Okay, it's Thursday night and I'm going to take a break from 'Ulysses' in order to write some more. We're up to Day Two... oh dear. I'm going to write a much more abbreviated account of the next couple of days.
After getting a much-needed night's sleep, we all woke up feeling refreshed. My cottagemates and I ate a hearty breakfast of porridge, and then Esther, Bonnie and I decided to explore the countryside around our cottages before setting off for an afternoon of museum and graveyard visiting. The sky was blue and the sun was warm (one of the last times this happened!), and we spent a good hour and a half traipsing down narrow roads and up hills to see what we could see. Mostly, we saw cows, including some overtly friendly ones who came right up to us and seemed to be begging for a snack. As we walked, we were charmed by the lovely contrast between the bright blue sky and the bright green grass, and had an altogether pleasant morning constitutional.
That afternoon, we hopped on Jimmy's coach and, led by Jim, set off to visit three places he thought we really ought to see. The first was the Michael Davitt Museum, set in a restored church, behind which Michael Davitt himself is buried. Davitt is somewhat of a national hero to many Irish people; he helped form the Land League, which fought for the ownership of the land by the Irish farmers themselves, and not absentee Englishmen. The museum was full of Davitt's personal effects, Land League propaganda/paraphernalia, and the like. Out back we found the one of the first of many graveyards that we were to see during this first week in Ireland. On a sloping hill were a variety of headstones, from the traditional type you'd see in America to the iconic Celtic cross that is virtually everywhere in Ireland. After taking a multitude of pictures, we headed out again, bound for Meelick.
Jim grew up in Swinford, a tiny "town" right near Meelick. Meelick plays host to one of the five round towers in County Mayo, located in a graveyard that holds personal significance to Jim because it's where his maternal grandfather is buried. En route to Meelick, he shared lots of stories about his childhood, his family, and his childhood experience - he grew up in a tiny house with his mother and siblings; his father went to England to find work, and Jim only saw his father a few times a year. Because of that, his grandfather played a very paternal role in Jim's early life. Jim pointed out the site where his childhood home used to stand, but it'd been cleared away years ago. When we reached Meelick, he immediately led us to his grandfather's grave. A small statue of Mary stood in front of the headstone; the Irish are really fond of decorating graves with flowers and other religious paraphernalia to show that they still remember the dead.
Other than the graves, we enjoyed seeing Meelick's round towers. Round towers are speculated to have been built to watch for Viking invaders, but it's not certain if that's true. Most of them have doors about twelve feet above the ground so that defenders could enter via ladder but could pull it up to prevent the invaders from getting in. The round tower at Meelick is the least famous of all of Mayo's five towers, mostly because its origins are the most murky. Despite that, it was still definitely a sight worth seeing.
Our last stop was at Hennigan’s Heritage Center. This was a really amazing place. Tom Hennigan, the man in charge, has preserved for the public the small, traditional Irish home that he grew up in. Jim knew Tom, who gratefully acknowledged Jim as one of people who first began to help the Center gain popularity among tour groups. The house had one main room, with a little bed for the parents build into a niche in the wall near the fireplace, a small bedroom with two beds for the children to share, and one room on the other side of the main room that his grandmother lived in. Tom explained the way he grew up and the way his family lived, from the implements they used to cook potatoes to how they’d hide goods in little holes in the wall covered by religious paintings to how they’d all bathe together in the middle of the room with one big washtub. It was clear from his presentation that he really wanted to dispel the myth or stereotype that the Irish people, up until a very recent point, lived “primitively.” He argued that their lifestyle, while very simplistic, was also very environmentally friendly and not at all consumerist. Tom also showed us through a series of rooms he’d fitted up in a variety of ways; one was a blacksmith’s shop, one showed traditional knitting and weaving… that sort of thing. Afterwards, we were invited into the small coffee shop-type room for tea, scones, and small sandwiches – a very welcome refreshment after walking around in the cold and being on the go all day long. Once we returned to the cottages, we had made dinner and then got started on our reading, since we had our first class the next morning.
(I've got more typed up, but I'm going to wait to write about a few more days before posting again.)
Thursday 28 June 2007
Tuesday 26 June 2007
Playing Catch-up (Part I)
I'm finally settled into my apartment-style dorm in Dublin, and we have wireless internet in our rooms! It's really exciting. Carleton doesn't even have wireless in the dorms. Way to go, UCD! More about that later, however, because I really need to recap my first week in Ireland before my memories start to fade. The professor who's leading the program, Connie, has asked us to keep journals in which we're to record our impressions of our readings and our excursions and Ireland as a whole. So I've been making sure to write in that one fairly frequently, and I've also got my regular journal/diary, so basically I'm doing a whole lot of writing. Anyway, I'm going to start my big recap. I don't know how far I'll get tonight, since it's already getting late (oops) and I have class in the morning. I'm basically going to record what I've been up to and go light on the "reflecting" and whatnot, but when I get caught up later on, I'll try to give you some insight into my impressions of the program and my experiences here. Also, I'm going to warn you straight up that I write excessively. I apologize, but I can't help it - I'm a wordy person. Sorry!
