It’s hard to believe that I’ve already been living in Ireland for a month! It’s even weirder to think that we only have two full months left of classes! I’ve gotta say, I love how the Irish do things J Following the conclusion of classes, we have spring break and then finals. Our exams could fall over quite a large time span (about a month and a half), and they won’t let us know when they are until sometime in March. Needless to say, this is a rather annoying fact for the trip-planner in me. Therefore, I’ve decided to use the weekends between now and spring break for small getaways around Ireland and possibly the UK. Then, once I know when all of my exams are, I can plan my big trip to France and Germany. I’m not sure yet if that is going to be one big trip (the best case scenario) or two smaller ones. Either way I can’t wait!
We’ve planned our first long weekend trip for next weekend. We’ll be headed down south to Dingle (get your minds out of the gutters people!) for the annual Walking Festival. Walking in this case actually refers to hiking, and since Dingle is one of the prettiest areas of the country this sounded like a great idea!
This weekend a group of us are headed over to Dublin for a night. It’ll be our first time back since Orientation, so I’m hoping to squeeze in a few of the touristy sights I wasn’t able to catch then. Two of those places I’m really looking forward to getting to are the National Archives and the National Library. Before you judge my incredible level of geekiness, hear me out! Yesterday I began a free 14 day trial of Ancestry.com and it’s been insanely hard to pull myself away from the computer ever since. For those of you who have never used it, one simply enters a few family facts into the website (creating a tree in the process) and then it takes off from there! Little hints (like census records, draft cards, pictures etc.) pop up for each family member. It’s incredible how quickly you can discover information on people who lived over 200 years ago! Luckily someone in my family had passed down a booklet of research, so I had a great head start to work with. Going off that, I learned that my great-great-great grandfather immigrated to the US in 1865. He was born in 1847 in County Cork, Ireland during the height of the Famine (so it’s a miracle I’m even here!) and moved to the area in Wisconsin that he lived and worked in his entire life as a farmer. Interestingly, Irish was his first language, not English! My ultimate goal in doing all of this research is to hopefully find some long-lost cousin who is still living in Ireland and go meet them before the end of the semester. I’ve been fascinated by genealogy for a long time (weren’t those some fun classes at the library, Julie?! ;) so the prospect of finding someone over here who’s even a teensy bit related to me is amazing!
On a completely unrelated note, I found something the other day that made me far happier than it should have. As most of you know, I am in love with the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. Ok, obsessed would be a more accurate word. For those of you have seen it, you may recall that Captain Nixon’s drink of choice throughout the show was Vat 69 whiskey (“Only the best for Mrs. Nixon’s baby boy!”). So you can only imagine my surprise when, sifting through a clearance bin in a nice wine and cheese shop in Galway City, I came across the very same Vat 69! I can neither confirm nor deny that I had a mini freak-out session right there in the store.
The only other noteworthy event of the week was on Wednesday, when Tiffany and I went to our first beginning archery class. We had a lot of fun, hit a few bull’s-eyes, made some Irish friends (finally!), and are looking forward to going back this Wednesday! So far archery has been the only club I joined that’s actually had meetings. That’s been disappointing, as I was particularly excited for softball and badminton but have yet to hear from them. Maybe I’ll just show up when they’re supposed to be practicing and hope for the best! We’ve learned that societies and clubs really are the best way to meet Irish students, so I don’t want an entire semester to slip by without meeting a bunch of Irish people!
Some random tidbits that don’t really fit in anywhere else and thus get a paragraph to themselves: it really can rain 24/7 (I’ve now witnessed it on several occasions); haven’t seen the horses Fred and George in awhile (I guess they really did belong to Travellers!); Jiff peanut butter is a precious commodity and those of you lucky enough to have some should treat it as such; I am capable of watching just as much of my ridiculous amount of American TV shows over here as I would be back home; Friends is broadcast here 24/7; Spongebob Squarepants has been translated into Irish (saw it on the Gaelic channel today!).
Below I’ll be posting the link to the Gaelic Girls video (along with some cool other ones posted by the NUIG International Office) that was shot a few weeks ago and features yours truly. I think they still may be editing a second video because we were interviewed for about ten minutes, so I will post that too when it’s available! Thanks again for reading! J
Click here for the Gaelic Girls video!
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