ALL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY in one graph

One thing that really baffled me about Europe was just how much damn history there is. Like... Virginia, for as long as it's had political boundaries of the type I recognize/am required to study, has always been Virginia. West Virginia left, but for as long as it's been a state it's had kind of roughly continuous boundaries and such. That is so not the case in Europe. Any given spot was probably controlled by the Vikings and the Romans and the Normans and the Holy Roman Empire and god knows who else; one town could have been part of a dozen different political territories throughout it's history. I find this incredibly confusing.

So in light of this, I have no idea how this graph works, but I think it's kind of nifty all the same.

How do you even calculate GDP in the year 1000? Does "Italy" mean the Roman Empire and all its territories when that's relevant, or just modern-day Italy? Where the hell are, like, the entire continents of Africa and South America? I have no clue. World history is mind-blowing and graphs are cool.

Elf Fantasy Fair

I'm killing time in the airport at Shannon on my way home, so I thought I would write a quick post telling the story of something awesome which I meant to write about but hadn't gotten around to yet - Elf Fantasy Fair.

Now, Anne had been talking about Elf Fantasy Fair for as long as we'd been hanging out. She'd shown me pictures of the fair grounds and the costumes, and told stories about camping and dancing and general revelry, and while I compared it to our Renn Faires at home, I could also tell that it was unlike anything I had ever gone to. So when the fair grew close and I became far too jealous to just let her leave and come back and tell me about it while I spent a weekend on campus, I asked her if I could come along, and she said yes. So we woke up at the crack of dawn one Friday morning and took a bus to Dublin, and from there a plane to Amsterdam, and from there on to the middle of nowhere, Netherlands. Her friends picked us up at the train station, I received a brief lesson in riding on the back of someone else's bike without falling off, and we were off to the campsite.

Imagine, if you will, a Renaissance fair, a Society for Creative Anachronism event, an Anime convention, a steampunk meet up, some LARP-ers, and some goth kids all get together on a slightly rainy Saturday morning. Then imagine that they do this on the grounds of a stunning 19th century castle, all red brick towers and arches and rose gardens.

Yeah, it was something like that. But better.

I have to go catch my flight soon, so I can't go into all the details of how Anne and I spent a good half hour after arriving just jumping up and down being amazed at the extravagance of it all, or how we had tea and ate chocolate mustaches in a steampunk tent done up like an anachronistic archeological excavation/opium den, or how after the fair we all sat around the campsite, eating candy and singing Mysterious Ticking Noise and the ABCs in Dutch (I could do almost all the letters, except for the damn G.) Anne's friends were incredibly warm and welcoming, despite me being too nervous to speak Dutch to them.

I won't be able to go next year - I'll be finishing my senior thesis around that time - but I'm hoping to see "Elfia" again the year after that.

Super-American Narratives that Creep Into My Head Without Me Even Noticing

This is going to be a rambling one, kids. Hold on to your seats.

Next year I'll be applying for graduate schools. I say this like it's an obvious thing - in fact, my Sociology professors here talk to the fourth years about graduate school constantly, and are surprised by any who aren't seeking further education and going straight into a job, so taken for granted as necessary is it - but in fact that's going to be a huge undertaking, both for life-reasons and for finance-reasons. And while I've been here, I've decided that a semester of living in Europe isn't nearly enough, so some of the schools I'm planning on applying to are here on this side of the ocean.

In the States, graduate school is a Big Deal. You're committing to years of debt and possibly soul-crushing work-study jobs and all sorts of competitive pressure. I think of it it sort of defiantly - I will sell my soul to student loan companies and shit jobs because this is something I really want, and it WILL pay off in the end, even though it's a liberal arts degree and I probably should have studied engineering or something. In Europe, I gather that it's not quite the same; the idea seems to be (in theory, though less and less often in practice) that if you want to go to graduate school, you ought to have some institutional support doing it, in the form of capped or free tuition, special terms for loans, benefits and discounts as a student, etc. (This is why, even as an international students, it will be cheaper for me to study in Europe than in the States, though possibly more complicated thanks to the mess that is acquiring a visa.)

But when I look into graduate school in Europe, I'm really not thinking in terms of benefits and rights I would be entitled to as a student or the idea that more education is a good thing for non-individualistic reasons, so I haven't looked into that at all. I'm thinking of it like this: "Well, I'll work really hard and get a bunch of jobs over the summer (never mind that the economy is shit and I'm also hoping to work an unpaid internship that would require significant time spent commuting) to save up the money. And then I'll take extra classes on my own time while writing my thesis to give me a leg up in scholarship applications, and surely they have to give me one, because I worked so hard for it, and on the steam of my own enthusiasm I will propel myself across the Atlantic."

Something like that.

So about this hard work thing, wherein I pull myself up by my bootstraps.

I don't consider myself very bright. Now, everyone who reads this and knows me will roll their eyes and possibly get annoyed; I'm in honor societies, I publish papers, I'm a good test taker so I do well on exams. But I don't think of myself as a particularly clever person. I'm a slow reader, and a slow writer, and a slow thinker - Papers that my classmates can knock out in a few hours take me a week, and if I fall behind on class reading I usually have to take a whole day catching up, because it takes me ages to get my head around the ideas. If we're talking about a new idea in class, I rarely speak up, because by the time I've worked out what's confusing me we've moved on to a new subject or the class is over.

None of this means I'm not clever, it just means I have a long processing time or a different learning style than other people I know. But in my own little narrative about myself, I have turned it into a very American bootstraps story. "I'm not particularly smart or talented, but I work hard and that's why I do well." (It's extra funny because in high school I didn't work hard at ALL - taking time to do shit is a recent development.)

