A visit from a friend, many buses, a boat, cliffs, and three rainbows

Wow, another update so quickly?! I know, it's shocking. But as I get to that time when I have work to do (like that English paper...), you can probably expect more frequent updates as I try to devise new methods of procrastination. Also, I actually did something cool! And I thought you might want to hear (read) about it.

So, as you may know, my super-awesome friend Amber from Swarthmore is studying abroad in Siena, Italy this semester. Last week she had a ten day break (which makes me realllly jealous as I'm going from August 21 to the end of December with only one pathetic little day off – and it rained anyway – but I digress) and she spent it doing some really cool things, including visiting me! If you want to read her account of our adventures, you can head over to her blog, but only after you've read mine.

Amber arrived in Cork on Wednesday night. I was supposed to have finished my horrible history book review (mentioned in my last entry) by that point, but thanks to a combination of the terrible library, getting sick a second time, a really interesting incident in which I was unaware of the existence of Irish daylight savings time for an entire TWO DAYS, and my seeming inability to finish anything ahead of schedule, I hadn't written it yet. Anyway, I made fake Mexican food and we talked about being abroad, but mostly about Swat.

The next day, while I went to my contemporary lit class and worked on my paper, Amber wisely decided to visit the Blarney stone. She originally asked, “What are the touristy things in Cork?” To which I responded with a blank look. I am a very bad tourist, obviously: I've been here two and a half months and have yet to visit St. Finbarr's Cathedral... or either of the two touristy towns just south of Cork. But also Cork isn't really for tourists. Rick Steves doesn't even mention it in his guide to Ireland, which is kinda harsh, but it's nice to live in a place that isn't filled with tourist shops. Anyway, it was pouring rain – shocker, I know, rain in Ireland at the end of October – so I'm not sure how much my guest enjoyed being a tourist, although she did seem to like shopping at Dunnes Store (“the Irish Target,” according to her).

We met up and she went to two of my classes, because Swatties can only go so long without subjecting themselves to unnecessary academics. First we went to Irish, which is really relaxed. My teacher Seán (we don't actually know his last name) made Amber participate but let her keep the booklet at the end of the class, which is kind of unfair since I had to pay for it. Then we went to my class on the Mabinogi, which luckily is just a bunch of tangents anyway so she could mostly understand the stories without having any idea what the Mabinogi is. We mostly talked about Arthurian legends and magic cauldrons, to give you an idea of how awesome that class is.

Originally, we planned to go to the English Society meeting, which was actually a poetry reading that night, but decided it was a bad idea. Although Amber wanted to meet the weird people I'd described (mostly this annoying American I dislike), I still had a paper to write and we hadn't planned anything for the upcoming weekend. Instead, we went and ate at the Chinese restaurant across from my dorm, which was actually pretty good. Afterwards we planned our weekend out, which was a horribly long and annoying process because the train and bus schedules are annoying and Rick Steves kept suggesting that we leave from tiny little fishing villages that you can never get to. Finally, he offered a good plan and we managed to plan buses, book hostels, and even reserve a ferry ride!

After a late bedtime, I woke up at a ridiculous hour to finish my history paper. I think I slept for maybe three hours... I'm not sure. Anyway I have three Friday classes, starting at 9 am, so we went over to campus. Finally, at 2:30, we were packed and ready to leave for the west coast of Ireland! Our bus from Cork to Galway left at 3:30, so we figured that an hour would be plenty of time to take the ten minute bus ride into the city centre and buy tickets. Oh, how I wish it were true. After waiting outside in the rain for thirty minutes – during which time three buses were supposed to have arrived, and of course didn't because this is Ireland – a bus came. Then it drove by without stopping, because it was full (which happens when the bus only shows up 25% of the time, I guess). I was mad, but have grown to expect this, which Amber did not. At least now I have someone to confirm that the public transportation here really IS that bad. Our only option was to walk to the bus station, an hour walk (in the rain, with luggage). As it was now 3:00, and our bus left at 3:25, you can see this was an issue. We attempted to flag cabs but they wouldn't stop either, as they were en route to pick up people who called. So we walked the whole way. Luckily, there was another bus which left at 4:30, so we hadn't dragged ourselves through the rain for an hour for nothing. Our bus ride was improbably dramatic: our inability to understand the thick Cork accent of our driver (I'm telling you, it's not really English!) and thus our confusion about where we were actually going; me almost losing my bus ticket between our literally thirty second bus transfer in Limerick, and frantically searching for it so we weren't stranded in the city known for its stabbings (it's not that violent, but standards are pretty low in Ireland); an amazingly uncomfortable twenty minutes on a bus in which I think I managed to get bruises on my knees, the girl in front of me had leaned her seat so far back (and during which one guy sat in the aisle for five minutes, so it could've been worse); my umbrella mysteriously vanishing; Amber's suitcase falling down the stairs in the emergency exit of the bus, which was hilarious; and fun stuff like that. Finally, at 8:30, we arrived in Galway! Once we got there, we checked into our hostel and then (finally) ate dinner. It was a pretty cool place called the Druid Lane Restaurant, which I definitely picked for its awesome name, and ate some delicious food. I'm pretty sure they had the same clock as my mom, which was weird. We hung out for a bit after that, but as you can imagine I was a little tired, so we headed in fairly early.

