Seeya Later

Well I’m back. It feels really weird to be in Texas again, it’s kind of nice though.

The last couple weeks have been great. We went to Limerick with Anthony and met his family. It was so sweet staying in an actual home again, and having a mom to cook everything. It was just a perfect last trip to have, we basically just hung around the house, played some outside games, went exploring their property, played cards and watched movies. So nice.

Me, Anthony's sister Catherine, Katie, and Molly

When we got back we spent the next couple days studying for finals on and off and watching a show called The Inbetweeners, which is huge here. We also went to the bier tent at the Galway Christmas Fair a lot.

Liter Steins

Monday we had a Christmas party at our apartment in Gort na Coiribe (fun fact: Gort na Coiribe is Irish for "student ghetto"), so Sunday we spent all day sitting around making paper chains and cleaning up, since it was hailing outside anyway. The party was great all but one person from API showed up, and a bunch of people brought their roommates too. It was great to see everyone one last time all together before people started leaving.

Our kitchen wall: paper chains, 2 chinese calendars, paper dolls, a "best roommate" totem pole, and 3 signs that say "Galway says crack a smile", "Occupy Galway", and "Yid Army"

API family at Christmas party

I’m so happy I got the chance to go to Ireland this semester, it really was probably the best time of my life. I was so scared to leave home in August. I thought I would freak out while abroad and want to come home because I missed everyone too much. Once I got there though, I only got homesick about 3 times all semester, and it never lasted long at all.

I did what I wanted to do in Galway, which was make friends. Thanks to lacrosse I have plenty of options for places to stay when (not if) I go back, and thanks to API I’ve also got places to stay all over the US. I didn’t make it to the continent, but that’s a trip for another time, I couldn’t be happier with how I spent my 4 months there. I feel like I’ve been “on” ever since I left. I didn’t want to waste any of my time, and I think I did a good job of that. Yeah, I watched some TV, but it was always with Anthony or someone else, never just by myself. I skyped with some people at home a handful of times, but not every single night for hours and hours, because I had things to do and people to see, and I knew the people from home would still be there when I got back.

We spent this last week doing all our favorite things in Galway. We hit up the Quays probably 3 times, went into town almost every single day, had one last meal at Monroe’s, and one last cupan tae at Cupan Tae.

It sucked saying goodbye to my friends. The last night I went the first couple bars on the lacrosse 12 Pubs of Christmas pub-crawl to see everyone one last time. Broke down on pub number 3, sobbed my goodbyes then went to the API final dinner (at Milano’s, the same place we had our first dinner). Finn and Kevin were both there, which was great because I’d wanted to see them both again one more time, but there were only 8/15 API students, so it was kind of weird. (empty chairs at empty tables ♫♪ ) After dinner everyone left went back to our apartment and we hung out there for a while before people started slowly drifting off. Irish Brendan and Alex came over after they finished the pub-crawl and brought me some Ben and Jerry’s to make me feel better. They also apparently stole the last pint glass I’d had at the pub and saved it for me. That nearly got me crying again. I’m going to miss those two so much.

Me, Irish Brendan, Alex, Laura, Rob, Adam, and Charco at pub number 3

The original plan was to get a job over there this summer, but the euro is on the verge of collapse, and jobs were scarce in Ireland already, so things aren’t looking too good. I hope I can go back and visit my friends at least sometime this year though. There’s a lacrosse tournament in Belfast over Spring break, maybe then would be a good time. Katie has to visit me in Texas within the next year because she lost a bet to me, and Cayla will be here in October for a wedding (which she’s already asked me to be her date for J). I hope I can see some of them in a couple weeks when we’re up in New York for New Years, because they’re all probably feeling just as weird as me and it would be nice to have someone to talk to about it. 

                                                                         

Favorite place in Ireland- anywhere with these jokers.

So that’s that. I’m glad to see everyone here again, but it was really hard to leave, and I’m still pretty sad when I think of not seeing my friends again for a long time. Hopefully my occasional updates on here kept you entertained, they were fun for me to write. And if you ever want me to ramble on about Ireland in person, it would be my pleasure.

