The North.

 Hello again!

We are back from Northern Ireland (Derry and Belfast) and now stay in Spiddal for the next two and a half weeks with only day trips. It is nice to know we are here for a while, nice to finally grocery shop for meals instead of limiting what we buy so we don't waste food when we leave for 5 days. And this will be a lot of pictures again... too many things are hard to explain without actually seeing them.

We left on Wednesday for Derry, after sitting five and a half hours in class in the morning we got to sit on a bus for five hours in the afternoon. On our way we stopped at Yeats' tomb at Duncliffe. Yeats was buried elsewhere but was moved to Ireland 10 years later. The grave itself was boring, but the church and graveyard was on a hill overlooking a mountain and the view was beautiful.

We got to Derry at night and had dinner provided for us at a pub. Derry is the only fully walled city left in Ireland so we had to wander to find a gate into the city. Anyway, dinner was delicious and dessert was included... Bailey's cheesecake. Yum.

Free Derry is where a lot of "The Troubles" took place from 1968 - 2008 between the Protestants and Catholics, Nationalists and Loyalists. Because of this, there are murals all over commemorating events that took place during this period.

The Free Derry sign. You can see the news crew, this is across the street from the Bloody Sunday memorial. The day we did this walking tour the British Government said they would pay reparations to the Bloody Sunday victims' families.

first civilian victim of The Troubles, the students
still wear these uniforms, were walking the streets
as we learned about this mural

Free Derry got its name by someone writing  "You are now entering Free Derry" on the end of a house during one of the riots during The Troubles. This was modeled after whoever wrote a similar line at Berkeley in CA during the anti-war demonstrations, a lot of how the Irish rebelled is based on protests in the US and South Africa.

The  mural to the right is really cool, up until a year or so ago the butterfly was black and white and the gun was black and whole. The people of Free Derry commissioned an artist to change the mural, the colorful butterfly representing life and hope and the broken gun to say that it will never happen again. Our tour guide was very emphatic about this point, that things have changed. He thanked us as tourists for helping to show the world that there is nothing to fear by going to the North.





There are two main events that took place in Free Derry, the Battle of Bogside and Bloody Sunday.  The Battle of Bogside was the first major event of The Troubles, it was a three day riot during which over 1000 people were injured and led to British Troops being stationed there which most people were okay with as they were viewed as a non-biased group...


Bloody Sunday was when British troops shot and killed 14 Nationalists who were not armed. It wasn't until 2010, 38 years later that the British Government gave a formal apology and admitted that those 14 victims were not armed.


In Free Derry there is a Civil Rights museum which is essentially a museum dedicated to The Troubles, inside they have clothes the victims wore during Bloody Sunday (with bullet holes showing the victims were shot in the back), letters like the one below, rubber bullets which killed at least six people and other artifacts from this time.  Our archaeology prof came with us, she grew up just outside of the army checkpoint and had to walk through it every day to go to school. She saw a 12 year old boy shot in the face with a rubber bullet on the way to school, had to run to the church during school multiple times because the school she attended was on the main riot street (our hostel was one street over) and could tell us all these first-hand stories about The Troubles.

A letter sent to one of the Bloody Sunday victims' families by the head of the UVF, the IRA's counterpart. One of the many interesting things in the Free Derry Civil Rights Museum 

On a lighter note, Thursday was Arthur Guinness day. I drank my first and last Guinness (and by drank I mean like a third of it) at 17:59 on Arthur Guinness's birthday at the year/time of its creation, 1759.

We left Derry on Friday  and stopped at the Bushmills Whiskey distillery and Giant's Causeway on our way to Belfast. The distillery tour was very cool, the end result mostly disgusting but that may just be personal preference.

Giant's Causeway is an area of naturally occurring hexagonal stone columns that was formed 60 millionish years ago. The Irish legend says that Finn McCool was building a stairway to Scotland to fight his Scottish counterpart, however his counterpart was huge so instead Finn McCool dressed up as a baby and when his enemy came to fight him he saw how large Finn's child was and decided he did not want to battle the child's father.

The "peace wall" designed to keep the peace between
the Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods.

