If you thought the Kennedys were popular in the US...

... you should visit Ireland. Everyone loves Ted Kennedy, and JFK's visit to the Michael Collins Barracks in Cork was featured more prominently in the museum than the Michael Collins stuff. And they have Kennedy curse conspiracy shows on TV.

My photos are now online. Check them out at my website. They'll probably make more sense if you read this entry first, though.

So, I've officially been in Ireland for a month now. It simultaneously feels as if I've been here for much longer and as though I've just arrived. The strangest thing is that my Early Start Semester class, which I haven't even explained to you, ended today. But more about that later!

First, I have to apologize for my long absence, and for the subsequently long post. As some of you already know, my computer decided to stop functioning the first week I was here. After trips to the only Apple service provider in Cork (despite being the headquarters of Apple Europe, there is not a single Apple Store in Cork - or in Ireland at all) and multiple calls to Apple Europe, I learned a valuable lesson - sometimes not being in America sucks. Essentially, the problem cannot be fixed in Ireland because they don't offer the same level of technical support here. I'm going to ship it back to the US and take care of the problem that way, but it's still incredibly annoying. It's also a good reminder of how lucky we are in the US, even by the standards of first-world countries. America is so culturally dominant that we take things like Apple Stores, US television programming, and companies primarily run in the US, for US consumers, for granted. In Ireland, the small amount of (frankly pretty bad) Irish TV is overwhelmed by reruns of American and British shows, and many of the stores like Tesco are based in the UK and see Ireland as only a secondary market. There are advantages and disadvantages to this, but living in such a small country is surprisingly different. That being said, Ireland likes to assert its independence internationally, for example through its neutrality during WWII. It is currently following in this tradition by exercising its veto in the EU over the Lisbon Treaty, which has been approved by every other EU member state. Ireland requires its citizens vote in a referendum for EU changes, and the voters rejected the treaty last year. It goes up for a vote again on October 2nd, so various political parties are papering the city with "yes" and "no" posters. Even more importantly, Cork (or Corcaigh, the Irish spelling) is beginning to be plastered in banners and Cork flags for the upcoming all-Ireland football finals, in which it is participating this weekend. That should be interesting to see.

So, what is it exactly that I've been doing this last month? The most interesting and important part was the Early Start Semester class on Modern Irish History: The Challenge of Democracy in 20th-century Ireland. The Irish university system is completely different, and their fall "semester" (they don't actually have semesters at all - all their exams are held in May, and many classes last the full year) is fairly short so the ESS makes your time at UCC somewhat equivalent to a semester at an American university. The class was four weeks, from 9:15-12:45 Monday through Friday, and attempted to cover the most important periods of modern Irish history: the War of Independence, the Troubles, and the peace process. Personally, I found the content incredibly interesting. Also, our teacher Gabriel Doherty (note: they aren't professors here - only heads of departments and such important senior people get that title) is very nice and hilarious. For example, he insisted we have questions for people who came to speak to our class. "If you don't, you'll embarrass me, and I'll have to bloody well kill you! No, I'll just fail you all on your essays and exams instead." Also, he kindly lent me money for my coffee in the cafeteria one day when I didn't have enough, a common occurrence in Ireland where everything is way too expensive. The content of the course is fascinating and has interesting implications for how we should approach peace processes around the world. Also, we watched one of my favorite movies, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, and had a talk with the historical adviser for the film, Donal Ò Drisceoil, who is also a lecturer at UCC. But by far the best aspect of the class is field trips! The first was just around Cork City, visiting the old British barracks, now the Michael Collins Barracks, which contains a museum, and the Cork Gaol (jail), which has also been transformed into a rather strange museum. The second trip was around County Cork, which is the largest county in Ireland and quite picturesque. Our first stop was Beal na mBlath, the site of Michael Collins' assassination. Now, I get lost everywhere I go in Ireland, which is rather disconcerting as I'd always thought I had a decent-to-good sense of direction. So I was very glad to see our teacher, who has been to Beal na mBlath more than a dozen times, get lost twice on the way. This is because nothing is marked here, and most of Ireland consists of incredibly windy and narrow back roads. Many of these narrow roads have high hedges on either side, so it was quite an experience trying to get a bus through when there was opposing traffic - there was much driving off the road. In any case, there was good reason for getting lost. Apparently, every time they put up a sign with "Beal na mBlath" on it, someone instantly steals it, so they just stopped trying. After, we went to Clonakilty, a cute Irish town where Collins went to school and was basically raised. There was a tasty lunch and then we walked around the town, which looks a lot like my conception of the stereotypical Irish town (in a good way). Our final stop was Collins' birthplace. It was a pretty but boring site, as the British burned down his family home twice so it was really just ruins in the middle of the countryside (as is 95% of Ireland - countryside, not ruins, although a ridiculous amount of Ireland was burned or bombed in the last century. For example, the British burned down Cork city centre & city hall so it's relatively new).