Sin é.

Hopefully Not My Last Entry But No Promises

I know it’s been a very long time since I’ve written anything. At first I just didn’t have anything interesting to say. It’s gotten to the point where I wasn’t traveling for a while, so I’m basically just doing the same things here as I would be at home, and no one wants to read that I was hanging out with my friends AGAIN. A couple fun things happened though.

Brendan’s birthday was a couple weeks ago so Katie and I made him a cake.

Yes that's a chocolate cake in a Guinness glass, not just a really curdled beer.

Went into town for Halloween and saw some interesting folks, apparently blackface is accepted and encouraged here.

Nicki Minaj and the Jamaican bobsledders. Cool runnings mon.

I won 2 tickets to this thing at school called “Mega Music Munchie Monday” or something. Basically it was a huge international food festival, so Katie, Anthony and I had our dinner there. Tickets were only 2 euro, but mine were FREE so it tasted that much better.

Danielle and I passed our rock-climbing test, but ever since then one of us has been traveling every week so we haven’t gone back yet. Hopefully next week we’ll both be around.

Alex, Adam (from lacrosse), and I went to a Connacht rugby match about a month ago, which was a lot of fun. Some guys took our picture, yadda yadda yadda, we three are now the face of Connacht rugby.

Come on Connacht

Alex and I did actually end up going to Dublin for the Irish lacrosse trials, but we got rejected :( they wouldn’t even let us go out and play for fun because we didn’t have Irish passports. Luckily we realized we could just marry a couple Irish guys to get some, so this time next year we’ll be fine to try out.

Mom and Dad and Erin were here last week, which was great. It was sweet traveling around the country by car instead of bus. We went up to Northern Ireland and Donegal, then down through Mayo to Galway for a bit, then down to Dingle, Cork, and Kerry. We went to the Slieve League cliffs (which are higher than the Cliffs of Moher), saw another church claiming to be the smallest one in Ireland (it totally wasn’t as small as the one on Inismor), and went across a sweet old rope bridge. My favorite might have been the Giant’s Causeway though, it was just so cool sitting out there watching the waves all crash on the rocks.

Giant's Causeway

In County Mayo there’s a mountain called Croagh Padgraig, where apparently St. Patrick fasted for 40 days before banishing all the snakes from Ireland. Ever since, people have climbed this mountain as pilgrimage, and there’s a little church at the top. Anyway, you climb this thing to repent, so if you’ve been really bad you’re supposed to climb it with no shoes on. Erin was the only one to go for it. She and Dad made it like a third of the way up the mountain before they quit, Mom and I made it to the sign then went down and had tea while waiting for them.

Thursday we had Thanksgiving dinner in Galway. Katie and Anthony came with us. It was Anthony’s first Thanksgiving. After that we went around town, so Erin now knows exactly what I do here all the time, and why I never write about it.

Thanksgiving seafood

Saturday they went to Dublin to catch their flight so I came back to Galway and went to another rugby match with my friends. The next day there was a 5k/10k run for charity that some people from the lacrosse team did, called the Santa run (run for a good Clause!) I hurt my knee the night before so I didn’t do it but I went down and took pictures of them. My friend Sonny got 2^nd overall for the 10k, and my other friend named Katie got like 8^th, but 2^nd for women in the 10. The rest of them did really well too, especially for having to run the whole thing in a felt suit, hat, and beard.

This event deserved 3 pictures

Santas on the Salthill Prom

Irish Brendan, Alex, Sonny, Ryan, and Lacrosse Katie

Right now I’m in London with Katie (from API, not lacrosse). Last night we saw Les Miserables, which was awesome, especially since I didn’t fall asleep like the last time I saw it. Then today we went up to the Tower Bridge and worked the underground like pros. Tomorrow we’re going to Stonehenge then home, hopefully. There’s a strike planned for public transit so that may not actually happen.

*Update, we made it home without a hitch despite the strike at the airport. Also, Stonehenge was underwhelming.

A 3 hour bus ride, freezing rain, and a pile of rocks we weren't allowed to touch. Great.