So! Bonnie and I arrived at the Shannon airport at about 8:35 in the morning on Saturday, 16 June, after a six-hour flight from JFK. Our seats on the Delta flight were somehow up in first class, so we were lucky enough to have the individual TV screens with lots more options of what to watch than what was being shown on the cabin screens. We were pretty excited about that, but as we descended into Ireland, we put our screens away and tried to catch a glimpse of the Emerald Isle through the windows (we were in the middle aisle.) Unfortunately, the island was shrouded in a foggy mist, and it wasn't until we were really close to the ground that we could see the green grass at all. As the plane descended, however, I caught glimpses of sheep in fields right around the airport, and then suddenly the plane touched down with a jolt, and we were there. After we'd gone through customs and gathered up our luggage, Bonnie and I found some members of our group and plopped down on the seats. We had to wait a few hours for Connie to arrive with Jim, another Carleton professor who grew up in Ireland and was going to be with us for our first week in County Mayo, his home. Once they'd arrived and all of the other students' planes had landed, we made our way outside to meet the driver of our coach. His name was Jimmy, and he was a second or third cousin of Jim and another native of County Mayo. We loaded up our luggage into the coach, found seats, and began the two and a half hour drive from Shannon to Louisburgh, County Mayo, on the west coast of Ireland.
Although we were driving through the beautiful Irish countryside, we were all so tired from our travels that most of us slept during the ride. I got a fair amount of sleep and ended up with some fun bruises on my head the next day from falling asleep and banging my head on the window as I nodded off. Once we arrived in Louisburgh, we were forced to wake up and move all of our belongings into our cottages. We stayed for a week in the Louisburgh Holiday Cottages, a small grouping of traditional-looking whitewashed cottages complete with colorful doors, big fireplaces, and complimentary peat bricks. There were seven people to a cottage, and the group took up three cottages, plus the one that Connie, Jim, and his wife Jane shared.
That evening, we walked into town (about three minutes away from the cottages) and were shown the two grocery stores and the multiple pubs and the small library that it included. Later, we all went to dinner at a local pub, which was overpriced and not that tasty. But we were all so hungry and tired that we didn't complain, and getting a good meal into our stomachs definitely gave us all a well-needed dose of energy.
Later on that night, Bonnie, Esther and I decided to follow Jim's recommendation and check out the beach that was about a ten or fifteen minute walk away from the cottages. We probably left around 9:00 or 9:30, and we were amazed that it was still fully light outside. Ireland is so far north that the sun doesn't start to set until at least 10:00 PM. It was also a few days before the summer solstice, so that also helped. Anyway, our walk to the beach afforded some amazing views. County Mayo, and most of the western coast of Ireland, is not flat at all. There are some legitimate mountains, but the landscape as a whole is very hilly. The roads to the beach were for the most part bordered by shrubbery on both sides, and over them we saw green hills sloping upwards. Small clusters of houses dotted the hillsides, and sheep and cows were everywhere, fenced into small pastures and fields by the houses. Along the side of the road we saw the first of many old, abandoned stone cottages - more about those later. We were blessed with relatively sunny skies during this walk, which we would later come to view as something of an anomaly.
Once we reached the beach, we were surprised and impressed with the view. I'm no nature writer, so any description I give you will most likely be inadequate, but I promise that I'll put my pictures online soon and then you can really understand what I'm talking about. Anyway, Clew Bay, an extension of the Atlantic, formed an absolutely beautiful beach in Louisburgh. The grass ended abruptly and dropped off, and suddenly we found ourseves walking on a somewhat narrow strip of sand, split by a large deposit of sand-flea infested seaweed. Small, wide sandbars jutted out into the water, and around us were green-topped cliffs and hills. There were small, sandy islands not very far out, and across part of the bay we could see even more mountainous land. The blue sky and the sun playing on the water made for some beautiful pictures. Bonnie and I, having put our feet in the ocean at Newport and Coney Island in the two previous days, felt called upon to touch the Atlantic's waters on its opposite shores. The water was cold, but we didn't mind. We frolicked on the beach with quite a few of our fellow classmates for some time, and then headed back to the cottages for a much-needed night of sleep as the sun finally set, only getting completely dark around 11:00 PM.
I'm going to stop for now, because it's nearly 1:00 AM. I promise that I'll write more soon, and I'll also, by necessity, have to make an attempt to embrace brevity. Cheers!
