Let the Games Begin: Cottage Olympics 2011

In a little over an hour, Rory is coming to pick us up for our fall break travels! My friends Kelly, Meghan, Katy and Bethany and I will be traveling through Belgium and Switzerland for 10 days.  We are calling it "The Chocolate Tour of Europe" and are all very excited for lots of sweets and treats (and waffles!!).  Before I leave, though, I thought I would give a quick update about last weekend!

Cottage 6, dressed to impress

On Saturday, the first ever Cottage Olympics were held! Cottage 6 had had the idea for a long time, and we finally got around to putting our plans into action.  It was, of course, rainy when we woke up that morning, and we were almost about to postpone the Games when the sun came out about an hour before the opening ceremonies! Each cottage competed against each other in several events including How Well Do you Know your Cottagemate?, Potato Pillow Pitch, Pass the Potato, Please!, and a relay.  We had a few injuries from the potato peeling portion of the relay, but nothing too bad.  Without even trying to, Cottage 6 prevailed and took home the trophy. We felt a little funny about winning the olympics that we had planned, but everyone thought it was pretty funny.  For our closing ceremony, we decided to do as the Greeks do and wore togas!

At the closing ceremony with our trophy!

That is all I really have time for right now, but I will update you all on my travels as soon as I return!
Bon Voyage!
Ellen

Bogland and Beyond

Last monday marked the half-way point in my study abroad experience. In some ways, it feels like I have been here forever, and in others I feel like I just arrived last week.  Yesterday, Kelly and I made the bold decision to disable our Facebook accounts until we are home in December. We both felt that we spend way too much time not really doing anything online, and now that we are half-way through, I would rather spend as much time as I can doing things I won't be able to do at home.  Last weekend we went on a four-day long weekend excursion to Dublin.  Back in August, I flew into Dublin when I first arrived in Ireland, but we didn't see much of the city at all, so it was nice to have a few days there.

Kilmainham Jail: Another depressing stop on our tour through Irish history

We left pretty early Thursday morning for our first stop at Kilmainham Gaol jail. The three-hour bus ride seemed to fly by compared to the five (or more) hour ones to and from our last excursion in Northern Ireland.  We arrived in Dublin in the early afternoon for our tour of the jail.  Kilmainham, which is now a museum, was a notorious prison during the late 1800s and early 1900s.  It is especially well-known for being the site of several executions of Irish rebels who were arrested in the revolutionary movement of the 1916 Easter Rising.  It was pretty unbelievable to see the exact jail cell of some of the people we are learning about in our classes. We got to our hostel later in the afternoon, and because the weather was so beautiful for a change, I took a walk around the area with two of my cottagemates Kelly and Sarah. It was nice to get the lay of the land, and we were staying very close to the Temple Bar area, one of the most popular areas of Dublin.  That night, the program paid for us all to have dinner at the Brazen Head Pub, a famous pub just a few blocks from where we were staying.  Being in Dublin, of course I had to get the Guinness stew!

Hill of Tara

We left the city of Dublin for the day on Friday to tour some sites just outside of the city.  We started at the Hill of Tara, which looks like just an ordinary grassy field, but actually contains dozens of ancient monuments and passage tombs underground.  We stopped in a little town to have some lunch, and I had a panini with turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. It made me so excited for our Thanksgiving dinner at the Park Lodge :)  Next we went to Newgrange which was one of my favorite things we have seen so far. We started at the visitor's center and saw some exhibits about the ancient passage tomb and then took a bus to the actual site, which is about 5,000 years old but was partly restored in the 1960s.  The opening of the passage was created so precisely, that when the winter solstice occurs, the light shines right through the opening into the passage.

Newgrange

At a pub in Dublin where a scene from P.S. I Love You was filmed!

On Saturday, we had a city tour of Dublin.  We drove around for the first hour and a half, and the tour guide mostly talked about the things we passed by.  Finally, we were able to get out and visit Trinity College. We saw the Book of Kells, which is an ancient, illuminated manuscript of the four gospels.  My favorite part of Trinity was the famous library...it felt like I was in Beauty and the Beast :) The walls were covered with books from floor to ceiling.  We had some free time to walk around the area around Trinity for lunch, and we also walked along Graffton Street, the most famous shopping street in Dublin. While we were waiting for the rest of the group, my roommate Meghan and I got some coffee and were waiting outside of Trinity, when some people came up and asked if we were students! It always feels good to know people think you are a local...even if you are wearing tennis shoes! In the afternoon, we met up with our Theology professor Brother Colman (or Bro Co, as he is known to us) and toured the National Museum.  They had an exhibit of "bog bodies," bodies that fell into a bog hundreds of years ago and are well preserved! On the way back, a small group of us stopped to see the post office on O'Connell street that was the site of the Easter Rising in 1916.  It is just an everyday post office now, but the pillars in front are dotted with bullet holes from the uprising.  That night, most of the girls from our group went to the Arlington Hotel in Temple Bar for a traditional music and dance show.  The hotel has the show every night of the week, and it is quite well known, so I was glad we got to experience it.  It was a great way to end a busy weekend.

