Turning 21 in Dublin

Ok, I think it’s about time I updated!!! So, going back two weeks, let me tell you about my wonderful birthday weekend!!

When I first realized I was going to be in Ireland over my 21^st birthday, I was a little disappointed because with the drinking age here being 18, I’d miss out on the typical American 21^st birthday experience. But then I realized I’d get to spend my birthday in Ireland, and how could I complain about that?! To make it even better, my friend Katie who’s studying in London decided to come visit me that weekend too! So Katie and her friend Mariah hopped on a Ryanair flight (which I have yet to experience- but from their stories, it sounded like they basically flew over in an over sized plastic toy plane- scary!!) in the wee hours of the morning, took the bus from Dublin, and got to Galway at around 11am. Going off of no sleep for 24 hours, we jumped straight into sight seeing and I showed them around the beautiful city of Galway!! I stole most of these pictures from them because they both have those fancy cameras with the long lenses and insisted on stopping to photograph every single door we passed (as a random guy on a bike stopped to say to us, “I guess some people can see art in anything.”). 

Shops on Quay St

A Galway Hooker (not what you're thinking- it's a boat!)

Katie's photography skills caught my hair in the wind!

At the Quadrangle on the NUIG campus

We found a sign for Irish Fest in Milwaukee!

Where we ate dinner!

After wandering around the city, we went and had a delicious, traditional Irish meal at Finnegans Corner, and headed off to bed because these two were exhausted! Plus, the next morning we had an early bus to catch to go see the Cliffs of Moher. We got much luckier this time with the weather than the first time I went! It was cold, windy, and rainy, but there was no fog and the clouds even parted to show some blue skies at one point. The water was a gorgeous blue-green color that almost looked like it belonged in the Caribbean! 

Blue skies and tropical looking water!

Peeking over the edge ;]

On Wisconsin!

Even though my actual birthday was on Sunday, we all had classes on Monday and Katie and Mariah had an early flight so we went to the pubs to celebrate on Saturday night! We spent the night dancing to some 90s and early 2000s music (so typical of going out in Ireland!) and meeting some interesting characters! One guy taught us some super creative dance moves (the lawn mower and the grocery cart... so 6th grade!), one guy guessed my age to be 14 (I told him to add 7, he said 23, we walked away), and after a lot of laughs, we headed home to get some sleep before waking up a few hours later to get on a bus to spend my birthday in Dublin!

Before I came to Ireland, lots of people told me that Dublin wasn't all that great, that it was just like any other big city, and to experience "true Ireland" I had to make sure to get out of the city and see the countryside. So going in, I had pretty low expectations. However, I absolutely loved the city of Dublin! Sure, it was pretty touristy, and I didn't exactly get same "Irish" feeling from it as I do in Galway, it was nice to feel the hustle and bustle of a big city again. It also was filled with the gorgeous, old architecture that is so prominent in European cities and so lacking in American ones.

We walked around the Trinity College campus for a while, which was absolutely gorgeous. We were looking for the famous beautiful library that's all over Pinterest, and found a building that said library and we followed a student in. Turns out, it was a small, normal looking library- that you couldn't leave unless you had a Student ID card! So we stood in the doorway for a good 10 minutes freaking out until a student came by and let us out! 

After we thankfully didn't spend the whole day locked inside the library, we went to explore the two gorgeous cathedrals in Dublin, Christ Church Cathedral and St. Patrick's Cathedral. We got to go inside Christ Church Cathedral, which was beautiful, and I lit a candle for Coco. We tried to go inside St. Patrick's Cathedral, but we were there on a Sunday and it was closed for visitors because they were having mass. The outside was beautiful, though!

Christ Church Cathedral

The candle I lit for Coco is the one on the bottom right!

St. Patrick's Cathedral

After we saw the cathedrals, we went to the Guinness Storehouse to learn about the famous drink of Ireland and get our free pints in the Gravity Bar, where we got a gorgeous 360 degree view of the city! The tour was really cool. We got to learn how to properly taste Guinness, where they told us to lift our elbows while we drank because it helps you get to the sweet taste further down in the drink (I thought it still tasted bitter- but I'm not much of a dark beer person). We also met a guy in the Gravity Bar that had been hanging out there a while and had already had a few pints- he told us all about his farm in Maryland and kept telling us to add him on "FacePlant", which we assumed meant Facebook! Everyone in Ireland loves to chat, it's great.

