Paddy's Day Festivities

As I mentioned yesterday, Dublin has been overrun with Americans this weekend and I’m happy to say that I contributed by hosting two of them. Helen arrived from London early on Thursday the morning, so she and I started the day at Er Buchetto, my favorite neighborhood café, before putting on our (metaphorical) tourist hats and hitting the sites. We started first at Trinity College, walking around campus and touring the Book of Kells, before continuing on via tour bus making our way to the museum at Kilmainham Gaol (Jail) where Julie met up with us, fresh off the plane from Spain. After a bit of an Irish history lesson at the jail, we began the cultural side of our touring at Jameson Distillery. Helen was selected to taste compare various Irish, American, and Scottish whiskeys and, loyal to her heritage if not her homeland, confirmed along with the rest of the crowd that Jameson was her brand of choice. We went out with my ultimate Frisbee team that night to celebrate the women’s 1st place finish in the Outdoor Intervarsity (All-Ireland) Tournament the weekend before (Go Trinity!!) where the gals confirmed their newfound affinity for Irish whiskey.

On Friday we continued our city tourism by bus at decided that our favorite stop was probably the Guinness Storehouse experience. I say ‘experience’ rather than tour, because it took up the better part of our day. We started off with lunch at the café where Helen tried the beef & Guinness stew, Julie a traditional Irish baked potato, and I had seafood chowder with Guinness brown bread, and we split a slice of Guinness chocolate cake for dessert (sense a pattern here?). Then there was the museum/tour portion where we learned about the brewing process and the 9,000 year lease that Arthur Guiness signed in 1759 for just £45 a year while the Mizzou Marching Band played in the background, brought in especially for the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. Another special addition for the day were face-painters, which of course we couldn’t pass up, followed by the interactive portion of the tour, where we all learned how to pour our own “perfect pints” (a perfect pint of Guinness takes 119.5 seconds to pour and the head will peak if touched), and ending with the beautiful view from the top.

While Guinness is certainly a staple in Irish pubs, it’s not the only local brew, so we headed to the Beerfest to try some lighter local options, and found one or two that I’d like to try again. There was a pretty good Irish duo on stage too – you could tell that this event was more geared toward locals than tourists since the music selection was songs by Irish artists, but more contemporary than traditional selection. Still, when in Ireland, the traditional music is worth enjoying, so I took the girls to hear some “trad” nearby (left) and they noted that unlike American bars that tend to attract the 20 – 30 year old crowd, Irish pubs are frequented by people of all ages. Also, people here are so friendly! This was a recurring theme throughout the weekend. That pub was less touristy than in Temple Bar and the locals were all singing along, which added to the atmosphere. Still, the Temple Bar area is worth seeing so we stopped by Oliver St. John Gogarty’s on our way to meet up with my friend Siobhán, but decided to take a pass since it was just too crowded for conversation. Julie did find herself a leprechaun, though!

As avid sports fans, Helen and Julie were missing March Madness, the NCAA college basketball tournament in the States, so I figured if anywhere would be showing it, O’Neill’s was a good bet. We didn’t find the basketball there, but we did get a seat next to the big screen showing the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells where Rafa Nadal was playing, so Helen was a happy camper. We were also able to stream some of the games on my computer throughout the weekend, so the girls didn’t miss all of the basketball and we were able to cheer on my Iowa State Cyclones v. Kentucky – a close game for a while, but heartbreaker in the end.

St. Patrick’s Day took us to the parade where we saw some good costumes and were relieved not to be pelted with candy the way we had been at Carnival. We got there early enough for a good view, too – an important factor in enjoying parades for those of us who aren’t the tallest in the crowd. Naturally, we were surrounded by primarily American accents, and the girls kept seeing friends of theirs left and right – it seems every American study abroad student in Europe found his/her way to Dublin for the weekend! We also met up with Kate and Woody, two other Rotary Scholars, and later managed to introduce my friend Siobhán to the American tradition of a Shamrock Shake, which we were able to find at McDonalds on Grafton Street. As much fun as Temple Bar looked, we opted for a less crowded scene and visited two of my local public houses for Saturday night, where the girls again noted how friendly the Irish are! We stuck out like sore thumbs in our green shirts and facepaint, so got a few curious questions about our nationalities (Ranelagh isn’t as big with tourists), but all were followed by warm welcomes, despite what the bathroom signs might have indicated (see right), and it was fun to have more of the local experience.