Which, now that I've been noticing it, is a very privileged way to look at it. It implies that my particular learning style that I've developed in college is somehow special because I tend to spend a lot of time reading/writing/thinking, and if everyone else just put in the same kind of effort they would all do as well. But of course everyone else can't put in the same kind of effort. They have different educational backgrounds, different styles of doing things, different obligations which prevent them from spending a day highlighting anthropology papers or thinking through confusing lectures. And hell, maybe they got the lecture or the paper right away - that doesn't mean they're not working hard. And if we're going to talk about intelligence, saying "no, I'm not clever, I just work hard" denies all the advantages I've had because of good teachers, family that encouraged learning, and maybe some dumb luck in the personality traits roulette.

Saying "Well, I'll work hard and then I'll get into graduate school" is falling into that same kind of privileged little story - I ought to get jobs and scholarships and grants because even though I'm not particularly exceptional I put forth the most effort. But of course there will be other people who will be clever and hardworking and deserve the chance to go to graduate school; if I succeed, it'll be in a large part because I'm coming from a lucky starting point.

I think the way my professors talk about graduate school here - where they earnestly think that everyone who wants to have a go at graduate school ought to have support from the government and the university to do it - is quite a different story. But I feel guilty thinking about it in that way, because to American sensibilities it sounds non-competitive and therefore lazy.

Weird, huh?

Scenes from the Big Gay Weekend

A few weeks ago Out in UL had a whole series of events - first BICS, the Board of Irish College Societies Awards, then Queerbash, our big annual party, and then Sparkles, a day of queer-themed workshops. Here's some highlights!

BICS


"We've been out-gayed," we whispered to each other as the first presentation of the awards day started and we surveyed the competition. Other clubs had come far more together-looking than us, in matching hoodies or t-shirts, but another of the LGBT societies had gone all-out. They wore rainbow flags draped around their shoulders, and rode scooters wrapped in glittery decorations. When their name was called, they honked the scooters' horns, and another club from their university, a circus society, juggled encouragingly.

Photo by BICS

There were several LGBT societies nominated for a bunch of different awards. We were up against the students with the scooters, in addition to a bunch of unrelated societies, for Best Event; Cork's LGBT society was up for Best Society. For the most part, we didn't get to chat with them; much of the day was spent running back and forth to the different interviews that were the last part of our score before the awards were announced.

We finished the interviews and the presentations, and went to make ourselves cute for the dinner, award ceremony and dance. We were up for Best Event, Best Improved Society, and Best Individual; two other UL societies were up for awards, as well. Some of the big universities, like DCU, won often, and chanted loudly as their societies went up to collect: "DCU! DCU!" We weren't really expecting to win anything, and we lost for Best Event, so when our name was called for Best Improved Society, there was a little moment of shock while we all tried to figure out what to do. The entire club went up to collect the award -  we hadn't talked about it at all, just sort of all leapt to our feet. And I know I'm only here for a semester, and didn't do anything really to contribute to our victory, but I was really proud to be standing on the stage hearing the other societies from our school chanting: "UL! UL! UL!"

Queerbash


I didn't perform at Queerbash, but you wouldn't have known it from the amount of time I spent in the little upstairs space where the performers waited to start; Anne's choir was on first, and naturally the show started late, because these things always start late. We chatted through the sound check and the start of the party, singing along with the practice for the final number and watching people start to arrive. Eventually the show started and I went to join the rest of my friends downstairs. The choir sang a suitably dramatic song, the Drama Society and Dance Society both performed, Candy Warhol (a local drag performer) ate a baby on stage (yeah, that was weird). Eventually Return to Sender, a local rock band who I really really like, took the stage, and the dancing portion of the evening began.

After Return to Sender and before the DJ took over for the night, Niall called all of the performers up onto the stage for a chorus line. I was not a performer, but the last song was one of my favorites - "Drumming Song" by Florence and the Machine - so I followed Anne to the stage door anyway and sang along with all the performers. This week at the last Out in UL meeting we all shared our favorite memories from the year, and this was definitely one of mine - it was just such a spontaneous, exciting thing. When the song ended we went and found our group again, and the DJ started up, and the dancing continued.

I'm going to be honest - I'm not very good at parties. I love dancing with my friends, and the music was fantastic, but by 1am my "awkward-at-social-events" mode had fully kicked in and I was starting to wonder anxiously when the event would end. Anne and I had lost our friends, and a slower song came on, so we started dancing just the two of us. And then "Raise Your Glass," which I forever associate with Nationals baseball games, came on, and then "Born This Way" (it was, after all, a gay event), and the next thing I knew we had been dancing for more than half an hour and I hadn't nervously checked my watch or worried about looking silly or thought about sneaking away for the entire time.

Sparkles


Billie was the leader of the first workshop of the day, and you could tell she was cool because she had spiked purple hair. "Who here has done a sexual empowerment workshop before?" she asked. Only one of us had, so she went through the ground rules, and then explained that we were going to go around the circle and get to know each other a bit. "The question is: What is your greatest erogenous zone? What turns you on?"

Which was not how I had quite expected to spend my Saturday morning.

What followed was a discussion on the finer details of what, exactly, makes a good kiss; virginity and queer-ginity; and how the hell you even define sex anyway. I didn't really have any stories to share, but it was fascinating listening to everyone else's; Billie kept pointing out that it's weird that we don't tell people about these things even though they're obviously such an important part of our lives, and I agree.