Tonight is my last lacrosse practice, then tomorrow I’m going to Limerick with Katie and Molly to stay with Anthony’s family, and when I get back on Monday I’ll only have 12 days left here. I’m expecting an emotional breakdown any time now, though I’m really hoping it doesn’t happen in Limerick. I’ll be in New York for New Years so hopefully I can see some of my API friends around there while I’m up, but as for everyone else I’ve met here, God knows when I’ll see them again, and even when I do see them it’ll never be the same as it was for the past 3 months. Anyway, that’s life I guess. I’m so lucky to have had this time here, I just don’t want it to all feel like a dream when I go back to Texas, that’s what I’m really afraid of. Anyway, maybe I’ll be back someday, who knows.

What I really need to start doing is collect the rocks I’m giving you all for Christmas presents, I’m way behind on my quota.

Not even my favorite picture of Erin at Blarney Castle...

Because this is :)

The countdown begins.

London London London!

This weekend API took us to London. It was my first time in England, and I must say I loved it. The city actually reminded me a lot of New York, except it was cleaner and not so crowded and the buildings were nicer. Here’s basically my whole weekend:

We flew out of the Galway airport, which none of us even knew existed, probably because it only has 2 gates. On the flight over I psyched myself up by listening to all the “The”s on my iPod. The Beatles, The Who, The Stones, The Sex Pistols, The Zombies, The Kinks, and especially The Clash. Our hotel was right off Trafalgar Square, so it was basically the middle of the city, which made it pretty easy to walk most places. API Cork and API Limerick were at the same hotel as us so we all walked over to the London Eye together. I heard two girls talking about the Katy Mills mall so I asked if they were from Texas. Not only were they from my state, they’re from my school. One was from Cork, the other Limerick, and they told me there’s one more UT student who’s in Dublin. Pretty funny. We were actually supposed to all meet up Saturday and take a picture in front of the Texas Embassy (yup, we have an embassy in London from when we were an independent nation), but we were all doing different things so it didn’t end up happening.

My favorite structure in the city

Get it?

Texas Embassy- now a Mexican food restaurant

Saturday I went up to the Portobello Road market with Danielle and Kelsey. I liked it a lot, typical street market set-up. They had a bunch of antique booths, which I didn’t spend too much time at, dresses, bags, souvenirs, records, leather jackets, and lots of food. I got bruchetta from an Italian booth, which was a perfect breakfast, and a sweet new bag to replace my fraying, 4-year-old Target one. We minded the gap on the underground back to London Tower- luckily Kelsey and Danielle are both from New York so they knew exactly how to read the subway maps and all I had to do was follow them through the station. We met up with everyone else and Kevin gave us all bus passes, so we basically just explored the city the rest of the day. Saw London Tower, Tower Bridge, Westminster Abbey, Fleet Street- all that good stuff. Later that night I saw We Will Rock You and got Chipotle for dinner, so obviously I was happy.

The beautiful Tower Bridge

We Will Rock You

We had to check out of the hotel Sunday at 11, so we only had a little time in the morning. I ran into Dan on my way to get coffee so we went and got breakfast together then ended up walking around Trafalgar taking pictures riding the giant lion statues there (actually only he was riding them because I wasn’t tall enough to hoist myself up, so I’m just in front of it). After that we saw Kelsey and Meg, and we took a taxi over to Abbey Road, where we got our picture walking across thanks to this hilarious Asian couple. We undergrounded it back to Trafalgar and got one last Starbucks (number 5) before checking out.

Attempting to climb

Couldn't even get it without the jacket

Settled for this

Our photographers

Now I could give you the blow-by-blow of each delay as it was announced, but I’ll just sum up our time at the airport by saying we got there at 12:00 and didn’t leave until 7:30. Air Eirinn gave us each £6 to spend around the airport, so Brendan and I hit the bar around 3:00, by 5:00 quite a crowd had gathered. It was a bummer we couldn’t have spent the extra time around the city in London, but really the airport wasn’t so bad, and at least we were stuck at the giant London one instead of the shed we flew out of in Galway.