Sunday was Mother’s Day in Ireland, but we were able to find a nice brunch place where I ordered green eggs and thought of my uncle Joe’s bakery – he always used to dye his English muffin bread green in honor of the weekend. We spent most of the day wandering around through the gardens at St. Stephen’s Green and taking in the carnival and cherry blossoms at Merrion Square, and then made our way over to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the evensong service. The choir really did sound heavenly and the sun streaming through the stained glass lived up to every rave review I’ve read.

The girls are heading home tomorrow to continue their study abroad ventures, but have a look at Julie’s and Helen's blogs too for their takes on the weekend. All in all, the weekend was all I’d hoped for and more, and I can’t think of a better place in the world to spend the feast day of Ireland’s patron saint. Sláinte!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, friends! I trust you're all celebrating in style.

So what is Paddy’s Day like in Ireland, you ask? Is it true that it was the Americans that shamed the Irish into celebrating the day properly? Well…yes and no.

I noticed a trend in chatting with people the last few weeks that many Dubliners told me they were heading to London for the weekend, though it’s hard to know if this was in an effort to avoid the incoming herds of American tourists or to go be nearer to the action for Saturday’s Six Nations rugby match between England and Ireland, or a bit of both. I can say that for the better part of the weekend, I’ve heard more American accents than Irish and it seems that the amount of Irish paraphernalia one wore (leprechaun hats, fake red beards, shamrock facepaint) was directly proportional to the distance they traveled to reach Dublin for the weekend. Many locals aren’t even wearing so much as a green top (ahem, Siobhán!), whereas the Americans in Ireland are decked out in full regalia (case and point: decked out tourists studying a map of Dublin).

Most of the expats also seem to be hosting American guests, and I’m no exception. My sister Helen, who is studying in London this term, and her college roommate Julie, who is spending a semester in Pamplona, both arrived to Dublin’s fair city on Thursday, ready to kick off the weekend of touring and celebrating our Irish heritage, and Helen brought along ‘lucky’ green shirts that my grandmother had sent along for us from the States to ensure that we were properly attired. In recent years, we’ve been able to spend the holiday with my grandparents in Florida over our college spring breaks, and even at 80+ years old, they never miss a chance to celebrate their Irish roots. As dutiful granddaughters, we promised to have a pint of the local brew for them.

Still, outside of city center and Temple Bar, my local pubs are packed and my accent is definitely the exception in this neighborhood – a much more local scene, and even if it's not quite the sea of green you'd find in city center, the locals are celebrating just as much as the tourists to be sure.

I’ll post more on our full weekend tomorrow, but for now, sláinte! Enjoy the day!

Mic Christopher Tribute Concert

Last night marked the ten year anniversary of the death of Mic Christopher, a beloved member of the Irish music community. He started busking (performing music for money) on Grafton Street (the main shopping street in Dublin, like Chicago’s Michigan Avenue) and around Dublin when he was 15 years old and was adopted into the music scene, playing with a number of Irish musicians and bands including the Frames and later founding the Mary Janes. After a performance in Grongingen, the Netherlands, a decade ago, he fell down a flight of stairs, hit his head, and was comatose for 11 days before he died on November 29, 2001.

It was a huge loss for the Irish music scene, so ten years later, his friends and some of his music idols got together to play a charity tribute concert. Glen Hansard, Mic’s best friend and one-time flatmate (some of you may know him from the movie Once - he's also in this photo playing a song with Mic Scott), seemed to organize the event and it was incredibly moving to see the way so many people who had looked up to Mic, called him a friend, and also those who Mic had looked up to, gathered together to sing – including at various times his daughter and father on stage as well. To give you a taste, here's a video of Mic and Glen busking on Grafton Street singing Mic's hit song "Heyday."

