The Royal Plains of Meath

Sleeping in bunkbeds in the narrow dorm overlooking a farmyard, with its old-fashioned country style furniture and ten girls to a room, felt weirdly like being in a storybook orphanage. Someone likened it to being at camp, which I wouldn’t know anything about, but was probably accurate. All of us downstairs in the kitchen the next morning scrounging for cereal and lining up to use the toaster, and then a large chunk of the class sitting on every piece of furniture in the living room and most parts of the floor and taking turns playing with the dog, all kind of felt that way too.

Also, the class is about 80 or 90 percent female, and all the girls slept in three or four rooms like the one I was in on the second floor of the main building. The boys were in a small room on the ground floor that had to be accessed from outside. I, for one, thought that was pretty funny.

Anyhow, our first stop for the day was the Bend of the Boyne Cemetery and our long-awaited tour of Newgrange. If you didn’t know/look it up already, Newgrange is an enormous Neolithic tomb, one of three at the Bend of the Boyne. The three of them are roughly contemporary and are all oriented on the rising and/or setting sun at different times so that together they mark the cycle of the year. It’s very cool, and they’re very obvious on the landscape. We passed the tomb of Knowth on the way to Newgrange. I was surprised at how far apart they are; I guess the word cemetery had made me imagine something fairly consolidated, but they’re actually rather spread out. You can only get to the tombs themselves by first going through a visitor’s center that then packs you into small shuttle buses at your appointed tour time, so there are never more than a couple of groups at the actual sites at once. There’s a neat little exhibit about the cemetery and the region and about Neolithic life in general at the visitor’s center, and they show a short film about the astronomical aspect of the tombs that was pretty much THE cheesiest and most unnecessarily dramatic thing I’ve ever seen. It was easily as bad as those middle school science videos that play weird New Agey music while cells are dividing and crap like that. And there was a sort of recurring theme of the great mystery of the seasons and how Neolithic people must have felt so uncertain and feared that without their rituals to appease to ancestors or the gods or whomever, the earth would stop turning and the sun wouldn’t rise again. I actually found it somewhat offensive (when I wasn’t laughing out loud at the narrator’s excessive flair for the dramatic). I mean, that’s a possibility, I guess. But you really have no idea what Neolithic people thought, or what their rituals were, or why. None. Whatsoever. It seems to me that we could give them the dignity of not just assuming that they believed that the pattern that had existed for all time might stop any minute or that the world would end if they slipped up. That seems a little extreme for people who had obviously observed enough continuity to build these massive tombs aligned EXACTLY RIGHT to match up with things that happen consistently year after year.

I digress. We went to the tomb, after a pretty walk across the river and past some cows to the shuttle bus, and a short bus ride down some back roads that was briefly delayed by a herd of more cows. The tomb is large, and impressive, and stands on a hill overlooking the valley, which is beautiful. The front of the tomb is all reconstructed according to someone’s “educated guess”, which is a little disappointing, but what can you do. Inside, on the other hand, is all completely intact and has not changed for more than four thousand years except for the addition of a few support beams (just in case) and a handful of electric lights. The passage into the burial chamber is not for the claustrophobic; it has a low roof and is sometimes narrow and slopes up because the chamber is several meters higher than the ground outside. But the chamber itself has a high vaulted ceiling that is easily as impressive as a Gothic cathedral, as far as I’m concerned, especially considering it was built without mortar and before the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza. And while we were inside, the guide turned off all the lights except for one bulb near the entrance that’s been positioned to simulate what happens at sunset on the winter solstice, when the last rays of sunlight enter the space above the doorway and shine directly into the tomb. It was very cool.

They apparently hold a lottery to choose a small group of people who get to be there at sunset in December for a couple of days around the time it’s supposed to happen, but since I already have a flight home on the 19th, I didn’t enter myself even though it would be amazing to be there for real. Oh well. The odds of being chosen are like a zillion to one anyway.