So I had a good weekend. I plan on going back to London in a couple weeks with Katie, Brendan, and Colleen. The one thing I really wanted to do that I didn’t get to was the British Museum of Popular Music, because apparently all the other people in API are squares who hate real music (and yes, I realize some of you squares may be reading this blog). I also think we’re going to go see Shakespeare’s grave and the Globe Theatre, and hopefully even Stonehenge.

Me, Colleen, Brendan, Katie, and Sarah- going back November 19th

Not sure what I’m doing this weekend. Maybe going to Dingle, plans are in the works. Nothing really planned for Halloween though. Lacrosse practice/party tonight, I think Danielle made pumpkin soup so hopefully I can snag some of that for dinner.

A Day in the Life

People tell me to write more, but I haven't been doing anything super interesting. To prove it, here's what I did today:

This morning I woke up at 10 for my class at 11. Luckily Molly and Anthony both slept in so there was still hot water when I took a shower. Usually there’s enough water for 2 showers, then whoever wakes up last has to press the “boost” button and wait 45 minutes for the water heater to fill up again. My first class was Irish, which I love, but today we didn’t learn anything really interesting, just the names of rooms in the house. So now I can say that I’m from Texas, I live in an apartment in Galway by the river, and what time it is. I think the next vocabulary set we’re learning is about family members, so that should be more fun. Usually during the break in that class I go to the Gaeilge café in the building and get a cupan tae, and talk to the woman working there a bit in Irish, because she knows I’m learning it. Not today though. “Is as Texas me. Ta me i mo chonai i nGaillimh in arasan gar don ahbainn. Ta se a tri a chlog.”

Our "Seomra Teaghlaigh"

Molly making beans on toast

After Irish I went to the library to do some homework before my next class. Started reading “Measure for Measure” for my Shakespeare class, then spent the rest of the time looking up stuff to do in London this weekend. Our group is going to the London Eye and on a riverboat down the Thames, and also to see the Tower of London. Then the rest of the time we have a hop-on hop-off bus ticket to see what we want to. I think Saturday night I’m going to try to see We Will Rock You, which is like a broadway show full of Queen music. My parents saw it a couple years ago and said it was great. Besides that I don’t have too many plans. Double-decker bus, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace. I know some people who are all excited to go to Chipotle. I’d be happy with fish and chips.

Typical cereal I eat for breakfast/lunch/dinner

I bought these based purely on the packaging and repulsive-sounding flavor to make Molly laugh. Best decision I ever made, they're basically Funyuns but better.

I had my second favorite class at 3, which is my Shakespeare class. My professor for that one is an American guy, who’s pretty interesting. But not interesting in any way that you would care about. Kind of just a have-to-be-there kind of way. Anyway, after that I went to Tesco (the grocery store) with Anthony to get stuff to make cornbread for the Fall-themed dinner club happening tomorrow. Unfortunately they don’t sell the little Jiffy cornbread mixes from home, and they don’t sell plain cornmeal either so I can’t even make it from scratch. I think instead I’m going to make cupcakes that look like pumpkins and some cinnamon coffee to go with them. I think we’re also having apple-brandy glazed pork, pumpkin soup, homemade applesauce, and pumpkin bread. Should be good.

I had lacrosse practice tonight, which was good for about 10 minutes, then it got really cold and started raining and the lights didn’t come on so no one could see the ball or catch any passes. It started at half six, we played ‘til seven, then stood around for another half an hour waiting for the lights to come on at half seven, since that’s what time they came on last week. 7:45 rolled around and we called it a night, since it was still miserable weather. It was fun, but not the most fun practice I’ve been to. On the way home we saw an ice cream truck so my friend Brendan got us all some, because no matter what, it’s never too cold for ice cream. 25 minutes later I finally made it home, where I sat in front of our “fireplace” for a while (which is really just a heater with a picture of a fire on it) then made myself a grilled cheese and an Irish coffee. A little while later my friend Katie came over and we played cards for a couple hours and made hot chocolate. I still had some left over heavy cream in the fridge from the Tres Leches cake a couple weeks ago so we even made some whipped cream to top them off. It was a good night.