Our third and final field trip was by far the coolest, though. Last Wednesday, we departed at 6:30 am for Dublin. After a bus trip through some lovely countryside and mountains, we arrived in Dublin at about 10:30. We went to the National Museum, which has an exhibit on the 1916 Easter Rising. They had some really interesting stuff. There was a letter from one of the leaders right before his execution that was really touching and oddly farsighted about the historical impact of the event. Also, they had an illuminated manuscript in traditional Celtic style that the Irish Free State government commissioned in the 1930s to celebrate the Rising that was AMAZING. It took the artist about a year to do each page; that's how complex the designs were. I could look at them for hours. We wandered around the museum for a while and returned to the hostel where we were staying. Several of us went to lunch in a pub that received a James Joyce Award for being the sort of place you might find in Joyce's Dublin, and peopled with Joycean characters. I'm still not sure that's a compliment, but it was a nice meal regardless. Our class then went to the Department of Foreign Affairs for a briefing on the Northern Ireland peace process with some government guy. Next the class went to dinner at the Bad Ass Cafe in Temple Bar (sort of the main touristy drinking area in Dublin) and from there headed over to the Abbey Theatre. The Abbey is the national theatre of Ireland, famous for its role in Irish cultural history (Yeats was one of the playwrights who was very involved there). We saw a production of The Rivals, which had nothing to do with our class but was enjoyable.

On Thursday, we went to Kilmainham Gaol as a class in the morning and had a tour. Kilmainham was where many political prisoners were kept during the 1916 Rising and then the Civil War. As a result, there's a lot of original political graffiti and you can see the cells previously inhabited by people like Eamon de Valera (Republican and Taoiseach/Prime Minister for a ridiculously long time), Padraig Pearse, & Parnell. It's a sad but moving place. Afterwards, we had about four hours of free time. Some of us ate lunch and then went on a tour of the Jameson Whiskey Distillery, learning about the whiskey-making process and being brainwashed to prefer Jameson in the process. At 4:00 we headed to Belfast, about three hours away. The border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, is basically non-existent. There isn't even a sign on the road to declare that you are now in another country; you only know you've crossed an international boundary because you get a text message from your cell phone provider informing you that they're about to charge you more money. The landscape around the border is beautiful and hilly, but you can see how hopeless it was for the army to try to seal the border against IRA movement. Speaking of which, NI is very safe now - Belfast ranked as the second safest city in the world, right behind Tokyo, but violence is still a threat. Just that Tuesday (two days before we crossed the border), a 600lb bomb was discovered on the border. Obviously nothing bad happened, but it serves as a reminder that the peace process still hasn't solved all the problems in Ireland.

We spent all of Friday in Belfast, beginning the morning with a visit to the Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont. First we had a briefing with Alex Attwood, an MLA (Member Legislative Assembly) of the SDLP (Social Democratic and Labour Party), the moderate Catholic/nationalist party in NI. (If you want, I could go on for a long time giving you the relevant background about the historical events and current politics in Northern Ireland, but that would most likely bore you. If you do have questions though, ask!) He's actually a very prominent member of the party, so it was kind of cool to hear him talk about the peace process. Then we got an official tour of Stormont, which I learned isn't open to the public, and sat in the seats of the MLAs (with my luck, I probably sat where someone really creepy like Ian Paisley is seated - I think I was sitting in the DUP section). We had free time afterwards, so I wandered around Belfast with my friend Diana. The city is beautiful and a strange mix between very old and very new, as real development and investment has only occurred in the last decade after the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. We went on a bus tour of the city, which has an interesting history, as it is the birthplace of the Titanic, C.S. Lewis, & Van Morrison. Then we went to look at murals. A brief history is required here: to put it far too simply, the whole problem with Northern Ireland and the conflict behind the Troubles is that there is a majority (about 60%) of Protestants from a primarily Anglo-Scot background who felt/feel like they were/are British, and didn't want to be part of an independent Ireland - thus they called themselves Unionists. On the other side were a large minority of primarily Catholic nationalists, who wanted to be part of Ireland since they viewed themselves as Irish. The Unionists completely controlled government from 1920 (the creation of Northern Ireland) through the 1960s and basically oppressed the poorer Catholic minority in a variety of ways. Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement in America, Catholics took up a non-violent campaign of protests which morphed into the Troubles. Long story short, NI Catholics and Protestants realllly don't like each other, which was only exacerbated by the fact that they were killing each other for twenty years. The two communities are physically isolated and send their children to different schools, etc (so you can see where the whole peace process thing didn't solve all the problems). In Belfast, the city centre is a neutral zone. However, the surrounding areas - particularly the working-class communities of Shankill Road (Protestant) and Falls Road (Catholic) - are anything but neutral. These communities are known for their murals, which depict their opposing positions in ways that range from nice to fairly terrifying. Just to give you an idea, our teacher told us that we would be fine, but we shouldn't wear anything with shamrocks or a Boston Celtics t-shirt unless we wanted to start something. Also, he half-jokingly said that he couldn't go anywhere, as he is British and so the nationalists hate him (although he is of Irish descent, he was born in England and has an accent) and he is Catholic so the unionists hate him. Look at my pictures to get a better idea of what the neighborhoods are like. It's just amazing how British Shankill Road is and how Irish Falls Road is. And although they are the best known places, there are murals and flags all over Belfast. Anyway, it was completely fascinating. We headed back the next day on a pleasant six-hour bus ride (hey, I like traveling!).