I was nervous through the first two panels because I had organized the third, inviting two guest speakers from the Mid West Interfaith Network, and I worried that the speakers wouldn't be able to find their way there, or that something would go horribly wrong. Fortunately, they both found us without problem and a really interesting discussion ensued, though perhaps a bit more sobering than the sexual empowerment talk. My favorite thing was flipping through the feminist and queer Haggadah (Passover prayer books) our Jewish speaker brought. I didn't get to attend a sedar this year, but I've loved the ones I've attended (especially when I was the youngest and got to read some of the stories and invite Elijah in!), so it was nice getting to connect to that tradition at least a little bit through looking at these books.

Inside the pillow fort.

Bonus


After Sparkles, Anne and I made a pillow fort. We brought blankets from her house to mine and stole all of the cushions from the couch downstairs. Once our brilliant fort was constructed, with only minimal catastrophe and things falling loudly from shelves, we watched Buffy inside and ate oreos until we fell asleep.

Easter

For Easter break, my family came to visit! It was tons of fun, and my Dad got lots of great pictures. But what I actually want to talk about is Easter itself, which I actually celebrated properly for the first time in ages.

At home I don't really celebrate Easter - if I'm in college I might go to Flower Communion at my UU church, and if I'm at home I'll come outside for the annual neighborhood egg hunt, but I don't think I've been to a church service for Easter for quite a while now. But I'm a religion major in Ireland and I hadn't yet gone to a Catholic church, so Easter seemed as good a day as any to fix that.

"I'll need an Easter dress," I told Anne, who had no idea what I was on about. Apparently, this thing where one can't attend Easter church services without an appropriately spring-like frilly dress is an American thing, or maybe even just a me thing. But seriously, all my Easter memories involve pastel dresses. Hanging upside down from the Buckley's fence by my pink chiffon Easter outfit? Good times.


So we went to Penny's and shopped for frilly dresses. Finally we found the perfect one, a beautiful white dress with a lacy overlay. Because it was so perfect, we both bought it. And then we decided we also needed matching cardigans and tights.

The Saturday before Easter, we had our outfits ready, so next we needed to prepare the house. Fortunately, Anne's parents had also visited, and had provided her with tons of Easter-y things - colorful place mats, napkins with bunnies on them, and an incredible amount of chocolate. We woke up early enough to have breakfast, and I got to try this mysterious Dutch thing where they put sprinkles on bread. It was delicious, but I still don't understand.

The bus doesn't run early on Sundays, so to get to church, we had to walk. It was a sort of grey morning and dripping on us a bit as we set off along the River Walk, a path that goes all the way along the river Shannon from campus into town - not the most direct route, but certainly the most beautiful, and I had never been much past the bridge on that side of campus. We said hello to all of the joggers and dog-walkers also enjoying the path that morning, probably looking a little bit peculiar (but incredibly adorable) in our matching dresses.

Once we got into town, it wasn't too hard to find St. John's cathedral, one of about a half-dozen cathedrals in the city which we'd selected on the slightly arbitrary standard that it seemed to be the grandest. It didn't disappoint; we arrived early enough to have a look around, and the church had absolutely incredible stained glass, as well as a fantastic alter and a mini Garden of Gethsemane set up at the front! The service itself was a bit hard to follow; they gave us a little pamphlet saying when all the songs and prayers were, but they seemed to jump around, and even Anne, who has actually been to a Catholic church more than once (unlike me), was a bit confused. And the sermon was altogether uninspiring. Easter can be such a great holiday, both in a more literal celebratory sense of believing that Jesus literally came back from the dead, and in a more symbolic sense of enjoying spring and rebirth and the hope of exciting things to come. But the priest kept talking about how solemnly we were supposed to be celebrating (Anne says this is a symptom of his Catholicism), and also insisted that those of us who don't believe in Jesus are just sad all the time, which was a strange thing to hear said about myself on such a fun day. But the choir was very good and it was all quite pretty, and after the service I lit a candle to one of the saints in the back, St. Anthony, because he is one of my favorite.

After church, we went home, boiled eggs to paint later, and danced around the kitchen singing Broadway show tunes. Anne had never heard any of the songs from Rent and I hadn't ever heard anything from Billy Elliot (which I now really want to see), but we both knew most of the words to Wicked. Before painting eggs we called over to Matt's house for tea; we brought everyone flower crowns we'd made with daisies we picked on the way home, so we all looked very festive even though it was a bit gloomy outside.

I wish I had pictures of the eggs we painted; we made a few Harry Potter themed eggs, with Snape, Tonks and Voldemort all represented, and Anne did an amazing Tardis egg. My favorite was probably the dinosaur egg I painted, with the egg white that had spilled out when the egg cracked as the dinosaur's spikes, even though it turned out quite sloppy.

I hope that everyone else had a fun holiday too, for those who celebrate it! I'm sad that I missed Flower Communion, because it really is one of my favorite springtime rituals, but it was nice to do Easter so well and with such wonderful people.

The Hunger Games

A few weeks ago Anne and I went to see The Hunger Games in theaters!

Well, let me back up. A few weeks ago Anne, myself, and a hundred or so members of Forum Society went to see The Hunger Games the night before it was released. In preparation, I borrowed a copy of the book and read it all in one night, and we were all really excited. So naturally, the movie didn't work, and we went home Hunger Games-less but as late at night as if we'd actually watched the whole movie, with vouchers to come back another time.

This ended up working out fantastically, in my opinion, because I saw it the next week with just Anne, as a date. (I will spare you a ton of corny babbling about how awesome she is, but the two weeks or so since going to the movies together can be summarized as follows: :D <3 :D <3 :D.)

