Ok so i went to Cork like 3 weeks ago, but the internet has been working about 30% of the time lately, and I've actually been busier lately, but I won't bore you with any more excuses, so here it is: Cork is the second largest city in Ireland, at about 200,000 people, and it's on the south/southeastish coast. I went there on the weekend after Valentine's Day with Alex, Erin, Sally, Lee, and Lee's sister who was visiting. The bus took about 4 and a half hours and we had to wake up at 6:00am for it which was SO [View Full Entry]

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I turned on the television the other night....and there was nothing on....so I flipped channels all the way up to BBC2, my last resort here for tv stimulation...and to my amazement, there were these "opening ceremonies" for something called "The Winter Olympics" in Turino, Italy, of all places! Needless to say, I was very excited, not only because this was way more entertainment than I'd been expecting from tv that night, but also because I love the Olympics, and had NO IDEA WHATSOEVER that they were supposed to be on. Now I thought Beloit was a bubble, but damn-Ireland?! Whats the [View Full Entry]

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On most days, there are huge swans on the river Corrib-ya know, the river that runs right next to my housing, beside which is the path that I walk every day to get to class or elsewhere. Yes, it is badass. My Corrib Village ID card is a seriously ghetto-laminated piece of paper with my Beloit application picture stuck in, and my name scrawled across in someone else's handwriting. The lamination is already coming apart. Classic. If you pet a stray dog, it WILL follow you home in the cutest way possible. Wagging and smiling and nuzzling your hand occasionally. I [View Full Entry]

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Well, I just finished with the biggest and most time-consuming meal of my entire life. On Monday, Ivan and Anto (Anthony) made us the quintissential Irish meal-cabbage and bacon, along with baby potatoes. It was really good, and the bacon wasn't like strips of bacon, it was a big hunk i guess you could say like a roast of bacon? maybe? Alex gave me that word. Anyway, to return the favor, tonight we made them a full-blown American/Southern meal: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn on the cob, rolls from scratch, and homemade apple pie. At Ivan's request we also bought [View Full Entry]

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In the course of having to cook for myself here, I've experimented a little, and to put it modestly, had great success. Alex and I decided it would probably be easier and more economical if we shared food and meals, because it's really easier to cook for two people instead of one. The first few nights (after we actually finally bought groceries) we ate a lot of pasta. A LOT of pasta. And toast and cereal. Then I finally got eggs and bacon. Recently, on Tuesday we went for fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn-Alex made the corn and mashed potatoes, [View Full Entry]

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I can't keep starting entries with "well", it could so easily get out of control! I've continued to hang out with the same Irish boys, and more of their friends, and we are continually learning about each others' cultures. They are very concerned with their masculinity and fairly homophobic, but that's all in line with Ireland's conservativism (hope that's a word). We've had endless entertainment finding words that we say differently, or things that we have different names for. I have two favorites so far-instead of saying fillet properly, they say it like "fill it"-utterly ridiculous-and [View Full Entry]

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Well I said I'd talk about school in this entry, but i haven't actually had a class yet, so there's really nothing to say! Two of my classes don't start for two weeks, I tried to go to one yesterday but it was just an info session that i'd already been to, so i left, and I think i have at least one class tomorrow, so we'll see about that. None of the classes meet for more than two hours a week. Thats right. two hours. But moving on to more exciting things... We decided with our Beloit girls downstairs that [View Full Entry]

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Well, getting here was maybe the most tiring experience of my life, but after 12 hours on 3 different airplanes with 6 and a half total hours of layover, losing 6 hours in the process, three hours of sleep, four hours on a bus sitting next to a wasted Polish guy, dragging 70lbs of luggage two blocks to get a taxi and then up a staircase, i FINALLY made it, fairly unharmed from the process. When I touched down in Dublin airport, it was beautifully sunny. It was really incredible and really green. Like neon, practically. The grass here is [View Full Entry]

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