Playing Catch-up (Part XI)

I really, really ought to be in bed right now. We have an all-day trip tomorrow and we're leaving at 8:30 sharp, but unfortunately I don't feel tired and haven't been falling asleep easily lately anyway. So that's a bit of a problem.

Today I FINALLY got my replacement laptop charger! Mine died during the second week of the program, so I mailed it back home, Dad sent it back to Apple, they sent him a new one, and he and Mom mailed it to me along with some mail and a duffel bag for all my new purchases (although there aren't many, honestly; I'm just worried about exceeding the baggage weight limit and having to pay an astronomical fee, which would just about do me in.) So I'm basically super happy that I don't have to borrow Esther's charger all the time.

Anyway, I left off with our rainy return to Dublin. I meant to mention that when we were in Madrid, we continually saw people using sign language because apparently the World Federation of the Deaf was having a huge conference in the city. We first noticed it on the metro from the airport to the city centre, and then we just kept seeing people sign. I wish I knew more/any sign language so that I would've been able to see how different their signs were. Also, here in Belfast we have a TV with, get ready for this, THREE whole channels, and I've seen a news program in which a speaking woman reads the news while her counterpart interprets/signs it. I thought that that was pretty cool. I did notice that the sign for 'man' was the same... woohoo.

So we had one more day in Dublin before we left the city for good. Bonnie and I did some last minute shopping in the city centre and said goodbye to our old haunts. The next morning, Saturday, we took a coach into Sligo. The ride wasn't all that long, but we had a rather small coach and we were all concerned with whether or not everybody's luggage would fit in the undercarriage - it was a bit touch and go for a while, but Seamus, our trusty driver, managed to maneuver everything in very skilfully.

In Sligo we were housed in Yeats Village, in houses of about 6 people. Bonnie and I shared a room and the others in our house had singles. These houses had kitchens and living rooms with comfy couches and A TELEVISION WITH 15 WHOLE CHANNELS! Needless to say, we spent many hours enjoying this novelty. It was also really good to have a TV when we heard about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, since we had no internet or phone access, really, and we were all really worried, obviously, because Carleton is quite close to the Cities and we all know people who live nearby. Thankfully, everyone we know is fine.

We chilled on Saturday and on Sunday attended the opening ceremony type thing for the Yeats Summer School and then took a coach tour of the Sligo area. If you know anything about W.B. Yeats, you know that he drew much inspiration from Sligo; in fact, it's known locally as Yeats Country. On the tour we saw, from afar "bare Ben Bulben" as well as a lovely valley and then then walked up to a beautiful waterfall. The weather at this point was really interesting - to me, it felt like mid-October, very crisp and cool and generally autumnal. For some reason it reminded me of the autumns of my childhood and I found myself wanting to go apple picking and make applesauce with Mom and even, gasp, go to school. It was kind of odd. Anyway, afterwards we made the requisite pilgrimage to Yeats' grave and saw his headstone, carved with the epitaph he wrote for himself:

Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by!

He's buried by a church, and we were invited in for an evensong service in honour of Yeats and the summer school itself. This was a Church of Ireland service, and it was just so odd... there was a woman preacher who spoke about praising flowers and grass and rain and then this Jesuit priest (?) gave a sermon about Yeats. It was rather disconcerting to the Catholics among our group.

That night we had a dinner reception at the Arts Center, which was about a 15 minute walk away from Yeats Village (our classes were 20 minutes away, and the morning lectures about 25 minutes away.) Then we chilled out and prepared for a week of INTENSE YEATS STUDIES!

Basically, the week went something like this: There were two lectures every morning at 9:30 and 11:00, given by scholars of various academic prowess. The great critic Helen Vendler was clearly the biggest name there; Connie adores and reveres her and just loved her lecture. We had free afternoons and then had our seminars from 4:30 - 6:00. We'd all chosen a seminar from a list we'd been given in March. I was in Maureen Murphy's "Yeats and Folklore" class with two other girls from my program. Honestly, I'm not a huge Yeats fan, but I do like Irish folklore, so I was trying to be optimistic about this. But Maureen was the type of professor who really liked to hear herself speak, and although the students separated into groups to "present" a particular play/story/tale/poem each class, ostensibly so that we wouldn't hear her "talk at us" for an hour and a half, she'd continually interrupt for some tangential digression she just had to say. It was a mite annoying.

So we passed those five days in that manner. There were also quite a few poetry readings; I really enjoyed one given by Richard Murphy. I hadn't been familiar with his work at all, but he was very charismatic and engaging and charming, especially for an 80-year-old man, and I liked the work he read, too. I'd love to get a book of his poetry at some point.

Also, during the week Connie's family was visiting, and while her husband and son took an intense bike tour of the country, her 11-year-old daughter hung out with us. Being the children of two Carleton professors, you can only imagine how intelligent she and her brother are. I enjoyed talking to her; she definitely seemed much more mature than the average 11-year-old!

During our time in Sligo, I think that all of the tight-knit groups among the larger group began to kind of fray around the edges because we'd all been living in very particular groups for so long and spending so much time with the same people. So on the last night, I went out with three girls I don't usually hang out with and we all had a whole lot of fun and loved spending time with different people. That ended up being a precursor to the Belfast experience, which I'll detail in my next entry. :)