That afternoon, following a lunch that included some truly fantastic chocolate cake, we went to Trim Castle, which is the biggest Anglo-Norman castle in Ireland and is pretty impressive in its own right. The keep is pretty intact, and some of the curtain wall with a couple of its gateways. There are some ruined outbuildings and across the river, at a fairly short distance, the remains of what was once an abbey. (I think our teacher was over there checking it out while we were on our tour of the keep.) It was pretty cool. I think I found the grounds more interesting than the castle itself. But our guide was very interesting and knowledgeable, and told us some fun stuff about medieval life instead of just sticking to the bare facts about the castle. And he did it in a way that didn’t make me feel like he was just assuming we didn’t know anything about history, which I appreciated because that’s a problem I sometimes have on tours. (The colonial-era Burgwin-Wright house in Wilmington with the tour guide who looked at me as if I were just adorably precocious every time I knew the answer to something pretty obvious comes to mind.) I learned some fun things about where a few English idioms came from. Come to find out, near the end of the tour, that one of the reasons for his enthusiasm was that he grew up in the town of Trim and as a kid would skip school and come play in the castle (which at the time was basically abandoned as far as I can guess, since it wasn’t excavated until the 90s and wasn’t open to tourism until 2000). Like, actually. His playground was a castle. How awesome is that?!

Near the top, before taking us up to the ramparts, he asked if anyone was afraid of heights. I raised my hand. I think I may have been the only one, which was a little embarrassing. But he was really nice about it, and said it was perfectly safe and blah blah blah and there was no need to feel bad because he’d had a PILOT on a tour not long ago who refused to go up to the roof. That’s a little unnerving, and not for any reason having to do with the castle…

Anyway, I was standing there going, “Yeah, I’m not actually that worried… you just asked, so I answered…” I figured the stairs were more of an issue than actually being on top of the building was going to be, and even they weren’t that bad because they had a rope to hold onto like the ones at Blarney. And I was right; between the walls and the very substantial iron railings that have been put up in modern times to keep people well back from the edge, there’s nothing even remotely frightening about being up there. And I really am afraid of heights. I get vertigo and everything. Just not under circumstances like the ones that exist at the top of a building that thousands of visitors are encouraged to stand on top of.

So that was pretty much that. We left for Cork after Trim, and it took the better part of four hours to get back. My iPod held out the whole way even though I’d been using it a lot for two entire days at that point, so I was pleased. It was raining for a lot of the drive, and when we got back into Cork City we were stunned to find that the river had risen so high that a couple of low bridges were almost flooded and the places along the Western Road where I watch herons on the way to town and back were totally underwater. It was quite a surprise. I guess it rained here the whole time we were gone. It reminded me of Belize last summer and coming back to San Ignacio from a long weekend to discover that the river had actually flooded and the bridge was actually underwater and the storm had taken out the tree behind my cabin. Except obviously this was not as bad. And everything was back to normal by the weekend.

I spent most of the weekend, except for a small adventure I’ll recount later, trying in vain to write that essay, which is now complete, still a little too long, and ready to hand in tomorrow when I get on the bus. Lectures are over. One more overnight field trip and then the class is over.

Weird.

To the Burren tomorrow. I’m excited.

All The World Seems Bright And Gay

Last Wednesday we set off for Dublin just before 8 a.m. (which was a vast improvement over the 7 a.m. originally printed on our syllabus). I was surprised and pleased at how familiar Dublin was. It's amazing how well you can get to know a city in a short time when you're mostly on your own.

We spent the morning at the National Museum of Archaeology, which I was very excited about. (I had to keep myself away while I was in Dublin last month, because I figured I was bound to end up there on a field trip and wanted to use my time for something else... but it was really hard.) Dr. Ó Carragáin gave us a quick tour before turning us loose for half an hour or so. We saw a lot of the same artifacts that had shown up on Powerpoint slides in class, which I at first thought was really cool. But, in hindsight, Ireland is a really small country.

They have a lot of stone tools, and copper axes, and medieval art. They also have a stunning amount of gold jewelry from the Bronze Age. I mean, cases upon cases. It was amazing. And a little gold model boat that's either Bronze Age or Iron Age, I've forgotten which (which is unfortunate since we definitely discussed it in class...). Either way, it was high on my list of favorite things.

But also: THEY HAVE BOG BODIES. Four of them. Mostly only partial, but even so.

They gave me the creeps, a little bit. The one who still had his face did, at least. The others were all right. I still wouldn't want to be the one who finds/studies them, though. I'm a bone person specifically because intact flesh is a little too much for me to handle. But mummies are still really, really cool.