My inner stats nerd was very excited about the plaque dedicated to the famous statistician that developed the Student 't' test!

Celebrating my 21st with a pint!

We passed this kid running across the top of a bridge! He then slid down like it was a slide! Thankfully, he didn't slide into the river!

After the Guinness Factory, and a quick stop in Burger King to use the bathroom, we went to the see the Temple Bar and find somewhere to eat dinner. We were too tired to go the pub afterwards, so we found somewhere to have some birthday cake and wine, and headed back to the hotel and went to bed!

We had a few photo bombers!

Overall, it was my best birthday yet!!! I'm so thankful that I got spend it with great friends, and I can't wait to go to London next month so Katie and Mariah can show me all around their new city! 

Thanks for reading!

Love,

Elise

Getting cultured!

First of all, I'm so sorry I haven't updated in ages! I've been having a blast, and trying to find time to study, and sleep, and blogging keeps falling to the wayside. But, that just means now I have a lot to write about! So here goes!

I can't believe I've been here for over a month. The time is absolutely flying. My classes are starting to pick up a bit and I feel like I'm learning so much about Ireland. I purposely took a mix of classes that cover topics about Ireland in different points of time. It's such an interesting country to study because it has such a rich cultural history that goes back for centuries, but at the same time, it's only been an independent nation since 1922. So in my indigenous arts class, we learn about all of the old Irish art forms, while in my history and politics classes we cover more recent Irish events.

I am also so glad I'm taking a class in the Irish language. It's the official language of the country, but unfortunately, only about 10% of the country actually speaks it fluently. So even though all of the buildings around campus and street signs around the city are written in Irish first and English second, walking around town I've only ever heard people speaking English. Irish students are required to take the language in schools growing up, but by the time they enter university, they hardly remember any of it. There have been some efforts made to revive the language, though. We learned about these summer camps that teenagers go to for intense Irish lessons. They make it fun and relevant though, and the students remake popular songs in Irish and film videos! I've been listening to them while I study. Here's their version of Passenger's "Let Her Go":

I'm also loving my Irish Indigenous Arts class! A couple of weeks ago we went out to Carna, a Gaeltacht or Irish speaking area of Connemara. We went into a pub, all stood in a big circle, and learned how to Irish dance! But not the river dance kind of Irish dancing, we learned Sean-Nós style dancing, or old-style dancing. It's very similar to tap dancing- in fact, American tap dancing originated from when Irish immigrants came to America in the 1800s and their style mixed with the traditional dancing of African-Americans. So here we were, 40 non-Irish students (my indigenous arts class is only offered to visiting students, and is mostly Americans) dancing in a pub! It was pretty hilarious. 

Last week in our Indigenous Arts class, we learned about Sean-Nós singing (old-style singing). It's a very beautiful style, where the singer is unaccompanied and has a lot of freedom to improvise the rhythm and ornamentation. The song we learned was called "A Stór Mo Chroí," which means "Darling of my Heart." It's a song that would be sung by the mother of a young Irish man or woman emigrating in the late 19th or early 20th century to find work and a better life. We talked about how this wasn't just a goodbye for a while, but it was a goodbye knowing they would never see each other again. It would take the Irish emigrant nearly their whole life to save up the amount of money and time needed to come back to Ireland for a visit, by which time their parents would probably be long gone. I had a hard enough time saying goodbye to my parents when I left for Ireland, knowing it would only be five months and that I would get to email and Skype with them nearly every day. I cannot even imagine having to say goodbye to my parents forever, but this song definitely made me understand what it would feel like a little bit better.

Aside from learning about Irish culture in my classes, I've been making it a point to seek out live trad music around Galway! This city really is the "cultural heart of Ireland", and there are so many opportunities to soak it all in. I still have to write a post about my birthday weekend and going to Dublin, so stay tuned for more! For now, here's an Irish toast we learned in class:

"Go mbeirimid beo ar an am seo arís!" (May we be alive this time next year!)

