The Gift of Gab

Brace yourselves lads, it's gonna be a long post. Not only have I not blogged in a week, but I've also received the gift of gab via kissing a certain stone, so I give myself license to go on for a bit ;)

Since I last wrote, I've had a few days of classes and settled in a bit more. I can't believe I've been here two weeks. Sometimes it feels like I just got here, and other times it feels like I've been here forever. It's a bit disorienting. So far, my only other academic class I've been to (besides Intro to Traditional Music, which I talked about in my last post) is Intro to Anglo-Irish Lit. I have two other classes, but Geology doesn't start till half way through the semester, and Gaelic starts tomorrow. My lit class though, has been a good introduction to lecture-style classes. It's not my favorite format by far, but my professor is very knowledgeable and an engaging speaker. So far, we're just getting a brief overview of Irish history and the literary figures that go along with it. We just follow along with the handout and take notes. No interaction, just taking notes. As I said, not my favorite, but definitely not bad. The topic is interesting and I'd like to see how she deals with the actual literature we'll be reading.

As you may be able to tell, I have a bit of free time on my hands...yep. So I'm figuring out the best ways to use that time. I'm actually working out on a regular basis *gasp* and reading a bit as well (surprise surprise) And since it's very wet here, and I never got around to hemming my pants at home, I have hand hemmed three of my pairs of pants here. I have to say, I'm pretty proud of myself :) I also went to the Choral Society rehearsal Tuesday night. It was a lot of fun :) Since it was a night rehearsal on campus, I searched for someone to go with me, so I didn't have to walk to campus alone at night. As it turned out, no one in our CSB/SJU group wanted to go, but a guy I had met from St. Norbert was planning on going. So Derek and I trekked to campus and joined the Choral Society. It was a 2 hour rehearsal run by a student. We sang a Thomas Tallis piece and Stand By Me acapella :) There was lots of laughter and a lot of chatting throughout the rehearsal. The atmosphere was a bit different than I was used to, to say the least. It was also a completely different sound with this choir than I had ever been a part of. It took me awhile to realize that I was one of the only people singing with vibratto. I'm not sure if it was just this choir or maybe a regional trend of singing, but it was odd. It didn't sound bad, but I was much more aware of my own vibratto after I had realized that. After rehearsal, everyone was invited to go to a pub with the choir, so Derek and I joined about 15 other students and went to the pub. We got about 5 minutes of chatting with the Irish students in the society before a band started playing. They were good, but really loud, so it was hard to hold a conversation. My first real opportunity to get to know Irish students covered up by a country song. Lovely. Despite that, I really enjoyed my first foray into the clubs and societies at UCC. I'm planning on trying a few more this coming week.

This weekend, we had a planned tour of Cork, Cobh, and Blarney. This is the trip that the study abroad stipend for our program paid for. We had a bus driver named Greg, who is a native of Cork as our tour guide. We started off with a drive through Cork. We covered mostly places I had seen, which made me feel good about having found the most notable places in Cork. It was nice to actually get some of the history behind Cork. I had seen lots of the places he pointed out, but didn't know anything about them. My favorite thing in this part of the tour was the English Market. It's not too far from our apartment, and I've been there a few times. It's got so much fresh produce available everyday for cheaper prices than the grocery stores. What I didn't know about it is that it's been around for over 200 years. Some of the stall owners' families have been there since the beginning. Walking through the market with Greg was also different, because he knew a lot of the people there. He must have said hi to 15 people in the 5 minutes we were walking through.

After Cork, we drove to Cobh (pronounced cove). It's a small town outside of Cork that is right on the ocean. It's the port that most Irish people emigrated from. It's also known as Queenstown, and was the last port that the Titanic was at before it went under. The ocean was a really cool greenish color, and the view was amazing. My pictures definitely don't do it justice. In Cobh, we had vouchers to get into the heritage center, which was a small museum that taught us about the famine, emigration, convict deportation, the Titanic and the Lusitania. I also looked through a book of Irish family names and found Deignan. There was a computer where we were supposed to be able to look up more information, but it wasn't working. While in Cobh, my camera battery also died. Of course. So I didn't get many pictures of Blarney, but I managed a couple and got a friend to take pictures for me.

After Cobh, we headed to Blarney, which is only a few miles outside of Cork. For those of you who don't know, Blarney castle holds the Blarney Stone. Legend says if you kiss the Blarney Stone, you are given the gift of eloquence, or the gift of gab, as the Irish put it. Blarney is said here to be just a big tourist trap, and "not even that great of a castle," but seeing as it was my first castle in Ireland and I like the idea of the Blarney stone, I didn't mind. And we didn't have to pay to get in, thanks St. Ben's. The castle had a lot of nooks and crannies that were fun to climb around, and they made the climb to the top much more fun. The blarney stone is located at the top of the castle, part of the battlements hanging over open air at the top of the castle. In order to kiss it, you have to lay on your back and hang your head back and kiss it upside down. There are two bars that run up and down that you hold on to, and a guy whose job it is to hold people while they kiss the stone. You can also buy a picture that they snap when you come back up. I had this huge grin on my face and it was a very funny picture. But reeeally not worth 10 Euro. We finished our Blarney adventure with a walk through the poison garden, where I saw actual Mandragora (they grow them in case they need to wake Hermione from being petrified)

So those are the highlights of my past week. I'm now registered at the Guarda and officially legal to stay here for 5 months and also registered for classes. We have all the essentials for living in our apartment and have figured out some tricks for getting around and saving money. I'm sure I'll have more to tell later, but that's all I have for now. I hope I was eloquent enough for you :)

~Meg