After lunch we walked to Christ Church Cathedral. It was very beautiful, and interesting, and we saw the "tomb of Strongbow" and got to learn exactly why it's unlikely that it's actually Strongbow. But the tomb was anticlimactic (though I guess I don't really know what I was expecting) and the crypt was a disappointment. There's really nothing down there except some plaques and sculpted sarcophagi in the corners dedicated to people I've never heard of, and an exhibit of the "treasures" of the Cathedral (there was some cool stuff in there, I admit). And a coffee shop. Yep, in the crypt. Can you say combining two of my favorite things [in a really creepy way]?

But mostly it was just empty space under the arches. So... it was kind of cool to be down underneath the Cathedral, but there wasn't much to see.

And by the way, I think Christ Church would fit inside Notre Dame about six or eight times.

After that, we walked around the corner to the place where the Viking city was that Dublin's city council rushed excavations of and built office buildings over. I think I mentioned that before. So I heard the more detailed version of that story, and it made me angry again. And then we left.

That afternoon we went to Monasterboice, which was once a very important church site and is now a somewhat disheveled, haphazard-looking cemetery. There are ruins of two chapels (one of which now has graves inside it) and most of a very impressive round tower, and three fantastic high crosses, which are what the site is really famous for. They have the tallest high cross in Ireland and the "best" high cross in Ireland. They are very pretty, but I do not know enough about either the more obscure parts of the Bible or medieval Christian iconography to get a lot out of them, even with a rundown of what all the major scenes are supposed to be. I was really interested in a snake design on the side of the last cross, but did not get a chance to ask about it because Dr. Ó Carragáin was being monopolized (as usual) by that inevitable one kid in the class who thinks it makes them look good to ask five million questions and never shut up, and I did not feel like listening to that long enough to wait for a chance to ask my question.

Anyway. At that point it was evening, and we headed for the village of Slane in County Meath, where we were going to spend the night, and had dinner. Which was awesome, for the record. Afterwards, we discovered that the hostel where we were going to spend the night was a renovated outbuilding ON A FARM. There were cows, and barns, and chickens in the backyard. (I hadn’t heard a rooster in so long!) And some kind of dirty little terrier hanging around who really like to play-bite.

The dorms were adorable and bright and had carpet and cute wooden bunk beds. Even aside from the fact that it was on a farm it was about 587356487 times nicer than the place I stayed in Dublin.

We dropped off our stuff and went back into the village to a pub for “trad music,” which actually turned out to be a couple of guys with guitars who mostly played covers of American rock songs. (I don’t know if that was their original intention or not. I suspect it was, but it was also pretty obvious that practically the entire audience inside the tiny pub was a single large group of American students, so you never know.) But that was still fun. They did play a few traditional songs, with the help of a friend of theirs who was mostly listening but did go up to play tinwhistle once or twice and to sing a song one of my friends requested that the main guy didn’t know. I requested “Dublin In The Rare Ould Times” (of course), but neither singer knew it, which I thought was odd as well as disappointing. Oh well. They were cool, and they didn’t want us to leave (we were probably the biggest and possibly most enthusiastic audience they’d ever had there, and of course we knew most of the songs they were playing).

It was one of the best nights I’ve had since I got here.

That was also the night my friend David discovered a shot called a Baby Guinness, which is pure genius even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with Guinness. He had attempted to order a White Russian, but they had neither cream nor Kahlua, so the bartender offered him this instead. It’s a combination of Bailey’s and Tia Maria. It is AWESOME.

And I’m going to stick to my self-imposed two-page limit here and leave you with that thought for tonight. (Go try it, really.)

The Fine Groves Of Blarney

A quote from the abstract for an article I'm reading that was written by the moderator of the seminar in question: "Through several hours of often heated (sometimes quasi-homicidal) discussion there were occasional moments when the moderator could detect what might pass for consensus opinion among Irish archaeologists, i.e. the absence of violent objection."

Of course, you could probably replace "Irish archaeologists" with "scholars in general" and have an equally à propos remark. But it still made my day.

In other news, Wikipedia apparently has (at least normally) a pretty thorough and accurate article on Irish history. This may be the one time ever that I've had the experience of having a teacher actually encourage the use of Wikipedia.

It's interesting to observe the differences in scholarship between Ireland and the U.S. Like, the use of "B.C." and "A.D." is still pretty common in the States, but the political correctness movement has made a real push to replace them with "C.E." and "B.C.E." There has been no such push here. Which is fine by me; I think to the extent that academia is important at all, there are more important things for it to be concerned about. But it's an interesting social contrast.