Slán go fóill!

Elise

My first adventures outside of Galway!

After being in the city of Galway for over two weeks, I thought it was about time I start seeing the rest of Ireland! So for only €20, I went on a bus tour through the Burren and to the Cliffs of Moher. I checked the weather before I left, and even the morning had rain in the forecast, by the early afternoon it was supposed to clear up. In hindsight, I really should have known better that the weather in this crazy country has a mind of its own, but I’ll get to that later. We got on the bus at 10:00am amidst a bunch of other tourists, and I thought it was going to be a straight shot from Galway to the Cliffs and back, that I’d listen to some music and take a nap on the way there and back, and that I’d be home for a late lunch. Turns out, we signed up for quite the tour! We stopped 5 times along the way. We saw Dunguaire Castle, Corcomroe Abbey, Ballyalban Fairy Fort, the Poulnabrone Portal Tomb in the Burren, and stopped for lunch at a pub in Doolin. I won’t bore you with the historical details of everything, mostly because I forgot them all, but here are some pictures!

Dunguaire Castle

Corcomroe Abbey

Corcomroe Abbey

Corcomroe Abbey

The Burren

Poulnabrone Portal Tomb (Sorry about the spots- it was raining pretty hard, I couldn't get a clear picture!)

After lunch, we finally made it to the cliffs. The only problem was, it was one of the foggiest days I’ve ever witnessed, and we only had about 50 ft of visibility- that doesn’t amount to very much when you’re trying to look at 700 ft high cliffs! We had 90 minutes at the cliffs, and we tried walking along them to see if we could see anything at all, but the winds were so strong and it was raining and we eventually just headed back to the bus to go home. I was nearly asleep when our bus driver started shouting at us, “Hurry up! You’ve got five minutes! The sky is clearing up! Go get your pictures!” It was a pretty humorous sight, but we all ran off the bus back to the cliffs, and all I can say is wow. Words and pictures cannot even come close to capturing the feeling of seeing them in person.

We couldn't see anything!

I think there's supposed to be water down there somewhere?

Hey, it cleared up!

Absolutely breathtaking.

Well that's about it from my bus tour! The next part of my post is going to be about my first hike with the NUIG Mountaineering Club (AKA the first time I truly feared for my life). Preface: I got a little carried away writing about my hiking experience- it’s over 1,300 words. Feel free to skip the read and just look at the pics!

I’ve finally experienced my first real adventure since I got here. Every Sunday morning, the university’s Mountaineering Club goes somewhere around Ireland to go hiking, and I went with last Sunday. When I say “hiking”, I fear you might think I went to a national park and walked up a hiking trail with lots of other tourists. This was absolutely not the case. I woke up early on Sunday (which if you know me at all, you know was a difficult enough task on its own), got on a bus full of other students, drove through the gorgeous countryside of Connemara, and they dropped us off in front of a mountain. They told us to choose between three routes: the regular, the medium, and the long. After seeing the intense hiking gear some of the experienced members had brought along, I went with the regular to be safe. There were 16 of us in the regular group, and we introduced ourselves and we had a few from Ireland, a few from the US ranging from LA to Colorado to South Carolina to New York, a girl from Canada and a girl from Belgium. We got all bundled up in our hiking boots, waterproof pants (which I need to go buy before the next hike!), hats and gloves, and set out on our hike. 

It started out easy enough; there was a nice path along a river that we followed. Then the leaders started talking about finding the best place to cross the river. Looking around, I didn’t see any bridges, and then I saw them walking along the riverbed finding spots with large enough rocks to cross on. Eventually, after a few of them fell in, they managed to find a board that they balanced across two rocks for us to cross on. As we lined up to cross, huge gusts of wind mixed with hail came through the river valley, nearly knocking me into the water! Us rookies found the whole thing pretty intimidating, and I was thinking this was going to be the craziest part of our adventure. Little did I know what was to come.