We left Dublin Sunday morning and stopped at the ruins of two ancient monasteries (Cloinmacnoise and Kilconnell) on our way back to Galway.  I think after this trip, it will be strange for us to see churches with roofs since we have toured pretty much every roofless church in Ireland! When we arrived back at the Park Lodge, we were all happy to get the leftover lasagna from Geraldine from our cooking class last week, so we all had a delicious dinner minus all the dishes!

Kelly showing her excitement at another roofless church.

A perfect fit! Others in the group aren't so lucky...

For the most part, this week was pretty uneventful, but on Thursday we didn't have our seminar class and instead took a day trip through Connemara to Kylemore Abbey, an abbey of Benedictine sisters.  The scenery along the way was beautiful...our bus driver said we were lucky that it wasn't foggy and rainy so we could see the mountains and lakes.  The road cut straight through the bogland of Connemara, making it a pretty bumpy ride.  At Kylemore, we had a tour of the castle, some free time to walk around the walled gardens, lunch, and a Q and A session with one of the nuns.  On the way back, we got to get off the bus and walk across the bog field! It felt like walking on a cross between a water bed and a trampoline with some        mud mixed in.

Bonus Picture:

It's fate :)

An Spideal: Daily life in the "roaring metropolis" of Spiddal

Since most of my posts so far have been about my travels around Ireland, I decided I should tell you all a little about daily life here at the Park Lodge. It has been pretty dreary here for the past five days, but today we actually saw a little sunshine! Here are some highlights from the past two weeks about what's been going on at the Park Lodge:

A few days after returning from Northern Ireland, our whole group went to a performance of Trad on the Prom at a snazzy hotel in Salthill, Galway.  It is a show of a mix of contemporary and traditional Irish music and dance that is performed from May to September every year. We were lucky to catch the last weekend! Some members of the cast are from other touring shows such as Riverdance and Lord of the Dance and many were national champion dancers.  The talent was pretty amazing! It was really dressed up and going to a new destination in Galway!

That weekend, my cottagemates and I took our local cab, driven by Rory, to Galway for the weekend market.  It's located right by St. Nicholas Cathedral, a famous church near the center of town, so it was easy to find.  There were lots of booths set up selling everything from gourmet olives to oysters and fresh veggies to local art.  It was pretty busy, but we took our time looking around, and I got a delicious falafel for lunch.  Because we have been gone on so many excursions lately, I feel like I haven't really had the time to just explore Galway very much, so I was glad to have the opportunity during our free weekend.  After the market, I met up with Aoife, a friend from Rochester who happens to be in her second year of medical school at NUIG.  We went to her house and had tea with brown bread and just chatted for hours (how Irish of us!). I spent the night at Nile Lodge (her house) and it was a nice get-away for the weekend.  It was so nice to see a familiar face, and we had a great time just catching up on everything! In the morning, we watched the Irish rugby team play Italy in the rugby world cup. It was a pretty exciting match, and Ireland won 36-6! Then it was time to head back and meet up with my group in Galway for mass and shopping before another week.

On Wednesday of last week, Kelly and Meghan (two of my cottagemates) and I took a walk up to Rory's (our friendly cab driver) house for tea. We weren't exactly sure where we were going (the directions we got from our other friends were a little vague!) but eventually we made it! When we arrived, we commented on the horse that was in his yard (not his horse, it just uses his field, apparently) so Rory cut up some apples and we got to feed it.  Then I was happy to get my dog fix and take Rory's dog Cain on a walk around the little loop near his house.  It had been a little rainy and cloudy, but it cleared up enough for us to have a nice walk.  When we got back, Rory had plates set out with more cookies and cake than I want to admit to eating and a delicious cup of tea for each of us.  My brother Will and Rory were good friends last year during his time here, so it is really fun for me to get to know him and see all the things I have heard so much about.

We had another totally free weekend this week, and it was a nice surprise to wake up to a beautiful sunny day on Friday! I actually wore shorts and a t-shirt for most of it! Our friendly bartender John Paul opened the bar at the Park Lodge for us that night, and it is alway fun when the group gets together. I feel so lucky with how well everyone gets along, and everyone definitely brings something fun to the group.  Being in Ireland, we knew the wonderful weather would not last, and it rained all day long on Saturday. It didn't dampen our spirits, though, and a group of us went into Galway to watch a Galway United soccer game.  Galway is in last place in the league, but we played the second to last place team, so it ended up being a pretty good match-up, although we did lose 1-2 in the end.  One bright side was that Kelly and I were lucky enough to score the last two Galway United t-shirts at the merchandise stand!

Sunday morning was another typical trip to Galway for mass and grocery shopping. It is nice that there is a bus provided for our whole group on those days so we don't have to figure out transportation ourselves.  We came back an hour earlier than usual this week, however, because we had our first in a series of cooking classes with Geraldine, John Paul's sister who is the cook for the Park Lodge.  There will be four classes total and two representatives from each cottage attend the class, learn how to make the meal and bring it back for the cottage to share! Sarah and I went this week, and we made traditional Irish brown bread, lasagna, roasted veggies and, of course, potatoes.  The class ended up being four hours long, so Kelly, Meghan and Michelle were all very excited when we arrived back to Cottage 6 with our homemade feast. Sharing the delicious meal with great friends was a perfect end to the rainy weekend!