Other than classes, I haven't been doing a whole lot. I was sick already, which meant that I was confined to my room without a computer or internet. On the plus side, I've read quite a bit as I lacked anything better to do. I've managed to finish Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Eugenides' Middlesex, some history books, and the fantasy novel from Amber (thanks!). Right now I'm reading Pynchon's V, which is a lot more interesting than I'd anticipated. There's a government department devoted to killing sewer-dwelling albino alligators - how could that not be awesome? I'm also becoming a much better cook, using the cookbook from Jeeyeon, and have made some really tasty foods. I haven't eaten too much actual Irish food, since it's really expensive, but it seems better than the stuff I ate in Belfast. I'm definitely blaming the English influence for that! I've gone out at night a few times with friends. Cork has an absolutely ridiculous number of pubs - I'm estimating about a quarter of the city's economy is generated by them - which means they come in a really wide range of themes. There are pubs that specialize in traditional Irish music sessions, some that are set up like monasteries (or something), and others that are more clearly aimed at university students of an assortment of social groups - basically, anything you can imagine. There are also a handful of nightclubs. Technically, nightclubs are supposed to be 21+, or so I've heard. It's kind of difficult to know for sure because you are very rarely carded in Ireland, North or South. Generally, you just walk through the door. A "higher" level of security involves the bouncer asking you "are you 18/21?" (When I went to one with a short friend in Belfast - we really needed a bathroom - he asked, "Are you 21? Even the short one?") Some pubs do actually card, but usually you only see people getting carded if they are acting obnoxiously drunk.

Also, I know I told you about the crazy Irish people I sat next to on the plane, and now you've heard about the Troubles and are probably thinking, "These people are all crazy! Why does everyone hate everybody?" So I must tell you that most Irish people are very nice. For example, in Belfast we visited St. Peter's Cathedral on Falls Road and were detained by a kind elderly Irish man who wanted to tell us all about Ireland (and claimed that he loved American accents, how bizarre is that?). But the best story is when I went to the post office. I had to pick up my new laptop from the post office because I owed €95 in customs (thanks to a certain person for making me pay that...) so they didn't deliver it to my dorm. Unfortunately, the stupid delivery center is in a suburb of Cork, not on any bus line nearby, so I needed to take a taxi to get there. I stopped to get €100 for the week, as I needed money to pay for the taxi (I'd just returned from Northern Ireland and so had British sterling, but no more euros). The taxi was €8. But as I went to pick up my package, I took out my credit card and the worker said, "Sorry, we only take cash." He sounded genuinely sorry, though. I had just enough money to pay for the package, but not enough to pay for a taxi back. I asked him for directions to a bus stop, which was somewhere confusing about ten minutes away, and he wasn't sure which buses went there. My situation was looking pretty bad now - I had to get an enormous package back to my dorm with about €2 and no idea of where I actually was. However, the man behind me in line said, "I'm heading back to Cork. I can take you. Where do you need to go?" I told him where, and he offered to give me a ride although it wasn't where he was heading. I learned that he has a relative in Philadelphia who left Ireland after he found out the British were going to kill him for working with the IRA during the War of Independence. So, there are super-nice Irish people who will be late to work (he said it didn't matter anyway, and knowing Ireland it probably didn't) and go out of their way to give you a ride just to "do their good deed for the day."

Also: have I complained adequately about the euro? What kind of currency needs eight different coins? None! They have 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 & 50 cent pieces, as well as €1 & €2 coins (and no €1 bills, which completely confused me at first). Believe me, that change adds up quickly and before you know it your wallet weighs 10 pounds and contains about €15 in coins, which you promptly have to use for necessities like bus fares and scones. And the exchange rate...

The weather was incredibly sunny and fairly warm this last week. Everywhere we went, people would tell us how this was the "best weather in three years." Considering how everyone produced the same time, I don't doubt it. So for once, I can't do the Irish thing and complain about the weather.