Anyway! Since then, the whole universe has also seen the Hunger Games, and I've read quite articles about the film, mostly about the whole mess with horribly racist fans upset that Rue was black. But Alyssa Rosenberg has a kind of cool article on Katniss and gender, which is about a lot of things, including the scene where Rue dies.

I'm not going to lie, that scene had me bawling like a baby. Here's Rosenberg's summary:

Rue is speared, Katniss shoots and kills Rue’s attacker, she puts Rue to rest in a striking act of political symbolism—and then she cries, hard, in a way that involves her entire body.

I found that striking too, but I didn't figure out why until I read this article - mostly, female action heroes deal with violence very calmly. Lara Croft or Catwomen aren't likely to start sobbing after a fight scene.

The whole article makes a lot of interesting points about Katniss's femininity as an action hero, but that was the one I found most interesting.

Racism in Ireland

Ooh, that's a heavy title, isn't it? Don't worry, I just wanted to jot down two things that have struck me lately.

1) In my Inequality and Social Exclusion class, we're talking about Irish Travellers. For the uninitiated, Travellers are a nomadic group with a distinct culture within Ireland. Most of Europe recognizes them as an ethnic group, though the Irish government does not.

We spent the whole tutorial talking about the horrible racism they face, and it took me a good forty minutes to work up the guts to ask the completely ignorant question that I couldn't get out of my head.

"Can you, like, tell Travellers apart from settled people just by appearance?" I finally asked. I knew full well that I couldn't - I'd seen them in documentaries and while their clothing is distinctive, it wouldn't be enough for me to feel comfortable identifying some random person on the street as a Traveller.

"Oh yeah," the class assured me, and began mentioning not only their clothes but their accent, their attitude, but even before they spoke just somehow you could tell...

"But it's not a skin color thing, right?" I clarified.

"Oh, no. They're white."

Obviously, racism isn't just about skin color. There was racism against all sorts of white ethnic groups when they first immigrated to the states, so I understand that the same thing is what's happening to Traveller communities; they're a racialized group. But for me, coming from Virginia, where all of our discussion of racism tends to include skin color in some way or another, it's really hard to get my head around the fact that these people who I can't tell from any other Irish person are this despised minority group.

2) There was a Confederate flag bumper sticker on one of the floats in the St. Patrick's Day Parade. The theme of the parade was multiculturalism, and there was a Confederate flag. I was absolutely appalled, but no one else even noticed - when I pointed it out, my American friends just shrugged and said they supposed the meaning wasn't as loaded here. I guess not, but damn, that was unexpected!

In which Out in UL Wins Everything, and Other News

Since coming to UL, I've been really involved with Out in UL, our school's GLBTQetc organization. It's a really awesome group - I was actually quite nervous about being out in Ireland, what with the Catholicism and all, so having an active group of lovely people holding all sorts of events around campus to join up with means a lot.

Because Out in UL is so awesome, we were nominated for three awards at last night's Clubs and Societies Ball - Best Society Event for Queerbash, an annual party/variety show held by the club; Best New or Improved Society; and Best Society Individual, for our fantastic president Niall.

"So if we win..." someone said on the bus ride over to the hotel where the ball was being held.

"When we win," Niall interrupted. "When we win all three."

Naturally, because we were all so excited and anxious, everything ran late. The dinner that was to start at 8pm SHARP, according to the ticket (and capitalized just like that) arrived sometime around 9pm, so the awards didn't start for another hour, and then we had to wait while people who we were much less interested in got awards for things. Finally, the nominees for the first award were called, the envelope was clumsily and at great length opened, and... We won! We cheered and shouted were excited. Some more awards that weren't us happened. "Even if we don't win this one, we already won something, so it's still really exciting," I thought as they read the nominees. They opened the envelope, and... us again! "There's no way we win all three," I told myself as they got to the final one, though even as I thought it I was also thinking that we'd damn well better get the last one because that would just be the coolest thing ever. And, long story short, we also got the third award, and then there was a big party and it was awesome.

This weekend is St. Patrick's Day, so I have lots of plans, with blog posts to follow! But first, I wanted to share this article...

TreeHugger has another kids these days kind of article about how us young people are all a bunch of apolitical narcissists who don't actually care about the environment and don't vote and don't trust each other and all of these things. I can't argue with his data that we don't recycle consistently, but I find his argument that college kids who don't vote are responsible for the Tea Party coming in and destroying the environment. I would instead say that the way our generation - surrounded as we are by the internet and a pretty broken economy and a whole lot of change - understand politics and activism differently than previous generations did, and that it's often kind of confusing and overwhelming and we haven't quite worked out the kinks yet, so maybe we don't always do it very well. What do you think?

Going Irish

Irish Things I've Picked Up:

• Thinking any journey longer than 2 hours is just way too long.
• Saying "grand." No, really. Talk to me for 5 minutes. I'll probably say "grand."
• A much more flexible notion of what being "on time" means.
• Understanding recipes which use metric measurements.

Irish Things I Still Can't Figure Out:

• Reading the weather report in degrees Celsius. I just don't get it.

This post has been brought to you by avoiding the walk to the library.

Scenes from England, Part 3: Cross Bones

Much later that evening, after I had met up with the amazing Miranda (a friend from high school, studying at Cambridge) and her friend, we took the tube under the river on a quest to find Cross Bones Cemetary. The link has a good history, but the short version is that this tiny patch of land in the middle of South London, just beyond the London Bridge, had been used from medieval times through about halfway through the 19th century, originally as a "Single Women's burial ground" - for prostitutes who weren't allowed church burials - and later as a pauper's graveyard. Since it was rediscovered and partially excavated in the 1990s, people have been tying ribbons with the names of the dead buried there, along with flowers, beads, and baubles, to the gates of the site, calling it a shrine to outcasts.