However, I really got a laugh while reading an article earlier that was saying something about how it was once common to apply the term "Celtic" to all periods of prehistory in Ireland, and the author made the point that certain kinds of cutting tools were referred to as "celts" right up through the first half of the twentieth century. Why is this funny (in a sad kind of way)? Because students in the U.S. are STILL taught that term. Myself included. I mean, I assume it's because it's convenient to have an umbrella term for non-specific tools other than "cutting implements," which gets rather unwieldy. But frankly, I've always been puzzled by the cultural connotations. Turns out I wasn't reading too far into it, because they ARE there, and they are outdated and largely invalid.

Anyway, in case you couldn’t tell, I am posting this partly in order to avoid writing my paper. Not because it’s not an interesting topic. Not because I don’t want to get it done. In fact, I had written a fairly substantial portion of it intermittently over the last couple of days. I am avoiding it now because I realized I was writing a 4000 word essay rather than a 2000 word essay. Unintentionally, not because I misread the assignment. And as of about ten minutes ago I determined that at this point it would be easier to start over than to attempt to complete and fix what I’ve done so far. Needless to say, this conclusion does not please me.

So, here is the belated tale of my trip to Blarney Castle two weeks ago:

I think this was probably the biggest adventure I have had since arriving in Cork other than my class field trips. Carolyn and Kristin (two of the other IFSA-Butler students, from Colgate and Colby respectively) and Johanna (a music major at Wheaton) and I decided to be embarrassingly touristy and make the inevitable pilgrimage to Blarney Castle. It’s less than half an hour from the centre of Cork by bus, which by the way is less than the time it takes to walk from our apartment complex to the bus station, and bus fare only costs something like 6 or 7 euros round-trip.

It’s a giant tourist trap, of course; admission is steep, the historical information signposts are cheesy, there are souvenirs everywhere, and they take everyone’s picture with the Stone and will sell you yours for an exorbitant price (and yes, I have mine…). It’s a little too much like an amusement park. But the castle is unique and interesting, there are all kinds of trails on the grounds, through woods and gardens and around a lake, and I guess it wouldn’t be right to come to Ireland and live half an hour from the Blarney Stone and never kiss it.

But seriously, kissing the Stone felt more like an obligation than an adventure. Definitely one of those I-did-it-because-everyone-does-and-I-felt-like-I-had-to things. And as anyone who really knows me knows, leaning backwards off of a wall at a great height is not my idea of a good time, although as I already mentioned on Facebook, it happened so fast I barely remember it. But I did it. It’s off the list.

I don’t feel any more eloquent.

One up-side to the castle being modified and maintained for tourism: a rope to hang on to while climbing up the stairs, and a full-on metal railing on the other side for coming down. Oh, what a beautiful thing that was. I don’t think you can understand just how beautiful until you have climbed a fifteenth-century spiral staircase without such amenities. It’s slightly less terrifying than climbing up and down a Maya temple, but that’s setting a pretty low standard.

Fun fact: Blarney made the 14th castle I had been to in my lifetime up to that point (I think), and the 9th I had been inside. (Okay, I’m counting a few that are technically palaces, too.) I’ve since been to one more, and there’s at least one more to come this week, which brings me to 16 and 11 respectively. Not bad, huh?

Also, I admit I had to cheat and go searching for an appropriate title for this one, because I couldn't think of one off the top of my head. (But do you see what I did there with the combination of topics in this post?)

Hallowed Halls And Houses: Field Trips Part 2

The second field trip, last Thursday, was a lot less off-the-beaten-path than the first. We stopped first at the Labbacallee Wedge Tomb, which is from the end of the Neolithic. It is literally right on the side of the road. Like, we got off the bus and walked around it, me expecting to walk out into the field somewhere past the cows, and then bam! there it was. It’s not very impressive—probably no more than ten of us could fit inside it at a time—and as it’s the biggest wedge tomb in all of Ireland, that says a lot about the average size. It was still pretty neat, though. And I had a good laugh when the teacher was explaining something about the extent of the cairn that would have covered it originally (were that intact, the whole thing would be a reasonably impressive size), and someone in the class asked, “Why doesn’t that survive?” Dr. Ó Carragain looked at him, motioned to the low stone walls marking the boundaries of the fields (we were on someone’s farm again), and said “Look around you.”

