As you may already know, I am in Ireland. Carlow, Ireland. If you don’t know and stumbled across this blog, I am veering off my regular course of study this semester, taking an academic break from history and turning my focus to fiction and creative writing at Carlow College. It has been just over two weeks and I am excited that I still many months before May 21st gets here and I have to fly back home. Before beginning I feel the need to let readers know that this is MUCH LONGER than the posts I plan to make in the future. But because this is the first one I am not sure what to omit. Also, this is on the blog site so I feel compelled to write in a way that is more comfortable for myself (English Majors and Instructors beware: I love fragments!).
(Unfortunately, technical difficulties have prevented me from uploading pictures onto the blog site. I invite you to look through my many pictures via the links at the bottom of the article.)
Let’s get to it. I left January 5th for Dublin from O’Hare at 7:15pm and landed around 9am. No, it did not take twelve hours to get from point O to point D. The time difference between Chicago and Ireland is six hour. When we arrived at the airport I met up with the five students that are in the program with me. Two I had met previous and three I just met for the first time there in Dublin Airport. I should mention that they are all women… making the class and the field trips very interesting for me, the only male student. But I digress.
The first thing I bought in Ireland was an Egg McMuffin from McDonald’s. This was also my first experience with a different currency. I am not going to lie; I was initially baffled when 1.60 Euro came back as all change. It has remained somewhat difficult to get used to the currency. It is not the conversion rate (which is 1.33 USD to 1 Euro) but the endless amount of change that seems to build up in your pocket if you don’t utilize it. The Euro coins you can accumulate goes as follows: 1 cent, 2 cents, 5 cents, 10 cents, 20 cents, 50 cents, 1 Euro, and 2 Euros. This means you’re usually digging for change. It can be difficult at a pub sometimes because the 1 Euro coin is about the same size as the 50 cent and 2 Euro coins. While watching the Bears play the Seahawks, my friends and I had stacks of coins we were sorting through to make the buying process simpler. It can feel like a hassle sometimes but it is certainly fun to use a different currency.
The apartments we have are fairly small but it already feels like home. It has three bedrooms, one bathroom, and a kitchen/dining room/living room. We have the opportunity to pay per use for a washer and dryer nearby and wireless Internet in the Carraig Abhainn apartments comes at the price of 60 Euros for the entire semester. Our apartment manager gave us a quick tour of the apartment when we arrived and our faculty liaison Eric Derr took us around town right after.
The downside to living in the Carraig Abhainn apartments is the walking distance to town and to school. It seemed like the first trip to Aldi, a 15-20 minute walk, took an hour. Of course a long plane ride and jet lag probably added to the effect. Eric took us down Tullow Street, the thriving main street in Carlow. Tullow Street is full of people shopping in the morning and afternoon but at night locals and students swarm the streets. Eric showed us various pubs and shops that would be of interest to us including Ireland’s biggest nightclub outside of Dublin, The Foundry. After Tullow, we went down Burrin Street and turned on Kennedy Avenue toward Penny’s. Penny’s is a great place to buy clothes and bedding on a budget. We were on our own after that until we met with Eric and our Carlow College advisor Padraigin Caesar the next morning for orientation.
On the first Saturday we met some French students that also live in Carraig Abhainn. We got to know each other and made out way to the Barracks, a nice pub with a good number of High-Definition television screens. The one we could see downstairs was playing the Wild Card Playoff game between the Saints and Seahawks. Ah, it almost felt like home. Except only the few Americanos in the bar were watching.
As an American, a couple of noteworthy things happened in the two hours we were there. First, I assumed that everyone in Ireland loved Guinness. Wrong. But I still bought a Guinness for my first drink at the pub. After paying a ridiculous amount for the stout drink, I made the decision to try something else. A friend insisted I try Smithwicks, another Irish beer. After trying it once I fell in love. The ale is far superior to the many beers I have tried in the past. So that was what I drank throughout the night (At a later facility, The Med Bar, I was finally denied service until I could pronounce the drink correctly. It is not Smith-Wicks. No, no. It is Smitt-Icks. The Irish hate the letter H, some linking it to England, and therefore the pronunciation is entirely changed).
The second thing that happened caused me to feel homesick for the first time since leaving home. The football game just started back up, and I believe the Seahawks were up 31-20 over the Saints. I got distracted talking with somebody for a couple of minutes and looked back at the screen. There were now college basketball players running back and forth along the court. I was in disbelief. Did somebody really just turn off an NFL Playoff game for college basketball? Yes, they did. I was certainly far from home at that moment. Being a sports guy, I was suddenly worried that I would never see my Bears play this post-season. My cable package here is minimal and doesn’t carry the channel the NFL is on (thankfully, we talked with people in charge the following week and we are set for the Bears/Packers game as well as the Superbowl). But the Irish, and most Europeans, don’t know the game and don’t care they don’t know it. Football has too many breaks and is much too slow for them to follow.