So you understand why I had to see this place.

It was under a bridge some way from the Tube station, and we weren't quite sure we had found the right street, but as soon as we turned the corner and saw the gate it was obvious. Ribbons of pink and green, some quite faded and some bright as if they'd been put on the day before (which they probably had - there'd been a vigil the previous night) fluttered on every inch of the black iron gate. Flowers bloomed from the top spikes, and plastic pearls were draped between the rails. Some of the names were historical, dug from the record or uncovered through the British Museum's forensic and archaeological work on the site, recorded in sharpie on the ribbons with whatever details existed. "17 years old, syphilis." Other names were as recent as the 2000s - not actually buried there, obviously, but outcasts in their own ways and remembered as such. There was a laminated piece of paper giving the history of the place, and a plaque that says "The Outcast Dead R.I.P."

It was breathtaking to see; to imagine all of the people who had lovingly tied up a ribbon to remember someone who everyone had forgotten centuries ago, and to take in the dozens of tiny details that made up this group monument, which represented such a small fraction of the people actually buried in the ugly little patch of land beyond.

We heard some drunk guys down the alley yelling, and had to leave quickly, but someday I hope to go back for the monthly vigil, to better pay my own respects.

Scenes from England, Part 2: The Changing of the Guard

A few weeks later I woke up at an ungodly hour of the morning with the song "London Calling" running through my head and my suitcase waiting packed for me at the door for a weekend trip to the city. I went with a rather short list - a lot of the things I would have liked to see weren't open anyway, and I didn't fancy the idea of running around trying to see everything. Here are my two favorite moments:

Despite my best efforts to be the chill, go-with-the-flow tourist, I'd become impatient. We were cutting through Hyde Park, and had gone the wrong way around the lake, and so had had to backtrack to see the Peter Pan statue. (Absolutely worth it, by the way. It's charming.) But we were on a schedule - the changing of the guard certainly wouldn't wait for a bunch of slightly lost college students! As we finally reached the exit of the park, we saw the guards on their horses riding by; a bit more confusion, a detour around a packed Buckingham Palace, and several minutes later, we joined a much smaller crowd outside of St. James's Palace, not long before the guards marched out. They were in smart, sensible grey uniforms, but the promised flamboyance came shortly after; what I can only presume is the Royal Marching Band, in beautiful red coats and golden hats. As we watched, expecting them to start their journey to Buckingham Palace, they picked up their instruments - and started playing "No one Mourns the Wicked," from the musical Wicked. Brilliantly, I might add.

I was floored. (And thrilled. I love that musical.) We stood on tip-toe to get the best view of the serious-faced guards performing Broadway, and clapped uproariously when they finished, though of course they didn't respond at all. As they filed out of the palace courtyard towards Buckingham, now playing much more traditional music, we walked alongside them, reveling in the carnival-like atmosphere (bright colors, loud music, and smiling crowds on a sunny morning in the park!) until they disappeared behind the crowds surrounding Buckingham.

Scenes from England, Part 1: Oxford

It's freezing. Snow is on the ground, which made for a beautiful airplane landing - the usual checkerboards of greens now interspersed with white fields, bounded by dark green hedgerows and scattered with picturesque houses - but, as I inform Sandra several times, I'm incredulous that Ireland is warmer than Oxford.

I went to visit my good friend (since middle school!) who's studying at Oxford a few weekends ago, and the city completely blew my mind. It's a city of colleges - it seems almost every street you turn down comes up against a white stone wall with a big wooden door where some university begins, hiding surprising amounts of open green space and beautifully intricate buildings in the middle of the dense, crowded city. Of course, part of the reason the city feels so crowded is the walls themselves, and the medieval street layout - lots of little curving alleys paved with stones lacing their ways between the main few roads, with narrow sidewalks and buildings that have stood for centuries looming colorfully above.

Highlights included a visit to New College, which is not actually new at all. It's built like a castle (apparently the students needed the defenses back then!), with thick walls full of arrow slits hiding the big stone buildings that surround graveled courtyards. But if Sandra led me through one archway at the far end of the main courtyard, and suddenly the space was entirely familiar... it was the courtyard of Hogwarts from the Harry Potter movies. I felt like I was walking into one of the films; with the snow on the ground, I expected to see students in house scarves, or perhaps to hear the figures in the plaques on the wall chatting.

A lot of Oxford had that fairy-tale feel (which I suppose suits such an old place, which has served as the setting or inspiration for so many creative works.) We saw the door which supposedly inspired the Chronicles of Narnia book, with an imp wrapped around the light and a lion carved into the door itself. We hunted down the pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien's college literary society met; with its narrow rooms and low brick ceilings, it was easy to imagine it full of hobbits.

Morning at St. Mary's

It was around 11am, church started at 11:15, and I was lost. I'd meant to go to a service at one of Limerick's beautiful old churches since I arrived, and I had finally hauled myself out of bed on time, only to find that the bus didn't run early enough on Sunday mornings, so I would have to walk the four kilometers to King's Island, an unfamiliar part of town that holds, among other things, St. Mary's Cathedral, the oldest building still in daily use in the city. I made it into the town okay, but I wasn't sure where I needed to turn to get across the river, and I was flushed from walking fast and frankly a bit sleep deprived...

And then I heard church bells, and gave up on following my scribbled down directions and just followed the sound.