Not being a huge music aficionado myself, here or in the States, I’m glad my Nashville music-loving friend Christen told me about the show. We got up to the 2nd row (so I could see!), had a very Irish night, and saw one heck of a great value show!

Need Directions?

So on the way back from Fanore today, we stopped on the side of the road in town to consult the map for…if not fastest route back, then most scenic to Dublin. Within about 30 seconds, a kind man knocked on my window and asked if he could give us directions. Stuff like this is why I love Ireland.

So we set off on the scenic route that he assured us all the locals took – just 3 miles down the road, take a right at the circle with the flowerbeds, and a left after that. It’s faster than the main road, and has the best view in the country of Galway Bay. It’s not a T-intersection when you turn left though, just a left.

So we more or less followed those directions. Matt began to doubt just a bit after mile 5, but we did find the flowerbed a little further down, the correct left at a T-intersection, and one beautiful view. Lesson: ask the locals – they know!

Cliffs of Moher and Public Houses

Our little excursion of the day today was out to visit the Cliffs of Moher. I was last there exactly two years ago when I visited my friend Elyse, who was studying in Galway at the time, over Thanksgiving break.

The cliffs haven’t changed much and I have to say, neither has the weather. We got lucky today though – it was windy and overcast, but in 2009, we caught a day that was windy, overcast, and absolutely pouring down rain, so I’m calling it a win.

We stopped in Doolin on the way back for a couple of pints by the fireplace in a local pub. I’d heard the stories of pubs – ‘public houses’ – being family friendly in Ireland, but hadn’t yet had occasion to find out for myself. It was amazing to experience. We walked in from the wind to the warmth and smell of a coal fire, and found a table just next to it. The pub had a highchair for Robbie, candy for the boys, and pints for the adults. The boys sat with us for a bit to do a puzzle and have some chips (French fries), then ran around the pub playing and giggling and amusing the rest of the pub-goers – truly, everyone from the college students at the table to the old man at the bar were watching them have a good time with a smile on their faces. Not something I’m used to seeing in America by any means, and another reason I love Irish culture.

So Much to be Thankful for in Fanore

It’s hard to beat being home for the holidays. But I have to say, strolling along the roads and beaches of Fanore, discussing everything from the differences between Irish and American Christmas parties to how cows say “moo,” and pausing for the occasional photo under a rainbow comes pretty darned close. I’d definitely take it over the packed shopping malls of the American “Black Friday” phenomenon.

Yesterday was American Thanksgiving, and two of the Rotary families with American ties – Matt & MaryBeth Porter and Annie & Carter White – invited me along with them to celebrate the holiday with their 3 boys, au pair, and dog in the west coast village of Fanore.

Fanore is a one-pub town (in the States, we might call it a one-horse town, but there are in fact many cattle and horses in the immediate vicinity). But for Ireland, where even small towns seem to have at least 3 pubs, this is a small town. It’s really more of a summer vacation town near as I can tell, but we rented two houses with beautiful ocean vistas regardless of the season.

It was windy and rainy as we drove up yesterday and since we had to wait for the food delivery before getting on the road, we didn’t get in until dark, which made waking up this morning to a view out the window of the waves crashing onto the beach all the more majestic.

After unloading the cars last night we played with the boys and chatted over wine and cheese while the turkey finished cooking, and then sat down for a delicious meal of turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, roasted vegetables, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and of course, pumpkin pie. The fire, laughter, and love that warmed the house reminded me of Thanksgiving with my dad’s side at my uncle Jim and aunt Gina’s cottage on Lake Michigan and made me so happy to be in this atmosphere of ‘home away from home.’