He let us poke around for a while after he was done talking, and some people discovered that we could get inside the tomb. That really bothered me for some reason, although I can’t explain why and I’m not even sure if it’s rational to begin with. There just seems to me to be something really irreverent about playing in a tomb, even after the remains there are long gone. I don’t know. The people who posed for pictures at Drombeg on top of what may or may not be an altar bugged me, too. But in a different way, I think.

Anyway, we moved on soon after that, and the next stop of the day was “just for fun,” according to Dr. Ó Carragáin—not really archaeology-related at all. The Mitchelstown Caves are a series of pretty dramatic limestone caverns inside which it is apparently too cold for bats (which I thought was really weird—is 12º C really that much colder than your average cave in the U.S.?). Our tour was led by a very bored-sounding guide probably not much older than me. I was pretty bored, too. I’ve been to caves before. They’re neat but unless there’s something special about them, they’re kind of all alike, and this one wasn’t any more spectacular than any number of caverns in PA.

Admittedly, after Actun Tunichil Muknal I’m probably a little bit more jaded on the cave front than most of the people in this class. It will probably take a lot to make any future caving experience exciting by comparison.

But as things stand, I would have preferred even a relatively boring archaeological site to the hour we spent looking at damp rock formations. I appreciate the gesture of taking us to something fun and unrelated to our classwork, but as far as I’m concerned that time and money could have been better spent.

After we emerged from underground (the day did seem much warmer after that, so there’s a plus), we drove to the town (village?) of Cashel, where out afternoon was to be spent at the Rock of Cashel, which was in use as a church site throughout the Middle Ages and where people were buried in the cemetery right up to the twentieth century. Calling it “the Rock” of Cashel is not in any way symbolic. It’s really on top of a giant rock. A giant rock from which there are truly magnificent views of the surrounding countryside, may I add.

It’s dominated by a ruined Gothic cathedral (and by ruined I mean it’s missing its roof and that sort of thing, but most of the walls and a lot of the sculptures and such are still in quite good condition considering), which overshadows a very nice (and more damaged than the cathedral, although more complete in terms of structure) Romanesque chapel. There’s also a large round bell tower, which if I remember correctly was the first thing built there. And most of the grounds on two sides of the cathedral are full of graves with elaborate tombstones (you know, the classic Irish crosses and that sort of thing). It’s not like there’s a clearly delineated graveyard with a fence or anything, and they’re not really in neat rows either, just spread out all over the hill, from practically up against the cathedral walls right out to the wall at the edge of the rock. It’s quite a sight with the epic view beyond them.

And that was pretty much that. This week’s trip is overnight, leaving EARLY in the morning to get to Dublin at a reasonable hour and spend the day there, then heading somewhere in neighboring County Meath for the night to visit sites there the next day. This is the trip I’ve been most looking forward to. We’re going to the National Museum of Archaeology, and Christ Church Cathedral (I’m excited about this even though I saw it about 800 times while I was in Dublin before, because I’m hoping we’ll go inside and possibly even into the crypts, which I didn’t do on my own even though I really wanted to), and the biggest Norman castle in Ireland, and, most importantly: We are going to Newgrange!

At orientation, when Dr. Ó Carragáin had his turn to talk about his early start course and was running through a recitation of the sites we were going to be visiting, I was sitting there whispering, “Newgrange? Newgrange? Newgrange?” loud enough for people sitting close to me to hear. And I got a little bit ridiculously jubilant when he finally said it. I suppose a less dorky person would be embarrassed about that.

I almost did a day trip while I was staying in Dublin that would have gone to Newgrange and Tara, and decided against it on the chance that this class might be going to one or both of those places, which is partly why I was so eager. And I think we’re not going to Tara, but of the two that was the less important for me, and I might still see about trying to work it in when I go back to Dublin later.

If you don’t know what Newgrange is, you’ll just have to wait until I come back and write about it.

Or I guess you could Google it. That probably makes more sense. It’s just a lot less satisfying for me.



(By the way, did you know that Word’s spellchecker does not recognize “Google?” Behind the times, Microsoft. Of course, ironically enough, it also does not recognize “spellcheck,” although it does know “spellchecker” and “spellchecked.”

Today’s pointless computer fact brought to you by coffee at midnight.)

Hallowed Halls And Houses: Field Trips Part 1

I’ve been trying to study for a quiz tomorrow, which is probably not a big deal but which is very intimidating because of the sheer amount of material we’ve covered. I’m very unmotivated. Instead (for irony’s sake, I guess) I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting on how Oberlin and its lack of actual testing in social science and humanities classes have kind of ruined my study skills.