We had an early morning Saturday. I was coughing ridiculously, which was usually bearable during the day but made it impossible to sleep, so we wandered around Galway, ending at Eyre Square and this crazy mall that had a fake castle inside. Also, they had a fortune teller in the tower of the fake castle! I probably would've wasted my money there if it had been open. We found a pharmacy then went to pick up our tickets for the ferry. Where was this ferry to? The Aran Islands! An hour shuttle ride later, we were on the awesome boat, heading across the Atlantic to the largest island, Inis Mór (pronounced In-ish-more, and sometimes spelled that way, without the dashes obviously). The Aran Islands are awesome because they are remote and a place where the “old way” of Irish life is preserved. They've had this reputation for at least a century, as Yeats sent the aspiring playwright Synge there to experience Irish peasant life in the early twentieth century (I'd recommend reading “The Playboy of the Western World” if you want to read something by Synge, especially since it caused rioting!). They are also very beautiful. Once we got there, we went on a buggy ride around the island! If this sounds awesome, that's because it was. We heard all about the beautiful places and culture. Apparently I look Irish and so we talked about families, from which I learned that the most famous church on the island is Teampall Chiaráin, or the Church of Kieran.

Then, the buggy dropped us off at the bottom of a big hill. At the top of a stony climb – Patrick, our buggy driver, declared that “you have to go to the moon to see more rocks!” and it's true – sits Dún Aonghasa, an amazing prehistoric stone fort and 300 foot high cliffs.

Now, if this site were in America, you would not be able to get anywhere near cliffs that drop 300 feet into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and really rough waves. But there isn't so much as a handrail here, because it's Ireland! Everyone just lies down and looks out over the Atlantic. If this sounds at all frightening, you'll be totally reassured by Patrick's story: “It's actually really safe. Only one person has died. It was last year, in January. A man was looking out, and the wind was so strong it just blew him over the edge.” Which is actually very believable, considering how windy it was up there. Anyway, pictures don't do the site any justice; it's really something that has to be experienced. We sadly had to descend at some point, so we went and checked out these two tiny shops. The women minding them knitted new stuff as they worked, and didn't have cash registers, just jars with change in them. One of the women sold postcards she designed herself (and which two of you may be lucky enough to receive) and chatted eagerly about the popular knitting designs and the increasing price of plastic bags (they are obscenely expensive in Ireland, though!).

(Also, can I say now that I had an INCREDIBLE cell phone signal on the top of this cliff, as well as on the ferry literally on the Atlantic Ocean? How is it that I can get a better signal in the middle of the ocean than in my apartment, Meteor?!)

After this, we returned to the main village (and I really mean village), Kilronan, did a little shopping at the Aran Sweater Market, and then went to Tí Joe Watty's, a pub, for a late lunch of fish and chips. It was the fresh catch of the day, and there were locals playing Irish songs and singing. I can't really think of another way to tell you how awesome it was.