In reflecting on the past year, I have so very many things to be thankful for, not the least of which is the opportunity the Rotary Foundation is affording me to spend this year in Ireland, and particularly the warm reception I’ve received from all Rotarians and especially those in the Dublin Central club, in welcoming me into their club, homes, and lives over these past few months. As this calendar year draws to a close, my academic year adventure in Ireland (now two months in) has only just begun and I am so excited to soak up every moment of the journey.

One Essay Down (and that's all that matters for today)

So after several weeks of research into
- the structure of the United Nations;
- the UN Security Council;
- the mass atrocities in Darfur;
- the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that lead to the independent state of South Sudan this past summer;
- the roles of the US and China with the Security Council with respect to the ongoing mass atrocities in Darfur;
- the established international norms of non-interference and respect for state sovereignty (you don’t invade another country’s territory just because you feel like it)
- and the Responsibility to Protect (simply put, if a country isn’t protecting its own citizens, as in the case of the Rwandan genocide or the mass atrocities in Darfur, the international community has a responsibility to intervene to protect those citizens)

I have finally submitted my first essay in grad school – worth a shocking 100% of my grade in my “UN and Peacekeeping” class, analyzing the success of the UN in conflict resolution and peacekeeping in the case of Darfur.

I went out for a celebratory pint with my Burundian classmate Nestor and after about an hour, a musician showed up to provide some live entertainment. His second song of choice: You Can Call Me Al. It’s a song off Paul Simon’s Graceland CD that my Dad used to play in his car on our way to and from church when I was younger. Gotta love a little piece of home in Ireland…and globalization. And I have to say, it sounded good with an Irish accent.

Bringing American Thanksgiving to Ireland

So, have I mentioned yet that I love my program? There may be a few things I’d change about the Irish School of Ecumenics at Trinity, but the program does a nice job of recognizing that we are a class of mostly international students (I’d say maybe a quarter American, a quarter Irish, and the majority European, with a few students from Africa and Asia), and as such, organizes activities here and there to welcome us to Ireland. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it to the first event, but the second main event was a potluck held in conjunction with American Thanksgiving (ish).

The dinner was actually last night, a full week before Thanksgiving, but is likely to be the only Thanksgiving dinner I’ll be attending. The ISE provided the turkey, and the attendees signed up to bring the side dishes. We had all the traditional Thanksgiving food covered (mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, etc) but as an international potluck, we also some fun dishes like Chinese dessert dumplings in the shape of a rabbit! My contribution was a pumpkin dip (mix up pumpkin, whipped cream, all spice, and sugar and serve with strips of sugary pie crust or pretzels for a sweet/salty combo that tastes like pumpkin pie but takes less than half the time).

Bringing in the Irish culture, we had mince pies and ‘poppers’ which are gift-wrapped tubes (like a tootsie roll but bigger) and when you pull them apart, they make a flash-bang (surprising when you don’t know what it is and aren’t expecting it!), and inside you find a plastic crown and an incredibly corny joke like the kind you’d find on the back of a Laffy Taffy in the US.

Examples:
Q: What is white and goes up?
A: A confused snowflake!

Q: What goes “Oh, Oh, Oh”?
A: Santa when he’s going backwards!

All in all, there were about 50 of us in attendance – many of the International Peace Studies students, some from the Intercultural Theology and Interreligious Studies program, and most of the lecturers and support staff. Christen gave a nice toast at the end giving thanks for all that we had and were able to share. Kat, who spent the last year working on a Native American reservation in Montana, was also thankful to be sure, but helped ensure that we Americans accurately explained the holiday to our international friends less familiar with the tradition. After filling our bellies and doling out the leftovers, we continued the night at one of the local pubs in Ranelagh (conveniently close to my house!) until we could fit nothing more – food or liquid – into our stomachs and I for one retired uncomfortably satiated with a smile on my face.