I learned my shit in Amy Margaris’s archaeology and human origins classes because I had to. Ditto for my history class about humankind’s relationships with animals. I half-ass learned my shit in my Classics courses—and it showed. The rest of my history and anthro classes were basically in one ear and out the other, if they even got that far. Sure, I’ve forgotten a lot from the classes I had exams in, but I’m sure it would come back to me with a little reminding. Meanwhile, I barely remember anything from the ones I wasn’t tested in, except for what I researched on my own for papers. Maybe it doesn’t really matter, but I’m positive some of that would have been useful to me in the future. And maybe I would have been overwhelmed if I’d had to remember all of it AND write papers and do projects, but as it was I wasn’t motivated to learn much of it at all because it wasn’t going to affect my grade and my other work was.

I think what I’m getting at here is that I might do better in this system.*

Of course, since I’m only here for one semester and will therefore end up having to write extra papers instead of sitting exams anyway, we may never know for sure.

Anyway, I promised an update about the field trips I’ve been on, so here goes:

We covered a LOT of ground the first day out, starting with an early medieval ringfort. They are apparently the most common type of archaeological site in Ireland (there are thousands of them), which is partly because a lot of them were left alone over the centuries because there was all kinds of folklore about fairies living in them and stuff like that. There wasn’t a lot to see, although I will put up some super-exciting (that’s sarcasm) photos later on. It’s all overgrown and there aren’t any structures left except for part of the embankments.

But it is on somebody’s farm, and you do have to troop across a pasture and through two gates to get to it, and there are cows watching you the whole time. So that was pleasantly familiar, and I think that probably had more to do with the big stupid grin on my face when we walked into the fort than the actual fort did. (Although, I was a lot more respectful of the site itself than some of my giggling, complaining classmates.)

But you know, I think I’d take barbed wire and fire ants over electric fences.

The next stop was Ballinacarriga Tower House, which was built in the fifteenth century. A tower house is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. This one is up on a steep hill and looks very imposing even as a ruin.

And after we stood outside and looked around for a while, and Dr. Ó Carragáin (look, I learned!) talked about its history and defensive features, he produced a big key and led us over to the barred metal door.

Some people started wondering aloud why he has a key, but I was pretty much going, “You’re seriously going to let me roam around inside a medieval fortress that hasn’t been touristified with signs and cleaning up and sections blocked off?!” Big stupid grin again.

It wasn’t actually as exciting as I thought it would be, and we didn’t get to explore all of it, just the ground floor and up the narrow winding staircase to the top floor, which was once a chapel (there are interesting carvings on the windows) and which is now open to the air because the roof is long gone. (As are all the wooden floors on the middle levels, leaving vast empty space inside most of the tower except for some small rooms along the front and sides that are entirely of stone, floors included.) But it was still pretty cool, at least partly because it’s not a tourist site. It is dark and dirty and sad, except for the chapel, which is bright and beautiful and sad.

We stopped for lunch at a hotel in Clonakilty, which is the village where Michael Collins was born, where we were given vast numbers of sandwiches. Afterwards, we saw another ruined stone house, this time bigger and less fortified and built in the early 1600s. We weren’t allowed to go in that one because it’s basically at the point of disrepair at which chunks of wall might fall on you at any moment. (Unlike Ballinacarriga, which is under the protection of some government organization, this house has not been preserved in any way and is now probably too far gone for anyone to start.)

The last place we went was Drombeg Stone Circle, high on a hill overlooking the ocean. It’s smaller than you might expect (rather than being disappointing, it just makes Stonehenge look all the more impressive), but very, very beautiful. I think that meant more to me than the tower house did, even though where Europe is concerned I normally think I’m more interested in the historic than the prehistoric.

So, that was a long day, but it was a very good day. I took lots of pictures. And it was really nice, for me, at least, to be out in the field poking around things (not to mention things you have to hike to from the road because they’re in the middle of a field or because the last stretches of roads are too narrow for a bus) and getting dirty and sweaty instead of staring at a Powerpoint—even if paved country roads in a chartered bus don’t really compare to being bounced down dirt lanes in the back of a pickup truck.

* I definitely pay attention better in an intelligent lecture than in a discussion class full of pompous idiots who think they’re intelligent. I’m also more likely to participate if a direct question is asked in a lecture than if I’m just expected to contribute to a class discussion. But I could have told you all that years ago.

