yes, sick, bounce, tight, ghetto, and trip are indeed valid American slang terms. Then, having provided my professional analysis, I returned to my blissful obscurity.

Posted by Ryan at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The weather in Dublin so far has been much more mild than I was expecting. My first weeks here were sunny bliss (which is uncommon, I'm told). Now weather is grayer and cooler, although it hasn't rained much at all.

That said, a battle is being waged between the heater in my room and the cracks in my window frame. The stakes are high: my night-time thermal comfort. I'm just cranking up the heat and putting on a sweaters.

This past weekend we took a day trip to nearby Kilkenny, an city to the south. We visited Jerpoint Abbey and Kilkenny Castle. The abbey was an impressive, crumbling ruin constructed hundreds of years ago. The castle was a big house, and generally less impressive than castles should be.

I'm hoping to travel this Friday, but doing that hinges on completing my first essay of the semester.

Posted by Ryan at 6:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One of Quicken's features is to offer "insights" into your spending habits. This morning while I was adding my latest credit card transactions, Quicken's Insights window popped up with this helpful nugget:
"Observation: your expenses have exceeded your income for the past two months. Would you like help establishing a budget?"

Hopefully once I put Quicken into "Travelling Student" mode, it will recognise the sheer obviousness of its observations.

Posted by Ryan at 4:35 PM | Permalink

The past weekend was our first free weekend in Dublin since classes started. And by "free," I don't mean that the Dublin program didn't plan anything, I just mean they didn't plan for us to leave the city.

Saturday morning our program director gave us a tour of the National History museum. He knows so much about Irish history that his extended oratory attracted other random tourists to follow our group throughout the museum, listening intently. The museum is full of gold jewelry and other ancient gold pieces made by Celtic people living in Ireland, as well as military uniforms and other memorabelia from Ireland's recent history.

We also saw the Irish Natural History museum which has skeletons of the famous Irish Elk I learned about in biology years ago (Stephen Jay Gould, the most prolific evolutionary scientist in recent times wrote an essay on the size of the Irish Elk's antlers.)

Friday I met with the Jesuit Communication Centre to discuss development of their new internet portal, www.CatholicIreland.net. Although my exact involvement isn't clear yet, I think I am going to be writing some documentation for their system. The goal is to link 500 of the thousands of parishes in Ireland in the next 3 years.

Saturday night I joined some friends in city centre to celebrate a birthday, and then proceded to make the most of my free weekend by sleeping off a cold. 11 hours later, Sunday brought studying.

We went to a few dance clubs here in the past week. For reference, RedBox is loud and smokey, Fireworks is a fun place, and The Palace is a 80s & 90s dance haven.

Posted by Ryan at 6:31 PM | Permalink

I just got my first assignment from my linguistics professor today.

She told my class that we have to write two 1500-3000 word papers (5-10 pages) on a list topics. Then she asked if there were any JYA (Junior Year Abroad) or Erasmus students in the class. I raised my hand and received the exact same assignment (same topics), but with a 3000-5000 (10-16 pages) length requirement. Hopefully I won't be writing 20-30 pages and taking a final exam for each of my 10 classes.

Meanwhile, library books, books from Amazon.co.uk, and photocopied articles from the student union are beginning to clutter my desk. All I have to do is try to read everything. Ah, the life of a student.

Posted by Ryan at 6:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)