"Fireplace" and halloween decorations

Tomorrow I have to go back to Tesco to get cake mix, then I’m making the cupcakes before class so they’re cool by the time I get back. I have my Imagining Modern Ireland class from 11-1. It’s definitely and interesting class, but I would like it a lot more if it wasn’t 2 hours long. After class I’m supposed to go with Molly and some other people to get lunch at a place called Mr. Waffle, which sells waffles, crepes, and sandwiches. Then hopefully I’ll make it to the gym, but I might take a nap instead, since it’s now 3:30am and I’m planning on getting up at 8am. Then I have to ice the cupcakes and go over to dinner club at 8pm. Full day.

Halloween decorations from Nana. Mine's the owl (Jerry) and Molly's is the skull (Bart)

Cyclamen flowers when I bought them about a month ago

Cyclamens now (and Jerry)

So there you go. I'm having a blast, still loving it here. I can't believe it's halfway over. 

Dublin was pretty cool. It was basically just like a big city at home though, so I’m really glad I’m living in Galway instead. Kevin gave us all 2-day tour bus passes, so we could get around the city and hop off to see whatever we wanted. My two favorite things we saw were the Guinness Storehouse and the Book of Kells at Trinity College. The Storehouse was huge. On the route the tour bus took it was right past two giant Cathedrals (Christ Church and St. Patrick’s), so the bus driver kept referring to the brewery as “St. Arthur’s Episcopal, the biggest Cathedral in the city”. It was great though, I loved seeing all the ingredients and old equipment, and there was a whole floor dedicated to advertisements and the origin of the Guinness Book of World Records. Each person also got a pint and a half of free samples of the product. The Guinness family seemed like a decent bunch. They apparently were big into worker’s rights and took good care of their employees, and they also donate lots of money all over town and the rest of the country. No wonder Arthur gets his own holiday.

We saw the brewhouse Saturday afternoon, then went to Charlie One’s Chinese fast food for dinner to complete the Irish experience. Then we went to Whelan’s Pub, which is where they filmed PS I Love You, because one girl here is on a mission to re-live that movie I guess. It was a cool place, and pretty cheap, especially compared to the Temple Bar where the other API people went to, which is apparently the most expensive bar in the entire country.

Thanks for that pocketknife Old Granny

The next morning we went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was beautiful but there was lots of stuff in there. It wasn’t “cluttered” per se, but it was more like a museum than a church. Lots of graves/memorials/displays all along the walls and floor. It was cool to see Jonathan Swift’s grave though. Afterwards we went to the Kilmainham Gaol, where they executed 14 Irish rebels, thus spurring the rest of the country to revolution in response. The history majors I was with loved it, but it was no Alcatraz, so I ended up leaving halfway through with some other people to see Trinity instead. They told me all I missed was seeing the courtyard where they lined prisoners up to be shot, so wasn’t terribly broken up about it.

The Book of Kells was by far my favorite thing on Sunday. The exhibit had a ton of information on how the monks wrote it, how they got the different colored inks, what the pages were made of, everything. It was fascinating (to me at least). The detail on the lettering and pictures was so incredible. You aren’t allowed to take pictures in the exhibit, but I pulled some from Google that are higher quality than mine would have been anyway. The gift shop on the way out sold Book of Kells coloring books, but unfortunately they didn’t quite capture the same awe as the original.

After that we bused it home. I finished Irish sock #1 on the way. So Dublin was nice, but like I said, I’m glad to be where I am. I’ll be back there again tonight anyway for the lacrosse tournament. Lacrosse is still going great. We had a scrimmage Tuesday night, then went out to the college bar for some bonding. The scrimmage was a blast, it was raining the whole time and half the players didn’t have cleats so we were falling all over the place. Anthony annoyingly informed me that Irish people say “boots” instead of “cleats”, so I started saying that to the lacrosse people, but because they hang out with Americans so much they actually do all call them “cleats”, so I was wrong anyway.