The Summer's Gone

So, despite all the adventures I was having at first, and the fact that I wander around town and write blog posts instead of doing homework, it turns out I am in fact here as a student (not that I’ve actually gone to the Immigration office to get the official paperwork for that yet, but it’ll happen…). And as of last week, I have class for about three hours a day, every day except field trip days (when, arguably, I’m in class all day long).

I don’t remember what my class is called; it has a very long, generic name. But it’s a survey course about the archaeology of Ireland from the Neolithic all the way up through the early modern period. As of today, we’ve covered all of prehistory and started to get into the early medieval stuff, which means by next week we should get to Vikings! which is very exciting. Ireland has a surprisingly different archaeological record from that of Britain even before the Roman Empire (which took over Britain, but not Ireland), which I find very interesting. Maybe you don’t, I don’t know. But there’s a lot I didn’t (and still don’t) know about prehistory in any part of Europe, so up to now everything’s been new and exciting to me. And now that we’re moving into the historical period I can start filling in some of the gaps (read: gaping chasms) in my knowledge of Irish history, which was never very well covered in either my Western Civ class in high school or my European History survey course at Oberlin (the latter didn’t even come as far West as England very often).

These Early Start courses are only open to visiting international students, and apparently aren’t very popular with students coming from elsewhere in Europe. So my class is pretty big, but is made up entirely of Americans except for one Norwegian. On the one hand, I’m happy about this because it’s way less intimidating. On the other hand, it’s not exactly giving me any indications about what actual classes—or, more importantly, Irish students—are like. I kind of wish I could just stay in this forever instead of having to start the real semester in three weeks, which is partly due to being afraid of the Irish students (which I’m aware is ridiculous) and partly due to really liking my class. I’ve taken very few classes at Oberlin that could consistently hold my attention for the entire period. Sometimes even a really great professor can’t do it.

Anyway, this teacher has a name so Irish I can’t even spell it. Or pronounce it, for that matter.* He’s a historical archaeologist, which makes me think the lectures might get better as the topics get more recent, which would really be a treat considering I already enjoy them. He seems like a really nice guy and is a lot more laidback than I think the stereotype of a European professor** is made out to be. He’s quite happy to just chat with students after class or on field trips, and routinely tosses in corny jokes or snide remarks while lecturing. He’s not teaching any classes this fall as far as I know, which is a little sad because I probably would have tried to take something else with him. (As my Oberlin transcript can attest, I tend to latch onto teachers I like.)

We had our first field trip last week and our second tomorrow, both to sites that are all within a couple of hours of the city of Cork. I’ll discuss all that in a separate post since this one’s getting long. Next week we have an overnight trip to Dublin and County Meath, and the last week of class we’re going overnight again to the Burren (that’s the name of a region, not a single site), which is in the West of Ireland pretty far North of Cork.

* This seems like as good a time as any to mention that Irish Gaelic has me thoroughly mystified. I mean, I’ve started to recognize some words. But saying them out loud is something else entirely. For example, one stop on the DART is at Dún Laoghaire. You say, “Dun Leerie.” What? And I’ve heard people complain that the French use too many extra letters…
** That’s actually not a correct usage of the term over here, because you only get to be called Professor if you’re the head of your department (which he’s not). But it sounded better than “lecturer” in that sentence.

[We're] A Long Way From Home

When I got to the hotel, I was met at the front desk by Maria, one of the staff members from IFSA-Butler’s Ireland office (conveniently located just across the square outside the hotel), who gave me some information, and a map of Dublin I obviously didn’t need, and a voucher for yet ANOTHER tour bus pass, and placed me in a double room with a girl named Kelsey, whom she explained was actually just coming up from Cork to meet us new arrivals and hang out with us during orientation, since she herself had actually done the program last spring, stayed on in Cork over the summer, and arranged to attend UCC for another semester this fall.

Other than two girls who had arrived over the weekend and were staying in a different room, I was the first one there, and there wasn’t anything planned for us until dinner, so after lying around for a couple of hours I wandered out to investigate the National Gallery (which happened to be about two buildings down the street from the hotel). On the way out, I met another IFSA person, Suzy, the one who actually lives here in Cork (I think she might be a grad student? She’s a UCC alum, at any rate.), who was sitting on the front steps with her dog. The most beautiful dog I have ever seen in my life. And I’m pretty sure that’s not hyperbole. She’s some kind of sighthound, sleek and elegant, about the size and shape of a Pharaoh hound (as far as I know; certainly bigger and heavier than most greyhounds), but solid, shiny black. I don’t think a person would need to know half as much as I know about dogs to appreciate how gorgeous this girl is. And I’m not even a huge fan of sighthounds, in general.