I ended up crossing a bridge into a part of town labeled "English Town" with stone streets and colorful houses, and as soon as I turned the corner I saw the cathedral soaring up in the center of all of it, surrounded by medieval walls. (I knew they were medieval because they had plaques that said so, but I was so intent on getting to the church that I didn't stop to read.) The bells weren't just ringing - they were caroling, this amazing melody that I wish I could somehow write out here. I found out later that St. Mary's has a competitive bell-ringing group. But at the time, the music just seemed to come from the sky itself, echoing off the rooftops of the pink and yellow houses, and I didn't even mind that I had to walk around the whole church before I finally found the front gate because it meant I got to spend more time in the sunlight listening to the song.

It was like something out of a movie, hurrying down this picturesque little street towards music that filled the whole town. I must have been grinning like a fool by the time I finally got inside the church. By the time I'd settled in the bells had died away and the organ had picked up so smoothly you hardly noticed the change, and I spent the entire prelude gaping at the huge ceiling and the stained glass and just the oldness of it all. The cathedral was built in the 12th century, and the walls are worn so you can see the stones that make up the columns. I don't think I've ever been anywhere so old.

The service was lovely (though the choir wasn't there that day, so we had to attempt to sing on our own. I didn't know any of the songs, but I finally caught on when we sang one to the same tune as Blue Boat Home, the UU hymn. Afterwards I had tea and chatted with some nice Irish grandmothers, who also helped me find the self-tour pamphlet for the cathedral so I could have a quick look around before they closed for the day. Now I have a dilemma. I want to go to all of the churches in the city (I'm thinking of going in order by age - this one's the oldest, I think next would be St. John's.) But the people at St. Mary's were just so nice, and the place just so beautiful, that I think I could happily go there every Sunday!

Katie Goes to the Theater

From the poster for the performance
at Belltable Theater in Limerick.

Tonight I went to see a play called The Field - my study abroad program bought us tickets. It's set in a small town in southwest Ireland (that's about where I am) in the 1960s. It's based on a true story, about a man named Bull who's worked a rented field for years and feels entitled to it. The woman who owns the land - a widow who needs the money she'll make selling it - puts it up to auction, and Bull threatens everyone to make sure no one else bids but him. But then an outsider comes in and out-bids Bull, so Bull kills him and threatens the whole town to cover it up.

I think we were supposed to feel sympathetic for Bull - he was risking losing his livelihood after all, with the world changing around him and with no support should he lose the land. But really, after the first scene was up I spent the rest of the play wishing he'd lose somehow; that the other guy would get the land, or that someone would tell the guards that he was the murder and he would go to jail forever. He complained about how the law was only on the side of rich people and the land wouldn't even be worth anything without his work and now it was being sold out from under him, and I just wanted someone to hit him. But everyone was afraid of him and in the end he gave a monologue about how he'd feel guilty but he'd still get his land and that was that.

If I were thoughtful and knowledgeable about theater and good at segues, I would tie this into the event I went to at Oxford, a symposium of various English theater luminaries talking about theater and politics. However, the conversation was ill-defined (is everything political? is it only political if it talks about party politics/policy? is conservative or liberal defined by ideology or effect?) and way over my head. The most exciting part of the whole thing was that Ralph Fiennes (aka Lord Voldemort) was also there and also confused. He probably would have liked the Field, though. He spent the whole panel talking about directing Coriolanus, a Shakespeare tragedy I had never previously heard of, and from what he said it's pretty depressing as well. 

Still, I really enjoyed both the panel and the play, even if the former was confusing and the latter was frustrating. Most of the times I get to go to the theater it's to see musicals my uncle is working on, so after hearing all these famous theater people talking about serious political tragedies, it was really cool to go see one myself! (But next time, I want a comedy.)

Holy Culture Shock, Batman!

I thought I was doing pretty well with this whole culture shock thing. I'm getting used to figuring out recipes and reading the weather using Irish measurements. I know that the parliament is called the Dail and what the major parties are. French fries are called "chips" and are eaten with a fork, guys are called "lads," and the police are the Garda. I've had a fry-up for breakfast and potatoes for both lunch and dinner on the same day and Guinness. I've learned that drinking happens on Tuesday and Thursday nights and that 9am classes don't happen on Wednesday and Friday mornings. So really, I was starting to feel like I had all the important stuff down.

Then today I had 6 hours of classes.

First was my class on Multiculturalism. "Can you name part of Irish culture that's currently in contestation?" the professor asked.

"Um... the language?" I hazarded.

"What about it?"

"Uh..." It was way too early in the morning. I grasped at straws from conversations with classmates. "Everyone learns it, but there's debate about how useful it is to keep encouraging it...?"

Fortunately, I was let off the hook with that - she was hoping for different examples, none of which I'd ever heard of. The Angelus? Huh? And what's this business about Travellers?

Then on to Sociology of the Family, which was actually pretty straightforward because it was about love and romance novels and that's pretty much the same everywhere. But lest I think pop culture was a solid ground I could stand on, my next class was a tutorial for Gender and Pop Culture, where I was again completely at a loss. We were talking about reality TV, and the Tutor kept mentioning shows - "Who's seen Come Dine With Me? Operation Transformation? Tallafornia?" (And those are just the ones I could find on Wikipedia after class - most of them I couldn't even catch the name well enough to Google!) At least some of them were in categories I understood - Tallafornia is basically Jersey Shore, Operation Transformation is The Biggest Loser - but where no obvious American parallels existed I was lost in a sea of unfamiliar celebrity names and famous episodes.