When everyone made it safely across the river, we started our trek up the mountain. The actual mountain we climbed was called “Leenane Hill”, but I wouldn’t call a 500 meters (1640 ft) a hill! Especially one that steep- it was nearly vertical at some points. As we started climbing (it was definitely closer to climbing than hiking!), every two minutes or so a huge gust of wind (we estimated about 40+ mph) would attack us, and we quickly learned that the best thing to do was to stop climbing and crouch down as close to the ground as possible unless we wanted to be knocked off our feet (which did actually happen to me a few times!). So we got into a routine of climbing a few feet, ducking for cover, climbing a few more feet, and ducking for cover again. The fact that it had rained so much the night before wasn’t helping our cause- each of us slipped on the wet grass at least once, and we were quickly covered in mud. I tried so hard not to put my hands on the ground, since I was wearing less than waterproof gloves, but after about 15 minutes, that effort was a lost cause and I was constantly squeezing my hands into fists to wring the water out. It was actually better to wear the sopping wet gloves than to take them off, as your body heat will warm the water and they act as a wind barrier. Regardless, I’ve never had such cold hands before- and this is coming from a girl that grew up in Minnesota! During our ascent, I’ve never experienced so many rapid weather changes. When we first started, the sun had broken through the clouds, and it was gorgeous out. About 10 minutes later, the clouds rolled back through and we were being pelted with hail. Another 10 minutes passed, and the sun was back out. At one point, the sun was out and it was hailing at the same time! This continued throughout the whole day. Ireland weather is absolutely crazy. 

P.S. My pictures don't portray the weather changes at all- I obviously wasn't taking pictures when the wind was knocking me over or I was being attacked by hail!

I was excited that the sun was out :]

The mountain was very deceiving in that every time we thought we had made it to the top, it kept going. I’d look at how far up we’d come, and how far we had left, and be so excited, but then we’d make it over the steep ridge and there’d be another one! Once we made it about 90% of the way up, we stopped for lunch. All of us lined up against a big rock that semi-blocked us from the wind, and took out our bag lunches. Unfortunately, my hands were so close to frozen that I could barely move my fingers! It took about five times longer than usual to open a container of yogurt. The leaders passed around chocolate, and I finally understood why Remus Lupin always gives Harry chocolate after a run-in with dementors- it really did warm me up! During our stop for fuel, it was actually really sunny, and the view was absolutely incredible. Until our leaders said, “Alright, let’s keep going!” and the sky clearly had other plans for us. Within about 10-20 seconds, huge grey clouds came rolling in through the valley and they brought the strongest winds we’d experienced yet, as well as the most hail. We made it another 25 feet or so before the wind actually knocked me off my feet and moved me about 15 feet in the opposite direction. It was here when our leaders decide that finishing our climb wasn’t worth the risk of being blown off the mountain, so we decided to turn around. But even turning around wasn’t an option at this point, so all of us huddled behind the big rock where we ate lunch and held on for dear life. You might think I’m being dramatic, but thoughts actually went through my head at this point like “Do we have a flare? Who knows we’re up here? Is it possible to call for a helicopter? Am I going to be covered in red welts from this hail? How long until they find my body?” Ok, looking back it was a little dramatic, but I was actually really scared!

Eventually the storm calmed down, so we started our descent. Remember when I said it was slippery? Yeah, going down was a whole new kind of challenge. One girl fell on her butt and proceeded to slide a good 25 feet down! We really should have brought sleds, because wet, muddy grass works even better than snow! Everyone fell and slid multiple times, and I have to say, going down was a lot more fun than going up. The only downside to sliding was that have a wet muddy butt was absolutely freezing when you stood up and the wind hit you, so I tried to stay on my feet as much as possible. We stopped on the way down to takes some pictures by a gorgeous waterfall, made it back over the river much easier than the first time around, and before we knew it the hike was over! It was definitely one of those having-a-baby experiences, where in the end you (almost) forget about the pain because it’s so worth it. As soon as we made it back into the town of Leenane, we went into the nearest pub, and I headed straight for the bathroom to change into dry clothes! Then I enjoyed some delicious hot chocolate and a bowl of soup, and we laughed about our crazy adventures. By the time I got home and took a very long, hot shower and climbed into bed, I was completely exhausted and slept for nearly 12 hours. The day was absolutely exhilarating, and call me crazy, but I can’t wait to do it all over again this Sunday! 

Slán go fóill!

Elise