… But I’m sure you don’t care as much as I did. So moving on. The National Gallery is enormous and has much to offer art connoisseurs. But if you know me, you know that I like ancient art. Art with historical significance. Decorative art on objects. I prefer things to paintings, and though I have nothing against paintings, I have to be in the mood to look at dozens of rooms of them without getting bored. I was not in that mood two Mondays ago.

Mostly, I was there to see the Caravaggio that all of Dublin seemed so proud of, and this I accomplished. It’s of Jesus being arrested. I sat and looked at it for a while. It didn’t do much for me.

I did walk around a lot of the other European galleries, and saw some things I enjoyed, including a not-very-famous Van Gogh I really liked. But I should probably go back and try again if I have time on my next visit to Dublin. There are definitely things I would appreciate more if I was more willing to take the time for them, and I basically skipped the Irish art wing, which feels just a little bit wrong, considering.

I had a late, awkward lunch by myself in a café around the corner and then went back to the hotel. Suzy and the dog, Sooty, were still on the steps, and we bonded a bit more about loving dogs, and how beautiful and regal Sooty is (“Yeah, she knows it,” was Suzy’s response to something particularly gushing that I said), and Suzy asked me to hold the lead while she went inside for a moment, which pretty much made my day.

Kelsey turned up shortly before we were due in the lobby for dinner. She was very talkative and friendly and could not say enough nice things about Cork.

Dinner was at a pub in Temple Bar called The Purty Kitchen, which was pretty authentically Irish (possibly the only place I ate in Dublin that was). After much deliberation, I settled on beef and Guinness pie (which was fine but which I probably will not order again anywhere else—although at least I can honestly say that I’ve consumed Guinness, and let people assume what they will from that statement). Afterwards, Kelsey sort of took charge of us and we went to a pub down the street where several girls ordered their first-ever drinks (I had forgotten until arriving that I would almost certainly be the oldest, since most normal people go abroad junior year). It wasn’t very exciting since it was still too early for most people to be out, but it was good initial bonding time and good question-Kelsey-about-everything time.

In addition to myself, there are four other girls here for Early Start through IFSA-Butler: Abby, Chelsea, Kristin, and Carolyn. I genuinely like all of them. Abby and Carolyn are in the archaeology class with me. I’ve barely seen Abby (outside of class, that is) since we got to Cork, and haven’t spent a lot of time with Chelsea, although we run into each other fairly often. Kristin and Carolyn and I are still spending a lot of time together.

There is also Roger, who is also from Oberlin (no, we did not know each other beforehand), who was not present at dinner that first night because he was delayed in getting to Dublin. He turned up about halfway through orientation Tuesday morning. He’s around, here in Cork, but I haven’t really hung out with him since we got here, either.

There’s not a lot more to say about Dublin, I guess. We had orientation talks in the IFSA office, which is very cozy and on the basement level of a Georgian townhouse, on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, followed by lunches in nice Dublin restaurants. On Tuesday afternoon Suzy dropped us off at the Guinness Storehouse for a tour. As I’m sure you can guess, I had approximately zero interest in being there, but since it was paid-for and it’s one of those things tourists are basically required to do, I guess I’m glad I went. And the bar at the very top of the building is circular and has one giant window all the way around, so you have a panoramic view of Dublin for several miles in EVERY direction. I almost-literally ran around it taking pictures.

Wednesday afternoon we just had free time, and I convinced everyone except Roger and Chelsea that we wanted to go to the Collins Barracks Museum (the National Museum of History and Decorative Arts), but by the time we got there (by tour bus again, so it was a lengthy ride) it was closing in less than an hour and we only had time to rush through a war history exhibit. But that was neat, and I will definitely be going back to see the rest of the museum when I return to Dublin, so I don’t have any regrets about that.

And then Thursday we got up and got on a bus and came to Cork, so that’s orientation week in a nutshell. I’m sure I planned to include more detail at the time, but since I’m so far behind I’ll leave it there for now, and maybe sprinkle in a story or two later on if I remember.

Next up: first week of classes in Cork, and my weekend adventures.