What's to come

Finally, I’ve come to my last post of the night. Yes, I’m maxing out at four of them tonight.

I just wanted to take a few minutes to fill you in on what I’ll be up to for the next three weeks or so. Michelle’s leaving today (just under three hours from now… I guess that’s what happens when I’m up doing homework all night!), and she’s taking a bag full of stuff back to NYC with her. Among that “stuff” would be my laptop, so I likely won’t be posting anything else on this blog ‘til I get back to ‘sota.

Sadly, our time in Ireland is over on Saturday, December 4^th. Myself, Molly, Erin, and Taylor have a flight booked for Paris on Sunday morning, and for the next week, we’ll be in France. Afterwards, Molly and I will continue down into Spain (Barcelona, Valencia, Sevilla? Not quite sure which ones yet) for about three days, then Italy for another three days (we’ll probably just stay in the northern part of the country). Then we head up to London for two more nights, and fly home to MSP on December 18^th.

Until then, I’ll share two bits of Irish wisdom that I picked up along the way:

May you have:

Walls for the wind

And a roof for the rain,

And drinks bedside the fire

Laughter to cheer you

And those you love near you,

And all that your heart may desire

~Traditional Celtic blessing

And a bit less traditional…

You guys are now starting to get the depressing cold rainy weather,

so drink early and often to battle the cold!

Slainte!

SNOW

While I'm in the festive spirit, I may as well fill you in on another fun fact!

Friday evening, we saw our first snowfall! Yes, snow in IRELAND! In fact, it snowed SO MUCH (1/4 inch) that one of our professors can't make it down to Galway, so it's a (partial) SNOW DAY!!

Apparently no CSB/SJU program has ever seen snowfall in Ireland in the 24 years it's been going on. WOO-HOO!!

Thanksgiving!

What can be better than...

family;

Michelle came to visit for five days!

friends;

and fellowship? (a good game of American-style football on a hurling pitch in Ireland)???

Oh yeah, how 'bout a fantastic turkey dinner;

Or enjoying the company of a good Irishman?

Or even seeing some spectacular views on our last full weekend here in Ireland?

Yeah, I think I had a good Thanksgiving!

Quick one on Dublin

We went to Dublin a few weeks ago, so I'm just going to give you a brief synopsis of what we did.

Thursday: Kilmainham jail, the place where the leaders of the 1916 Easter Uprising were "tried" and executed. Also, we went to the Abbey Theater for the play "John Gabriel Borkman." Afterwards, we got to explore/wander/indulge in the Temple Bar area.

Friday: Newgrange, a megalithic tomb. Newgrange was built over 5,000 years ago (older than the pyramids at Giza). The pictures can show how spectacular it was (sorry, not allowed to take pics inside)!

Saturday: Bus tour of Dublin. <--- Very bad. We had a pretty poor guide. Bummer.

Leprechaun museum <--- Very good.

We literally turned into leprechauns!

Sunday: Hill of Tara, the crowning place of the high kings of Ireland (and a pretty sweet place to chase sheep).

Yeah, this is a short one. Dublin wasn't really my favorite city, so I don't really have a ton to say about it.

An Spidéal

I figured I'd just toss out a few pics of the local neighborhood.

"Monks don't get angry; Monks get even."

On a chilly morning in November, our group left the Park Lodge Hotel just as the sun rose. Our destination? Glenstal Abbey, a Benedictine monastery located just outside of Limerick. I think I can safely say that the experience we had at Glenstal was probably one of the coolest I've had in Ireland to this point.

We arrived about fifteen minutes before the Sunday mass, so we joined the monastic community and the rest of their parish for mass. I don't know what it is about Benedictine masses, but they are always really appealing to me. Afterwards, we met up with the monks for coffee and biscuits and a bit of socializing. Soon, we went on a mystical adventure through the forest with Brother Anthony.

Brother Anthony has been the caretaker of the forest for the past forty years, and he is absolutely HILARIOUS. I had no idea whether I should be taking him seriously or not, because some of the things he was saying were soooooo outrageous that we couldn't help but laugh. We wandered the forest with him for about an hour and a half, listening to stories of the forest.

Afterwards, we were treated to a gourmet lunch, courtesy of the boarding school's cafeteria. This was yet another opportunity for us to socialize with the monks, so my table got to know Brother Cuthbert pretty well. Turns out that he was leading the tour of Glenstal right after lunch!

Oddly enough, the abbey was built in the 1800s, but modeled after an 11th century castle. If you ever wanted to go to school in a castle, Glenstal is the place to be. With spiral staircases and tower libraries, it has everything you could possibly desire and then some more! After the tour, we broke into two smaller groups. One group went with Brother Cuthbert to tour the library; the other group met up with Father Gregory to examine the relic chapel. Both were fantastic.

After we finished the tours, we went to (another) coffee/tea/cookie reception. We had the next 30 minutes to chat with the monks about whatever we wanted. Turns out several of them have connections with Collegeville already, and they hope to continue an exchange between the two monasteries. Fr. Gregory was absolutely fascinated by the concept of walking on lakes in the winter, so we were more than happy to tell stories about the cold Minnesota winters! Kind of makes me want to be home in the snow already!

Time to get caught up

After a rough night (exactly 86 minutes of sleep), what better time to catch my loyal readers up on some Irish stories than now? I'm warning you in advance, the quality of writing may not be up to par for this one. Actually, it's more likely that I'll resort to bullet points. Yeah, that sounds good.

The last significant post you got from me was the last leg of our travel break. Here's a bit of what I've been up to since then:

• Story: Undertook specialized training and became a master cow herder.
  Reality: Some old guy asked myself, Will, and Ted to stand in front of a cow with a big stick so it wouldn't run off.
  
  
• Story: Conquered the Galway Bay crabs
  Reality: Rory, the local taxi driver (and likely the coolest old Irish guy I know), decided to drop off a bag full of crab claws for our cottage. After much confusion, we ended up boiling them, cracking the shells between the table and a chopping board, and eating them. Messy? Yes. Delicious? Incredibly.
  
  
• Story: Celebrating a 21st birthday of a good friend with much class and style.
  Reality: Take out the class and style and it's pretty much dead on.
  
  
• Story: Mourned the loss of any chance of a productive government for the next two years.
  Reality: See above.

In addition, I undertook a few adventures revolving around a scuba diving trip:

• Braved the stage ten winds (roughly 78 mph) and rain while waiting for a bus
• Spent an incredibly boring seven hours in the village of Letterfrack, which is complete with two pubs, a hostel, and a county market. The dive was cancelled, but I had left Spiddal before they could get ahold of me. Oops.
• FINALLY enduring the 50 degree waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Included in my adventure would be hermit, velvet, and edible crabs; starfish; pollock; and finally...

...this guy.