We did a bus tour in Belfast because the city is much larger than Derry. We saw more evidence of The Troubles, the most significant being a 25 foot tall wall that separates the Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods and still stands today. There were more murals, more fortified police stations. We drove through both the Protestant and Catholic parts of town (we didn't in Derry because the Protestant area is across the river) and it was a very distinct difference. In the protestant area you saw murals about the UVF, their current slogan "engaged in peace, ready for war" and plaques to those killed. The Catholic part was very similar to Derry.

The rest of the pictures are things we saw in Belfast...

The red brick building on the left is where the Titanic was designed, the new modern building is the new Titanic museum.  The titanic was built on the wharf behind these buildings and dry docked there until it sailed in April of 1912

Belfast Castle - on a hill overlooking Belfast. The gardener had a much loved cat. If you can find all 9 images of the cat in the garden it is supposed to bring you luck 

Belfast City Hall - with a statue of Brittania on top and a statue dedicated to Edward Carson, the lawyer who argued for Northern Ireland's right to stay with the UK 

Queen's university in Belfast

So that was my weekend! We got tired of going to pubs so one night in Belfast we went to a movie instead, The Guard. It is about an Irish cop and a drug deal that takes place in Spiddal and Barna (the next town over) so there are scenes in the movie shot in Spiddal. It was kinda weird becuase we would laugh at different parts than the rest of the theater (like the ad before the movie about no cell phone usage) but it was fun!

We had some delicious white chili tonight for dinner, perfect because it is kind of chilly here. Any easy soup recipes (or other delicious and easy recipes) would be much appreciated now that we have time to actually make meals! Just email them if you get the chance.

michelle

 We have a lot of homework and reading to do for class this week and leave for Northern Ireland on Wednesday at 2 after 5 hours of class so this one will be mostly pictures. Plus I just wrote about 3 pages of journals for class tomorrow so… that is far too much writing as is, so just a couple notes about what these things are…

 Muckross House – renovated for Queen Victoria’s visit in the 1800s sometime… the family spent 6 years renovating the house for her visit and then went bankrupt because they were expecting a title in return however the king died and in her heartbreak the queen never granted the title.

Ring of Kerry – gorgeous loop around Kerry with various stops like Skellig Michael, a monastery built between the 6^th and 9^th centuries on this rock (I hesitate to say island) off the coast of Ireland. They built houses and staircases all over the island and had to fish for their food because there was no soil. Unfortunately we couldn’t take the boat to the island because of the weather, so I only have a picture of a picture. There were also random scenic spots we could just yell out to the bus driver and he would pull over so we got shots like those below.

 On Saturday we drove around the Dingle Peninsula, again it was gorgeous. I didn't really think of Ireland as having beaches, not sure why considering it is an island, but today's drive was more than enough to prove me wrong.  Those black dots in the picture below are surfers, yes, surfers.

 Sunday we headed out of Killarney and stopped at Ross Castle and the Cliffs of Moher on our way back . Ross Castle was built in the 15th century and is full of priceless antiques like 14th century wood chests and lead/pewter plates (why the average age was so low for the high kings/lords).

We also went to a play at the National Folk Theater. It was all in Gaelic, but it was still very easy to figure out what was going on and the music and dancing was wonderful!

 The Cliffs of Moher were beautiful!! Especially if you ignored the sign to the left and walked along the "path" next to the cliffs. The cliffs rise 400 - 700 feet off the water. Next to this sign is a little monument to those who have died on the cliff, but being the intelligent college students we are, we passed it by anyway!

Thats it for now. We leave for Northern Ireland tomorrow (with warnings not to say that we go to a Catholic school and to leave all of our St. Bens/St. Johns clothing behind) and dont get back til Sunday but then we have a weekend off so I can spend more time on a blog.

michelle

Kiltartan, Kilmacduagh and Glenstal Abbey

Dia dhuit! Hello! This is a long one (and my second today) so lo siento, just bear with me!

We started early (as in 8:30, that’s the new early) with a talk from Brother Colman, our guide for he weekend and also the teacher for our Contemporary Irish Catholicism class. He gave us a little background on the trip and then we started off for our first of many overnights at various points around Ireland!