Sadly, it was 5:00 so we had to return to the mainland. Another super amazing boat ride later – what can I say, I love traveling on the ocean; it must be my Viking blood – and then another shuttle ride, during which it started to pour after a perfect sunny day, and we were back in Galway. We grabbed our luggage, ate at McDonald's (hey, we wanted to see how the cultural differences would manifest in fast food! Also, we didn't have much time), then got these ridiculous crepes filled with chocolate sauce, toasted marshmallow, M&Ms, and vanilla ice cream which were messy to eat but obviously really delicious. Then we were on a bus to Dublin, and it's pretty boring after that. Let me just say I was on a bus for four hours Friday and another four hours Saturday, plus two hours on a shuttle bus and another two hours on a ferry Saturday (although I stood for most of that), then four and a half hours on Sunday from Dublin to Cork, for a total of something like 16 ½ hours traveling over a weekend. Let me tell you, that's a lot more than the hours I spent sleeping... but it was an amazing trip! And I'd definitely suggest you do it.

We went to Dublin after that so Amber could catch her early morning flight, and I must say it was mostly uneventful. You probably remember that my initial experience in Dublin was rather unfortunate - jet lag, getting lost, rain, etc - so that may have colored my opinion. But also, there's being in Cork. I'm not sure if I've already mentioned that Cork and Dublin just don't like each other, but even if I have, it bears repeating: people from Cork don't like Dublin, and it's reciprocated. I've heard some compare Cork to Texas (it's big, in the south, they have weird accents, and they think they're the best), but I think the analogy is kind of lacking. Since I'm in Cork, I hear a lot more of that opinion. According to students at UCC who are from various counties in Ireland, not just Cork, Dublin thinks it's a cool metropolis like Paris or New York but "it's really not, like." (This is my best approximation of what someone in Cork would say. Just leave out the "h" in any word with a "th" - "tirty tousand," for example - and end sentences with "like" or sometimes "so" for no reason) So they think Dublin is pretentious. Apparently, everyone in Ireland outside of Dublin likes Cork more (so they tell me). But I feel like it also has something to do with the fact that Dublin was the seat of British rule for so long that it's not "really" Irish. You do sort of get the impression wandering around Dublin that it could be a city anywhere, if you ignore the terrible signs and general confusion of the streets, which are distinctly Irish. It seems to me - although no one has actually said as much - that this idea of real Irishness is part of the reason that Cork sees itself as the real capital. Anyway, the reason I mention this is because our cab driver insulted Cork and asked why I was there, not Dublin, which is after all THE CAPITAL. This is more evidence that I'm not just making it up!

On a totally unrelated note, I have decided that I will own a car in the future. Months of walking everywhere, usually in the rain, often getting splashed by cars zooming through puddles, and especially walking to class at 8:40 on a Friday morning in the pouring rain and getting splashed – which happens approximately once a week – will make anyone absolutely hate this form of transportation. I've learned there is a big difference between “the weather's nice, I think I'd like to take a walk” and being in Ireland.

The Aran Islands are a Gaeltacht, which means people speak Irish there as a first language. It was so cool to hear people my age speaking Irish casually, and not just to show off. Since I impressed Patrick with my Irish skills (no, he was definitely not just being nice since we hadn't paid him yet!), I thought you might want to know some easy and fun Irish for everyday use!

Also, I'm not good at spelling things phonetically so this might not be useful. And I don't really know Irish...

Hello – Dia dhuit (dee-ah hoo-it, with a guttural, German-sounding “h”), literally translates as “God be with you,” I think

Hello to you too – Dia agus muire dhuit (dee-ah ah-gus mur-ah hoo-it, same “h” sound). This one means, “God and Mary be with you.” Basically, you just add saints to the saying when you respond, like Pádraig (Patrick).

How are you? - Conas atá tú? (co-nus a-TA two)

I am good/well. - Táim go maith. (time goh ma)

Goodbye – Slán. (slawn, kind of...)

Cheers – Sláinte (sline-ta, or sline-chta, I think it might be a matter of dialect)

Thank you – Go raibh maith agat (go rev ma a-goat, very loosely).

And, most importantly: Tá sé ag cur báistí agus gaofar agus fhuar. (ta shay egg cur bah-sh-tee ah-gus gway-fur ah-gus four) – It is raining and windy and cold.

(Also, I saw three rainbows in a week - and two were double rainbows. And I had to pull out my terrible html for this entry because the image uploader completely fails, so if there are any problems they are my fault.)