The sky was a really strange color today, I’m not sure what it means. There was also a weird yellow circle floating above us all day. Weird.

                   

                                                                Not my picture, but this is what the sky looked like.

Extra pictures here.

Tá mé go maith

Good news, the “Who Loves Megan the Most” competition has officially begun! Just kidding. But yesterday I got a package from Katonah, full of Life cereal and decorations for Halloween (which they do celebrate here). I also got a letter and beautiful watercolor picture from Shradha. And if Rachel gets the immigration details for her mission sorted out, then she’ll hopefully be visiting me in a couple weeks. The contest is off to an excellent start. (No purchase necessary to enter, emails are just as nice.)

Enough cereal to last the month? Only time will tell.

I bought some Irish yarn the other day so I’m finally knitting myself a pair of socks. I usually knit while watching TV. This week there hasn’t been much on the news so we’ve been watching MTV (from one end of the spectrum to the other…) mostly Jersey Shore. What’s really bad though is this show called Geordie Shore, which is basically the British version of it. I’ll tell you right now, it’s nowhere near as good. At least Jersey Shore’s characters are somewhat likeable; these people from Geordie are awful. It also probably doesn’t help that they don’t censor ANYTHING after 9:00 at night, so instead of hearing the bleeps and leaving the actual words up to my imagination, I get the full force of their obscene vocabulary in all its glory. How nice.

I finally started my Irish language class this week. I really like it a lot so far. After 2 classes I can say “Hi, how are you, good, thank you, what’s your name, my name is Megan, what’s your phone number, 086-779-1504”. I also ordered a cup of tea in Irish (“cupan tae”), and I was so excited about it that didn’t think and took a huge sip right away and burned off half my taste buds. I tried speaking some Irish to (more like “at”) Anthony, since he’s had it for 12 years at school, but apparently most of it went in one ear and out the other, and what few phrases managed to stick are all in Munster dialect, where as my teacher uses a Connemara dialect. This is basically what I know.

Lacrosse is great; I had practice again last night. Last week when I brought a stick home, Anthony kept picking it up and messing around with it because he’d never seen one before, so I brought him with me to play last night. He said he liked it and he’ll come back next week. The thing with him and a lot of the Irish players is that they’ve played hurling for so long that they keep getting the sports confused, so in the middle of the game they’ll just pick up the ball with their hand and put it in their stick, because I guess you can do that in hurling. Or even better, they'll toss the ball up out of their stick and try to bat it into the goal instead of just throwing it in. It’s so fun though, and fortunately the girls’ team is growing. Yesterday we had 9 girls at practice: 4 who have played before are 5 first-timers. I met a girl named Alex last week from Maine. She's a first year but she's doing a full-degree here, not just a semester of studying abroad. She's played since she was really young, but she says she was always on the bench at home, but here she seems like a super star, so I think she's going to try out for the Women's National Team next month. Apparently the women’s team has no restrictions about what country you’re from. They hope to have at least half of the team be actually Irish, if possible, but really they'll take what they can get. I’m so jealous.

Sweet Irish lacrosse shirt I want. I can't get over the harps everywhere.

I tried an Irish step-dancing class Wenesday night with Katie and Sarah, but it was actually no fun at all because I have absolutely zero dance experience and the teacher was awful so I don’t think I’ll be going back. One of my friends here has taken Irish dancing for like 11 years though, so she’s going to do it. Hopefully she has some performances during the semester I can go to, because it’s really cool to watch.

Tonight dinner club is making tacos, so I’m bringing over a Tres Leches cake, and I think Molly’s making guacamole. Feels just like home. Except most the people here are from the north and don’t like spicy things at all, so I’m keeping my expectations low for these “tacos”.

I can’t believe tomorrow’s October! I guess it feels like I’ve been here for longer than a month, but this is still going by really quickly.  We’re leaving for Dublin at 10 tomorrow. I still have to figure out what I want to do there besides see Trinity and the Guinness Factory, because they’re basically just giving us a bus pass and turning us loose for the weekend. Suggestions are welcome.

Me, Molly, and Anthony