The first stop was Kiltartan, just a simple ruined old church just beyond the fence that marked the edge of the Coole Estate.  The church was missing a roof (common theme) and the inside was full of graves and trees. The legend says Lord Gregory didn’t want to have to see a Catholic Church steeple so he built the church outside the grounds without the steeple.

kilmacduagh

Then we drove to Kilmacduagh where they had the ruins of several churches/monasteries plus the round tower.  The door to the round tower is placed 26 feet off the ground, the tower leans 4 feet in one direction and the pitch of the tower is just 18 inches, doable because the it is a cone shape.  The tower was where monks would hide things if raiders came calling, which worked great until the tower shape was likened to a chimney and raiders started burning the tower

kilmacduagh

and all its contents.  This particular
tower has been burnt at least twice.




 The weather was wonderful for this portion of the trip: little bits of rain but mostly clear blue skies and warm!  I decided to ditch my rain jacket at Kilmacduagh, so I had to keep finding spots that would keep me out of the rain when it started to sprinkle. 

Kilmacduagh - kil = church/monastery, mac = son of, duagh = name

The cave where St. Colman would spend Lent

We then drove to the Burren and hiked up to the hermitage and cave of St. Colman.  This was my favorite part. You would never have known how gorgeous it was in this little copse of trees without going in. The trees were covered in moss and there was this little stream which ran next to his ruined cottage.  A little bit up the hill, still in the copse of trees, was this little cave where St. Colman would spend all of Lent. I think 6 of these caves would fit in my bathroom.

spring at St. Colman's hermitage

oops. I forgot this.  Megalithic tomb Poulnabrone - dates back to 2500 BC, site of 33 burials

Glenstal Abbey

Sunday we went to mass at Glenstal Abbey, from where comes Brother Colman.  Glenstal is beautiful, built in an 18^th century castle which was donated to the monastery through a chain of events that started with the original owner’s daughter being killed by the IRA. After mass we were given a tour of the abbey and grounds from a different monk, Brother Cuthbert (the youngest monk at the age of 38 at Glenstal. Average monk age in Ireland? 67 Nuns? 71). The Abbot then took us into this Icon Chapel where there are icons in a small “chapel” decorated in the Turkish Icon Chapel style (didn’t know there was such a thing) with a whole story round about story that started with this Swiss woman that had a dream about these icons and their relationship to Russia.

prayer book of the priest, look closer it says 01 May, 1789

Brother Colman showed us some of the books in their library. That was awesome, by far my favorite part. He showed us a scroll from the 15^th century, a little handwritten illuminated prayer book from the 11^th century, the prayer book of the priest who gave Louis XVI his last rites at the guillotine(Louis’s last words were to turn to the executioner and tell him that the priest’s life was in his hands), a signed copy of Winston Churchill’s history of the WWII, a first edition of Mein Kampf published in 1935 by the Nazi publishing Company and a signed copy of Daniel O’Connell’s book (the Irish George Washington, aka “The Liberator”). That stuff was so cool, I still can’t wrap my head around it.

We stopped at Tesco on the way home, a wonderfully large grocery store and wonderfully cheap!! That’s a big deal for us. We haven’t had to cook dinner for the past two nights, cottages 4 and 3 each made us dinner (tacos and orange/onion/?  porkchops) which also means no doing dishes, although we did offer.  Add to that that I didn’t have class today and no class Thursday and Friday makes this an excellent week!!

michelle

random addition: We were extras today in the Irish soap opera "Ros na Run." They were shooting at the hotel and were in need of extras! So we went and were there for 4 hours, two episodes. They got our contact information and are going to call us back to be extras again (paid this time!!) and are going to bring us to the studio and give us a tour!

Thoor Ballylee and Coole Park

I am back! I said I would write about Thoor Ballylee and Coole Park, Granted, now I have forgotten what I thought was so great about them, but here goes anyway. And I will most likely put up another one today as well, but I didn't want to combine them because I am planning on just taking my blog and turning it into one of those photo books. 

Yeats' Tower

On Tuesday we went first to Thoor Ballylee, the tower where Yeats and his wife lived. There were two bridges on the property but during WWII one of the bridges was blown up. The story goes that this man showed up and told Lady George (Yeats’ wife) that he needed to blow up the bridge, so she and Yeats went into the tower, he blew it up and waved and yelled “thanks!” as he left the property. The literature prof, Gerard O’Brien, read us some of Yeats’ poems next to the two creeks that combine at the base of the tower. I think everything sounds better when read in an Irish accent. 

