Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Causey Farm and the first full weekend in Dublin!

Thursday was the first day that I was able to sleep in! Yayyy! We had individual meetings set up with Martin to discuss our schedule and the classes that we were signed up for. My meeting was at 1 o’clock, so I slept until about 11. I did a bunch of cleaning that morning, and went to catch up with Martin around 12:45 or so. Unfortunately, his meetings had been running late all morning so I had to wait until about 11:35 to be seen. My schedule was relatively set in stone though, so I didn’t need to move much around! Here it is:
Mondays:
From 1-3, I have Contemporary Politics of Latin America, which is fulfilling my upper level Spanish course
From 4-6, I have Cultural performance and Popular Entertainment, which is taking the place of a Communicaitons major elective
Tuesdays:
From 10-12, I have Media Art and Graphic Design, which is fulfilling my Arts Core requirement
From 2-4, I have Intercultural Communicative Competence, which is filling another CMN elective
Wednesdays:
From 2-5 I have The History and Culture of Modern Ireland/Living & Learning Seminars with Martin and Don.
No class on Thursdays or Fridays and we only have each of these classes once a week! A big change from what I’m used to back at Northeastern. The whole group of us are also not taking any exams at the end of the semester. Here, the exams take place in January, so we have all been signed up for courses that offer a final paper as a final project.
After I was finished sorting out my classes, I went on a Dublin City Bus tour to get a feel for my new home. This was about 2 hours long, and I got some great shots of the city and the places we were visiting! Here are some of them:

St. Patrick's Cathedral!





Now, some of you may have seen my facebook status, but Thursday was also Arthur’s Day, a tribute to the anniversary of the establishment of the Guinness factory and man behind the magic that is Guinness. This was celebrated with a ‘worldwide toast’ at 17:59 (5:59 back home), which was also the year that the factor was established. For this momentous occasion, a bunch of us went into the city to celebrate! The bus ride took a lot longer than expected so we barely made it to a pub on time, but we actually went back to Gogarty’s (where we went the first night here) and each ordered a Guinness to cheers at 17:59. Unfortunately, we didn’t all have our beers at that time, but once we did get our Guinnesses (not sure if that’s the proper plural), we drank to Arthur Guinness and his delicious brew. We stayed at Gogarty’s for a while and then headed to Trinity college, where they have an on campus bar too. It’s called the pavilion and is actually relatively cheap! 4 pint size beer cans for 8 euro! It’s usually 5 euro a beer! We stayed there for a while and met some really cool Irish guys who had graduated that year. They gave us a whole laundry list of places to go and things to see so hopefully we can get to all of them!
We called it a relatively early night. Friday was culture night all across Ireland. We headed into the city to try to catch some street performances down in Temple Bar but we missed most of them by the time we got there! We went to a small, kind of upscale pub on the way into the city center and met a few people there who told us what was up for the night. From there, we headed to Flannery’s a popular place for the college crowd. They had an alcohol promotion going on where if you hula hooped, you got a free Malibu and Cranberry! We stayed there until about 1 or so and took a cab home (since the buses don’t run after 11:30 or so).
Saturday morning, we traveled to Causey Farm, about an hour away from DCU in Kells. It was so so much fun! The day started out by us making traditional Irish soda bread. The bread was cooked for us so that we could have it later in the day, but we mixed all of the ingredients in! From there, we went into a dance hall and learned how to do a traditional Irish step dance kind of thing to music. It was so much fun, and a great way to meet the other International kids who are at DCU! I don’t know how successful I was at perfecting the dance, but it’s the attempt that matters!
Our bread before it went in the oven!

We hopped on a tractor and drove out to the boglands located on the farm. The bogs were really cool and have a lot of importance. A lot of the plants/animals/insects can only survive in a bog environment so you find a lot of species unique to this area. We had an opportunity to walk around in the bog if we wanted to, so naturally, I took of my socks and shoes right away and jumped in! Alex and I were the only two in our group who did it, but it was really fun and I’m glad that I did. Here’s some photos of the two of us ‘bog jumping’:




After the bog, we went back to the dance hall and learned how to play the Bodhran, a traditional Irish drum. It was a pretty successful jam session, I’d say! We took a lunch break at this point and ate the soda bread we had made, which was fresh from the oven! They gave us Irish cheese, preserves and chutney to put on it with a nice steaming cup of tea. It was delicious! Alex and I didn’t eat our whole loaf, so we brought the rest of it home.


Alex and her Bodhram!


Once we were done eating, we headed outside to the field to learn how to play hurling. Mind you, I still have a fractured elbow but I didn’t want to miss out, so I put on my helmet, grabbed a hurler, and just took it easy when it came to learning the ropes. We had relay races, hit the ball back and forth, and even shot on goal! When it was my turn, I scored a point! It seems like an interesting game, similar to lacrosse rules I think but with no net/basket at the end of the stick. After this, we milked a cow! One of my friends tried the milk straight from the udder- not the best tasting thing in the world!




Finally, we went into the area that the sheep were grazing on and watched as one of the staff showed us how his dog herded the animals. We became the pen for the sheep and the dog did all of the work! It’s a really interesting thing to watch in action. After the sheep, we hopped back on the bus for the hour ride home (which I slept through!). Here are some other photos from the farm:





Saturday night was another fun night in Dublin- a few of us took a cab to a local nightclub that we’d been advised to try out, Barcode. The club that we went to was amazing- so so huge and so highly decorated/painted, especially when you're comparing them to the clubs in Boston or Providence. It didn’t' really get too busy until about midnight, but we ended up having a good time overall!
When I got home, I went on Skype and talked to my friend Matt who’s studying in Australia right now. He’s having a great time- I’m jealous of the 80 degree weather! After that, I finally got a chance to Skype with Nick, which I was very very happy about J We talked for about 2 hours or so and then I went to sleep (at around 5 am-yikes!). I slept in Sunday morning and deemed that a relaxing day- went food shopping with a few kids, made dinner, and watched some good ol’ American football on the computer.
I came home around 11:30 or so and sat in the kitchen with my roommate and a few of her friends just chatting about the differences between here and home. It was an interesting conversation overall- really cool to get a look from a different perspective!
Monday was the first day of lectures which went pretty well overall. Kind of intimidating, but not too too bad. We’ll see how it goes, I guess! Monday night we just stayed on campus and met up with Alli’s roommates and went to nuBAR for a bit.


Today I had class at 10 am which was kind of rough, but it’s a graphic design course so it seems really interesting! I really need to start updating this more often and in shorter posts- I’ll work on it!

Cheers!

1 comment:

  1. Yayy! I recognize all of those sights! Your classes sound AH-MAZING! Graphic design will be so awesome and the Latin American course sounds so interesting! Sometimes I really miss college- sigh! The farms pics are so awesome- those animals look amazing and your Irish soda bread looks a little deformed but a gallant effort nonetheless! I really wish I had gotten to do more of that when I was there... cheers baby girl! <3 Meg

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