Adapting to Ireland: Using Electricity

My good friend Christen and I spent the first two weeks mostly either eating out or cooking together in her apartment since it was closer to the grocery stores than mine and had a larger kitchen. So the first time I tried to use my stove and oven was about 3 weeks after I moved in. It’s not that I dislike cooking, I just rarely make the effort if I’m only cooking for myself, but without a microwave oven to make single-serving frozen dinners, I’m now learning.

Lesson 1: to use the stove, you have to turn on the electricity. In Ireland, in an effort to save energy and probably as a bit of a safety measure too, you have to flip the large red switch in the kitchen to get power flowing to the stove or oven. This fun fact took me only twenty minutes to figure out as I pondered why not one of the burner on my stove top heated up when turned on (laugh all you want).

Lesson 2: to use the oven, you not only have to turn on the electricity and set the oven to the temperature you desire, but you also have to turn on the timer. Note that when the timer expires, the oven turns itself off even if the temperature is still set. I learned this lesson when I gave my brownies 10 more minutes to cook in my head, but not on the timer, and twenty minutes later, still had brownies that were really more like brownie batter at the center. Luckily, brownie batter tastes just as good as cooked brownies in its own way.

Lesson 3: just like heating the oven requires turning on the electricity, heating the shower requires flipping a switch as well. I have taken waay too many cold showers (not so bad in the summer, less pleasant in the fall after you’ve come in from the rain and all you want is a hot shower to warm you up). Empowered with this new knowledge, I aim to change this in the near future.

Adapting to Ireland: Doing Laundry

I’m not sure that I’ve met anyone who actually likes to do laundry, myself included. But when it’s in your home or apartment, it’s not so bad, because at least you don’t have to lug it to a Laundromat or down to the bottom floor of your dorm building like you did in college, right? That’s what I thought too when I moved into an apartment on the ground floor, just a few steps away from the laundry machine. After the standard three weeks, it occurred to me that I desperately needed to do laundry and waiting until I go home to my parents’ house (in May) was out of the question.

When I moved in, my leasing agent told me that there was a washer and dryer in the shed in the courtyard (it seems to be quite common in Ireland to have a shed built in the backyard or courtyard of a building for the washer/dryer). Lovely. Yet when I first went to do laundry, I found only one unit: washer only.

Luckily, the morning that I got up bright and early at 8am, I was 15 minutes too late and one of the other tenants had beaten me to it. I say luckily, because had she not, I wouldn’t have had any idea how to operate the machine. She showed me how to go inside to the hallway, insert a 2 euro coin into a box under the cabinet, and turn the knob to turn on power/water to the machine. She also explained that we only get cold water to wash the clothes, so don’t bother setting it on anything other than 30 degrees Celsius.

No problem. What hadn’t occurred to me was that I had better start praying to the weather gods for no rain because without a drying machine, and without sufficient space in my room to put a drying rack even if I owned one, hanging my clothes on the line to dry was the only option. I’d never done this before. It’s really not common in the States – usually you either hang dry clothes in a laundry room or dry them in the machine.

After two hours and three loads of laundry, most of the clothes that I own were hanging in the courtyard on an incredibly windy day. It turns out, that’s great laundry weather so long as it doesn’t rain (luckily, it didn’t), and your clothes don’t blow away to Wales (they didn’t, though I was concerned). And so, my first laundry experience was a success.

(Note: my second was an epic failure due to torrential rain for days on end. Also, it turns out that my washer also functions as a dryer, but only in the sense that it has a spin cycle that you can run until you’re blue in the face and your clothes are damp instead of wet. I’m grateful that I don’t have to wash my clothes by hand, but I may need to find some friends with drying machines for the winter months when line drying may result in freezing my t-shirts solid.)

Adapting to Ireland: Pharmacies

When one moves to a new place, regardless of whether it’s off to college freshman year, to a new city for a job, or to a new country to live or study abroad, there are certain elements that remind you that you live there. Things like moving into your new apartment and cooking your first meal there are obvious. But when you live in a new country, sometimes the little things take on an extra dimension. I found out (a little too late in some cases) that finding medication, doing laundry, and cooking are a lot different than what I was used to in the US. This week’s posts will focus on these revelations. First up: getting sick.