Lady Gregory's autograph tree

We then travelled to Coole Park, home of Lady Gregory, patron of the arts in Ireland. She invited many artists, authors and actors to her home including the likes of WB Yeats and George Bernard Shaw. She was very fond of collecting autographs (when she went to high-profile parties she would bring a fan and have people sign on the spines of the fan) so she had all of the artists, authors, etc. sign this tree in the park at Coole, now dubbed the Autograph Tree. We wandered all about the grounds, stopping at various points for Gerard to read us more poems. I liked the following one, so I included it. Gerard read it to us on the shore of Coole Lake.

The Wild Swans at Coole, W.B. Yeats

THE trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

The rest of the week has just been class and hanging around Spiddal. We have had a lot of group gatherings – going out in Galway, walking in to Spiddal, playing cards/other games around the cottages. Today we wanted to make cookies (the classy kind, just add water!) so we went to the hotel kitchen to get a cookie sheet. Geraldine the cook was there and gave us a cookie sheet (and greased it for us), apples, pears, mushrooms, fresh rosemary and a blender (for the mushrooms, so we can have mushroom soup). Then she decided to give us this full sheet pan full of some sherry/strawberry dessert and whipped us up some custard and topped it with other fruit. Gracious!

michelle

The Cottage Life

Okay so I had a request for actual life in Ireland, not our various trips so here it goes.

cottage #6! The rest cascade out to the left towards the hotel

We live in 5 person self-catering cottages on the Park Lodge Hotel property (…address mail to Michelle Hromatka, Park Lodge Hotel, Park, Spiddal, Co. Galway, Ireland) 1.5 mile outside of the “roaring metropolis” of Spiddal which is part of the Connemara. The Connemara is a Gaeltacht area, meaning it is an Irish speaking (they say Irish, not Gaelic) area and is regulated(?) by the government. Every sign must be in English as well as Irish, people who live in the Gaeltacht area are supposed to be fluent Irish speakers. Apparently some English wanted to build houses on the Connemara and their building permits weren’t passed because they don’t speak Irish.

living room, small fireplace, kitchen, dining room

So we live in these self-catering cottages, complete with three small bedrooms, two with two beds and one with one bed, a kitchen, a living room with gas fireplace and a dining room. They sound bigger than they actually are with that description but I love it! We pay for our electricity through a stipend the professors give us. We have to put 2 euro coins in the meter to keep the electricity running. We are a lot more conscious now about electricity: use the electric water heater for dishes, its faster than the stove, turn off the outlets (yes, the outlets have switches), take short showers at the times the water heater is turned on…etc. It’s pretty interesting to see how much we can go without when we have to pay for (mom/dad that’s not a suggestion).

the bathroom

me bedroom, bed on the left

For class, we have a classroom in the hotel which we have access to by a keypad. The class barely holds all 29 of us for the one class that we are all in (I don’t have a picture of it yet) There is a lounge with two computers, the classroom and the laundry room. Laundry costs 6 euro for wash and dry but the dryer is huge so you can fit quite a lot!

Our class schedule is like this:

Monday: Gaelic Archaeology and Culture 10 – 1

                   Study Abroad Seminar 2:30 – 4

our little kitchen, note the
fridge on the bottom R

Tuesday: Irish Catholicism 2 -4ish (still undecided)

Wednesday: Irish Catholicism 8:30 – 10

                          History of Ireland 11 – 2

Thursday: Study Abroad Seminar (sometimes)

So with one exception we get to sleep in everyday and the schedule is always up for grabs, like today we didn’t have class because instead we went to Thoor Ballyle (Yeats’ home) and Coole Park(home of Lady Gregory, patron of Yeats and altogether an awesome person) and the literature prof (I am not taking that class) read us Yeats’ poems in various spots throughout Coole Park. Next Monday we are “hunting and gathering” (no joke) around the hotel property and down by the ocean for nuts, berries and shellfish.  Going back to a normal class schedule and setup will be quite the rude awakening!

More to come later on Thoor Ballyle and Coole park… I have too much to write about those and this blog is already too long.

Slainte! (cheers!)

michelle

An Spiddal

Hello again!