After that, I headed to two hours of Irish Politics. Again, I had been sort of feeling like I was finding my footing until I got to class today. "So, who thinks there should be a tax on septic tanks?" the professor asked, referencing a recent major issue in Irish politics - namely, whose responsibility it is to fix the often old and piecework system of plumbing and septic tanks that's seriously damaging Irish water systems.

To me, the idea that the government could ask you to pay 50 euro to inspect your water tank and then help pay to fix it if it needed it was pretty straightforward, but people are quite wound up about it. Apparently whether or not one should pay taxes for one's garbage collection is also contentious, as is the idea that the president should have a political opinion or that the senate should exist at all.

"What are Higgins' political beliefs? What about Enda, what's he trying to do?"

"Who's Enda?" the girl behind me, another American, whispered.

"The prime minister?" I guessed, which didn't help answer the question at all, because in truth I have no idea what he's trying to do or what party he's in.

So now I'm back in my dorm with a stack of reading to do, so that I can understand changes in Irish culture, reality TV, and the different branches of Irish government before I have those classes again later this week. It's all really fascinating, but it's weird sitting in a class and having none of the cultural background that the professors assume the students are familiar with!

Irish Government Cuts Communion Payments

I've been trying to watch the news while I've been here. It's proving tricky - most of the channels we get are from the UK and so only talk about Northern Ireland, and when I do find an Irish new channel it's always right when it's about to switch to talking about soccer! But today I caught, on the Irish equivalent of C-Span, that the government is cutting exceptional needs payments (a kind of social welfare, I think) going to families on the occasion of communion or confirmation.

So far I've been unable to walk into a class without some of the discussion revolving around the current economic situation in Ireland, so the fact that the government was making cuts really didn't surprise me. What surprised me is that they give out money for communion at all. I mean, I guess First Communion is probably a bit expense - I remember my Catholic friends getting their fancy white dresses and having parties - and the point of Exceptional Needs Payments seems to be so that unusual large expenses don't push struggling families over the edge into debt or whatever, so in that way I guess I understand the logic.

But as the Labour Party representative railed against the man who'd proposed the cuts, I couldn't help but disagree with her. Aid for struggling families is great. But if you have to make cuts, ending government support for a religious ceremony seems like a good place to start to me. Separation of church and state and all that.

But whether or not the state should give people money for First Communion never came up in all the discussion of it I've seen. It was framed exclusively as money out of the pockets of needy families, with hardly any mention of the occasion.

Here's the article, if you're interested! Struggling Families' Communion Payments Slashed

Tale of Two Hot Cocoas

 

This week I had two amazing hot chocolates, which is naturally of such importance that I must tell the whole internet.

On Tuesday night after fencing training, the club went to Scholars - a club in the student centre - for pints. But I'm still not very good at this whole going-to-bars thing, and the thing that caught my eye on the menu was hot cocoa. It was cold and rainy (so, the usual state of things) and I was a bit homesick, and hot cocoa sounded ideal. But I didn't realize what a good idea it was until the bartender handed me the  cup and saucer. The cup was overflowing with foam and whipped cream, sprinkled with cocoa powder, and two little pink marshmallows sat on the saucer, because the cup was so full there wasn't room for them. I think I practically skipped back to the table, I was so delighted at the pink marshmallows. The conversation among the fencers switched back and forth between English, Irish and French, so while I didn't understand a lot of what was going on, it was a joy to listen to.

Then this past weekend I was up in Dublin, exploring the city at the start of the day while the boys fenced pools at the fencing tournament at Trinity. I wandered through some museums and a park, then made my way up to Grafton Street.

Grafton Street is one of the major shopping streets in Dublin, and coming out of the gate of St. Stephen's Green onto the street was like walking into Disneyland. There were buskers every few blocks, playing competing songs; flower vendors seemed to be at every crossroad, and between that and the incredibly fashionable window displays the place was all bright colors. I went into a few fashion boutiques and book shops, before coming across a chalkboard sign advertising mint hot chocolate.

The sign was for a little gelato shop - I forget the name, but they weren't drawing much a crowd with their admittedly amazing-looking displays of ice cream, because, well, it was bloody cold. The entire front of the shop was open, so passers-by could see all the different flavors, and the women working were bundled up in scarves and sweaters. They were actually out of mint, but I settled for a regular hot chocolate and continued strolling.

The Scholars hot cocoa won for presentation, but the Grafton Street hot cocoa was perhaps the most delicious thing I've ever tasted. Walking down the street, listening to the music and chatter and admiring the shop displays and drinking this amazing creamy hot cocoa was possibly the best way one could spend a Saturday morning in Dublin. Next time I go back, I'm definitely stopping by that shop again, and hopefully by then it will be warm enough to try some of the gelato too!

Land of the Circle Scarf

I have a theory about how one dresses stylishly in Ireland, or at least here at University of Limerick. See, as far as I can tell from a few days' observations, the thing about the Irish is that they really love their neckwear. A normal scarf is a good place to start. A knit cowl is heading in the right direction. But the truly chic will settle for nothing less than an enormous, bulky circle scarf.

Ideally, it will be a chunky knit, so thick that it reaches your ears when settled around your neck and so long that you can wrap it twice and then some. (Just twice would be fine, but then you wouldn't be able to have it both tightly around your neck AND with a cascade of knitwear covering your chest, which is the ideal look.) Garter stitch and stockinette with slight variations seem to be the patterns of choice; just get as much knitting around your neck as possible. If your scarf isn't quite bulky enough, fringe is an acceptable way to add more yarn to your person.

Needless to say, I will be buying yarn and making myself one of these as soon as possible. In America I usually think they look ridiculous, but after 3 days of walking to class in the constant chilly damp I'm starting to see the appeal!