So! Bonnie and I arrived at the Shannon airport at about 8:35 in the morning on Saturday, 16 June, after a six-hour flight from JFK. Our seats on the Delta flight were somehow up in first class, so we were lucky enough to have the individual TV screens with lots more options of what to watch than what was being shown on the cabin screens. We were pretty excited about that, but as we descended into Ireland, we put our screens away and tried to catch a glimpse of the Emerald Isle through the windows (we were in the middle aisle.) Unfortunately, the island was shrouded in a foggy mist, and it wasn't until we were really close to the ground that we could see the green grass at all. As the plane descended, however, I caught glimpses of sheep in fields right around the airport, and then suddenly the plane touched down with a jolt, and we were there. After we'd gone through customs and gathered up our luggage, Bonnie and I found some members of our group and plopped down on the seats. We had to wait a few hours for Connie to arrive with Jim, another Carleton professor who grew up in Ireland and was going to be with us for our first week in County Mayo, his home. Once they'd arrived and all of the other students' planes had landed, we made our way outside to meet the driver of our coach. His name was Jimmy, and he was a second or third cousin of Jim and another native of County Mayo. We loaded up our luggage into the coach, found seats, and began the two and a half hour drive from Shannon to Louisburgh, County Mayo, on the west coast of Ireland.
Although we were driving through the beautiful Irish countryside, we were all so tired from our travels that most of us slept during the ride. I got a fair amount of sleep and ended up with some fun bruises on my head the next day from falling asleep and banging my head on the window as I nodded off. Once we arrived in Louisburgh, we were forced to wake up and move all of our belongings into our cottages. We stayed for a week in the Louisburgh Holiday Cottages, a small grouping of traditional-looking whitewashed cottages complete with colorful doors, big fireplaces, and complimentary peat bricks. There were seven people to a cottage, and the group took up three cottages, plus the one that Connie, Jim, and his wife Jane shared.
That evening, we walked into town (about three minutes away from the cottages) and were shown the two grocery stores and the multiple pubs and the small library that it included. Later, we all went to dinner at a local pub, which was overpriced and not that tasty. But we were all so hungry and tired that we didn't complain, and getting a good meal into our stomachs definitely gave us all a well-needed dose of energy.
Later on that night, Bonnie, Esther and I decided to follow Jim's recommendation and check out the beach that was about a ten or fifteen minute walk away from the cottages. We probably left around 9:00 or 9:30, and we were amazed that it was still fully light outside. Ireland is so far north that the sun doesn't start to set until at least 10:00 PM. It was also a few days before the summer solstice, so that also helped. Anyway, our walk to the beach afforded some amazing views. County Mayo, and most of the western coast of Ireland, is not flat at all. There are some legitimate mountains, but the landscape as a whole is very hilly. The roads to the beach were for the most part bordered by shrubbery on both sides, and over them we saw green hills sloping upwards. Small clusters of houses dotted the hillsides, and sheep and cows were everywhere, fenced into small pastures and fields by the houses. Along the side of the road we saw the first of many old, abandoned stone cottages - more about those later. We were blessed with relatively sunny skies during this walk, which we would later come to view as something of an anomaly.
Once we reached the beach, we were surprised and impressed with the view. I'm no nature writer, so any description I give you will most likely be inadequate, but I promise that I'll put my pictures online soon and then you can really understand what I'm talking about. Anyway, Clew Bay, an extension of the Atlantic, formed an absolutely beautiful beach in Louisburgh. The grass ended abruptly and dropped off, and suddenly we found ourseves walking on a somewhat narrow strip of sand, split by a large deposit of sand-flea infested seaweed. Small, wide sandbars jutted out into the water, and around us were green-topped cliffs and hills. There were small, sandy islands not very far out, and across part of the bay we could see even more mountainous land. The blue sky and the sun playing on the water made for some beautiful pictures. Bonnie and I, having put our feet in the ocean at Newport and Coney Island in the two previous days, felt called upon to touch the Atlantic's waters on its opposite shores. The water was cold, but we didn't mind. We frolicked on the beach with quite a few of our fellow classmates for some time, and then headed back to the cottages for a much-needed night of sleep as the sun finally set, only getting completely dark around 11:00 PM.
I'm going to stop for now, because it's nearly 1:00 AM. I promise that I'll write more soon, and I'll also, by necessity, have to make an attempt to embrace brevity. Cheers!
Saturday 23 June 2007
Greetings from Galway
Hey, family! I've decided to keep a blog so that I can share my adventures in Ireland with you all. I've been here for a week, but I haven't had internet access until now. I'm currently in Galway; we're staying for two days and our hostel has free WiFi! Tomorrow we're leaving for Dublin, where we'll be staying for a little over a month. Once I get settled in there, I should have much more regular access to the internet, and then I'll be able to make a proper post detailing just what I've been up to for the past week or so. Suffice it to say that there's been a whole lot of graveyards, sheep, cows, rain, Joyce, lovely Irish accents, and a particularly nasty mountain.
So that's what you have to look forward to once I get a chance to write a marathon post either tomorrow or Monday. Now I'm going to journey into the city with Esther and Bonnie to find food, and then we're going to Yeats' Tower for the afternoon. Hope you're all well!
So that's what you have to look forward to once I get a chance to write a marathon post either tomorrow or Monday. Now I'm going to journey into the city with Esther and Bonnie to find food, and then we're going to Yeats' Tower for the afternoon. Hope you're all well!
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