I am now comfortably situated in my little cottage near Galway Bay! We got to the Park Lodge Hotel (where our cottages are) on Thursday, got mostly unpacked then were served a delicious dinner by the hotel. Irish potato soup, bacon wrapped chicken and banana ream pie for dessert. Unfortunately we have to cook the rest of our meals...

supposedly where John Lynch's dad hung him out the window.
John killed a man but the Lynch's were too powerful, people
didnt want to convict him so his father did it himself. 

Friday we had a tour of Galway. The city is pretty old and the streets are the exact same layout as they were 500 years ago. A lot of the buildings have been plastered over but every now and then the stone decorations over the windows will be showing so you can still see the medieval features.

 Friday night one of the hotel owners, JP,  opened the hotel bar for us so we could watch the UEFA 2012 qualifying match, Ireland vs Slovakia. We tied, which JP says is not going to cut it for Ireland.

The fort, Dun Aonghasa

Saturday we took a ferry to the Aran Islands (known for their wool) and rode our bikes to Dun Aonghasa, a fort built in the 2nd century BC, and

view from within the fort

 back. The fort is on this 300 ft cliff overlooking the ocean. That's one of those things
that is kinda cool here. There were no fences by the
cliff, no signs warning you of the drop off, basically fall at your own risk. And we were warned that parts of the cliff have crumbled off, so even if you dont wander too close you could still be screwed.

view from the bike path

It rained in the morning but for our ride back the sun came out (first time since we got here) so luckily we
 didnt ride back in the rain. On our way back we took the wrong path by accident so we were biking up and down these steep hills that were like landscaping rocks with parts of boulders sticking up, but luckily there were no casualties there either! That trip took us 70 minutes and the correct path takes only 20 minutes, but we saw a lot more and the island was gorgeous! Definitely worth it.

This morning we went to church in Spiddal, the village 1.5 miles away(we were supposed to go to Galway but the city is closed for the Iron Man competition). They say mass there in Gaelic so we didnt understand any of it, but I say it still counts. They also do this free-for-all style communion. We were all really confused, because people just got up and rushed to the shortest line once all the eucharistic ministers were in place.

Tonight we are watching the hurling championship,the most popular sport in Ireland. Other than than, just enjoy the sun while it lasts and start my homework because class starts tomorrow!

michelle

Reykjavik rewind

Hello!

So I decided a blog is much easier for all involved. I don't need to bother creating a family email group and you can ignore my posts if you like without needing to set up a "send to junk mail" rule. Anyway, I am including some pix from the last couple days (highlights) to catch up and will write more about Ireland later when I have more to tell!

So rewind a couple days... Iceland!


After getting 3ish hours of sleep (on the airplane, so not really sure if that counts) we arrived in Reykjavik at 6:30am... wonderful, because we then had to try and stay awake all day in order to fight the jet lag. So we decided to go to the blue lagoon, geothermal hot springs (that may be redundant) so we could relax all day in the pools.  Picture right: the bar in the middle of the hot springs

The water is blue because of algae (some of which is only found in the pools in iceland), minerals and bacteria (60% of which are new species). The water in the pools is replaced every 40 hours. You can see all the minerals dried on the side of the pool (picture  left).

Iceland is run off of the hot spring and geothermal power plants... hot water is piped to houses from the hot spring and the energy is harvested all over, so hot water and energy are super cheap (the water smells like sulfur) and everything else is expensive.

We spent all day at the blue lagoon, checked into our hostel, ate dinner and crashed!

The next day we went whale watching. We saw minke whales, harbour porpoises and white beaked dolphins.    Sadly, we missed puffin season by 8 days so we didnt get to go to puffin island.

We wandered around at night, attempted to read the icelandic menu to get some ice cream... decided to go with snickers and smarties (like m&ms) because we could figure out what they meant.

left side: north american tectonic plate
 right side:  rock of law , where vikings had their parliament

Our last day in Iceland we did the Golden Circle tour - a 190 mile trip around Southern Iceland to see some of the highlights like gullfoss, the golden waterfall (left), Pingvellir national park where the rift valley between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates can be seen and the original geysir, the only icelandic word that is used universally.



I am now in the Park Lodge hotel, near Spiddal which is near Galway. All unpacked and loving the little cottage!

so long for now!

michelle