25 Things to Do in Limerick - Numbers 6 and 10

At orientation, they gave us a map of the city with a list on the back: 25 fun things to do in Limerick. This week I've done two of them: A open-top bus tour of the city, and a day at the Milk Market.

The bus tour was on Thursday evening, and was great fun. It was a bit wet (it's never not a bit wet, as far as I can tell) and quite cold (also pretty much always the case), so I was hesitant to sit up outside on the second level when I could stay huddled in the warm lower level, but I was talked into a seat out in the open up top, and I'm glad I did. The view was fantastic - it was fun being taller than everything else, seeing over all the other cars to the beautiful old buildings. The guide threw an amazing amount of history and trivia about what street was named for whom in which rebellion, and I wish I remembered it all, but the short version would be that in Limerick some things are named for reformers and most everything else is named for someone who rebelled against the British. Lots of the statues we passed show people holding guns or swords as if they were about to charge, and many of those were killed for their trouble. (There's also a statue of Richard Harris as King Arthur, which I aspire to find.)

The bridges over the Shannon are particularly beautiful - there's not as much shopping and fewer historical buildings, but it makes up for it in just the lights and flags hanging over the old stone bridges and amazing river itself. It's far enough away from the city centre that it's probably not the best place to visit at night, but I would love to sometime go walking around there at sunset.

Then today, we went to the Milk Market. I'm not quite sure I understand the history, but here's my best guess - Limerick City used to have lots of markets. A Hay Market, a Pig Market, a Potato Market (we passed that one on our way into the city today.) They all became irrelevant as the economy changed and grocery stores opened and things like that, except for the Milk Market, which no longer sells milk and is instead a very popular weekend-long farmer's and crafts market.

That table full of tarts is one of the first things we saw when we got inside, and we couldn't resist - after grabbing some vegetables for dinner Monday night and stopping by a few stalls just to browse, we had to go back and grab a fruit tart, which was possibly one of the best ideas I've ever had. Next time I really want to try one of the cheese tarts, or maybe even a meat pie. After we'd seen every stall we sat down at a little coffee shop where the owner knew a lot of the customers by name and had some tea, then went exploring around the town. Highlights included a tent full of used books for sale at one euro each, and an Irish Handcrafts shop, where a smooth-talking salesman told us great stories about the meanings behind Aran sweaters and convinced both of us there that really we need the $200 dollar hand-made ones to bring home. They're so beautiful and comfortable!

So that checks two items off of our "25 Fun Things To Do in Limerick" list. I'll keep you posted as I do them!

Days 1-3

Let's see if I can't write out a proper blog post while keeping it under novel length, shall we?

My goal is at least a photo every day, which will probably get harder as I'm spending more time in classes and other routine things, but I'm certainly getting a running start. Check out what I've seen so far on my Flickr. (Those photos are from just today and yesterday.)

We got into Limerick on Tuesday morning, and when I say "we," I really mean a crowd - about twenty study abroad kids from the states were on my flight from Heathrow to Shannon. From there we were picked up by a bus and dropped off at Plassey Village, where I got a key for a very cute little 8-person house.

Tuesday I mostly kept to myself, getting settled and exploring the campus, but on Wednesday there were errands to run. First we made a shopping trip to Aldi, which was far more difficult than it sounds. We couldn't figure out how to get a cart, having never encountered the kind that require a coin to make sure you return it, so we could only get what groceries we could awkwardly carry around the store, and we didn't really know what we would need. We knew we would want food in the house, but we'd only just gotten there, so hadn't really given any thought to meal planning. And then, once we finally got to the check out, we held up the lines with both unfamiliar currency and being unaware of bag-packing etiquette.

Once the groceries were put away, I went into town with a few girls I'd met the day before. Limerick is an interesting city - I'm not sure yet how I would describe it. A lot of the parts between campus and the city centre are a bit run-down looking and spread out, but there's a much denser city center, with an odd and pretty combination of medieval buildings, a few Georgian blocks, and lots of more modern things (the city's been experiencing a lot of economic growth in only the past few decades.) It's mostly very beautiful, but it feels like quite a jumble, so I'm worried I'll get lost! The bus set us down right in the middle of city centre, across the street from a whole block of department stores. We found lunch in a bakery, avoided shoe shops and book shops in favor of finding practical things at a bunch of Euro Marts (like dollar stores) all right on the same street. It was hard to think of pleasure shopping when we were carrying around pillows and sheets - we'll have to go back for proper browsing soon!

When we all got back, we cooked dinner together at someone's house, which was really lovely - the four of us agreed at once that it'll have to be a frequent occurrence. But I hardly had time to finish eating before I had to run across the campus for fencing practice! Most of the Irish students aren't back on campus yet, since school doesn't begin until Monday, but the ones who were there recognized me from Facebook and were happy to have me - I make the fourth girl in the society, making a full epee team. Of course, I usually fence foil, so I had my first ever formal epee lesson that night with the coach, and I could well be at my first epee tournament within a week! I hope I'm a quick study at it!

Afterwards, we went to the campus pub for a while. We were there again this evening after a bus tour of the city and a day of orientation meetings, this time for a free dinner event for study abroad students, and I expect we'll be there again tomorrow night, for another study abroad event, this one tragically lacking in free food. I have a feeling I'll be spending a lot of time in Stables, so I'll have to grab a photo of it soon. Tonight I'm going to stretch - I'm sore from fencing! - and then start picking my classes! Also on the agenda is planning a trip to Wales for the near future, so if anyone knows the easiest way to get from south Ireland to Cardiff, please let me know!