Now I didn’t get sick sick, but this past week (my second week in Ireland), I caught a cold – sneezy, runny nose, sore throat, you know the drill. But having just arrived in the country, I had no medicine in my cabinet and when I went to the pharmacy, I didn’t recognize any of the products. After just a few minutes of blankly staring at the wall marked “cold and flu,” one of the nice pharmacists came to my assistance and asked what I needed. I told her my symptoms, and just a few minutes later I was stocked with Strepsil throat lozenges, vitamin C tablets to add to my water, and daytime and nighttime cold medication. For my Irish readers, you should know that my typical visit to the pharmacy at home involves a *vast* selection of brand-name and off-brand cold and flu medicine for every different combination of symptoms that are just on the shelf for you to sort out yourself, and the pharmacist is typically behind a counter dealing primarily with prescription medications. Of course they’ll help you with over-the-counter (non-prescription) medications too if you ask, but I was happy to find the pharmacist so helpful in getting me what I needed for what turned out to be just a 5 day recovery.

Irish Times

First off, since I've just come in from the rain, I thought I'd tell you that it's been lovely weather. Also, when you visit, dress in layers. Seriously, in the 5 hours that I've been out walking around, I've had my jacked zipped all the way up to the top and been a bit chilly, have taken it off twice because I was warm, and have been rained on three times. Oh Ireland. I'm looking very local though, just walking around anyway without an umbrella - they don't even seem to notice whether it's raining or not! The joke goes that the story of Moses must have been made up because the Bible calls 40 days and 40 nights of rain a disaster, but in Ireland, they call that the weather!

In addition, comfy shoes are a must. I'm currently staying in Dublin 3, which is 4.2 km North of Trinity College, with my Rotary hosts while I continue to look for an apartment. I have a few leads and a "back up," so feeling like it's much more manageable. I hope to visit a family tomorrow to talk about staying with them (it's much cheaper, and includes food and culture!) then make a decision. Thoughts and prayers on the topic are VERY much appreciated

I've noticed in my travels that people in different places have different conceptions of time (those of you who knew me in high school also know that I used to have my own conception of time as well - I'm better now, really!). For example, in Honduras, a meeting at noon might begin at 2pm. In Uganda, I overhead a conversation that went something to the effect of, "well I thought the meeting was scheduled for 2pm, so I didn't expect you until 2:30pm." In DC, time typically runs by the clock. In Ireland, I've been told that you can expect something between DC and Uganda.

Which brings me back to the culture and the comfy shoes: in Iowa, or in the city anyway, "walking distance" means a couple of city blocks, maybe half a mile, certainly not more than a mile - say up to 15 minutes. Heck, I used to take the car to drive to my friend's house 4 blocks away. I now find that absurd, but it was typical then. In DC, there is a little more leeway since it's more often foot traffic than driving, so a mile is certainly walking distance, sometimes a bit further too - about 20 minutes is reasonable, maybe 25 or 30 in heels. In Ireland, however, people seem to think of walking distance as 35 minutes! And they must all be very brisk walkers, because I've been walking the "35 minutes" to the city center daily and my walk takes an hour. Luckily, I'm not in much of a hurry since classes haven't started, and it’s helping me to get my bearings around the city.
All in all, I'm learning bits and pieces about Irish culture, though I haven't met many Irish yet. There seems to be a high percentage of international students among the postgrads, or maybe that has more to do with my subject and that of those I've run into (International Peace Studies, International Management, Global Health, etc). My host, Grainne, has been running here and there this week so I’ve seen more of her husband at the house than her, but he and I had quite a chat last night about everything from technology to culture to travel to politics to human nature.

Now the three of us are off to a barbecue hosted by another Rotarian for the Group Study Exchange team from Australia to Ireland. Ireland beat Australia this morning in rugby, so it should be an interesting night!