A couple other things have happened since arriving in Ireland that took me off guard. The first happened the second day here when Shelby and I walked into a Pizza Hut and tried to order breadsticks. The guy at the counter looked at me for a moment, looking like I just spoke a completely foreign language, and said, “What?” “Breadsticks,” I say. It still didn’t register; he had no idea what I was ordering. Finally a worker nearby knew what I was asking for and said no, they didn’t have breadsticks. The man at the counter jokingly called us “bloody yanks” and I just ordered some chicken wings. Later I found that they have garlic bread, but not what we are accustom to in America.
A few days later I was in a shop looking for a shirt to wear out to the club for my first Wednesday out (Wednesdays are pretty much a Friday or Saturday night in Carlow because most of the college kids go home for the weekend). I tried a few things on and was making conversation with the lady working the register. I made my purchase and before turning to leave I cordially told her to “have a good night.” She responded with, “Oh, my night was lovely…” She thought I was asking her about her previous night. I awkwardly nodded and left after a goodbye. As expected, I have avoided that misunderstood phrase since.
Other tidbits: the Irish dislike George Bush and love Obama. I am often asked if I like Obama. I am lucky to live near Chicago because everyone here knows where that is in the States. The roads are extremely narrow near most small towns so cars often have to slow down when approaching each other. In our tour bus, we have been on roads where it is necessary to come to a complete stop to let a car go by us. Lastly, the scenery is unbelievably beautiful after spending so much time in and around cornfields.
We have six field trips included with our program and we take them the first six Fridays. So far we have taken two: A tour of County Carlow and a trip to County Wexford (pictures available via a link at the bottom of the article).
There are 26 Counties in Ireland and County Carlow is one of the smallest. We were able to travel to the most historical places in the county in one day. We visited an old church/graveyard that was constructed in about the Eleventh century and was the site that brought people to create and settle in Carlow Town. Carlow sits in a valley and the county has one of the richest farmlands in all of Ireland. The hills on one side contain limestone and the other granite; both minerals important to the building process in Ireland’s history. In one of my pictures, we are able to see three or four counties. It was really a sight. We saw other old churches and monasteries on this day, including a church built in 1204.
We ate at a pub in a local town, eating chicken goujons and chips (chips=French fries). It was good craic, and the best meal I had the whole first week after eating pasta almost the entire time. Oh, and craic means a good time. I did not smoke crack. Craic is also used like hello. “What’s the craic?” or “What’s up?” Now you know!
Then the most exciting part of the day. We traveled up the Blackstairs mountains to the Nine Stones and saw a remarkable view of the county. It really can’t be explained in words so check out the pictures. We made our way up part of the mountain on foot and witnessed beauty. ‘Nuff said. We traveled along extremely narrow roads to get back to civilization and out to the town of Tullow. From there we made our way to Duckett’s Grove, a castle used for hundreds of years and only recently donated to the State. This was the perfect ending to an unbelievable day.
Just this previous Friday, the group and I made our way to County Wexford where we toured the National Heritage Park and went to Curracloe Beach, the beach where the beginning of Saving Private Ryan was filmed. We learned a little about early living in Ireland with reconstructions of living quarters, burial sites, and monasteries. The exhibits went quite well with the lesson we had in our mandated Irish Experience class this week. The tour was followed by lunch at a pub in Wexford and then a drive to Curracloe Beach. It was pretty amazing to see the same flat beach I have witnessed in Saving Private Ryan numerous times, of course it looked a little different. The day was much more calm compared with the Carlow tour but was just as enjoyable.
While on the subject of classes, I will explain what the schedule looks like for members of the ICISP program. It varies little from person to person at Carlow College, but the College is geared toward Humanities students or those taking Humanities courses for the semester. Each class meets only once a week for a two-hour lecture (often with a ten minute break). An optional tutorial is offered and you are recommended to attend once in a while to keep up with studies and to learn a little extra information your Professor may not have gone into detail on or addressed at all during lecture. Most classes have no homework, but a midterm and a final Essay (research paper) are about 95% of the course grade, so you have to show up (continuous absences are not allowed through the ICISP program). The Professors are extremely knowledgeable, very nice, and do a good job at keeping students engaged to make the two hours fly.
I have learned quite a bit in the past two weeks about Europe from the French students we meet with often, the news, and my roommate who is from Spain. It is interesting to see the conception of America when talking with the Irish: it is the land of opportunity…Hollywood (we heard from a traveling American about a bar in Cork modeled after the movie Coyote Uglythat plays an unrealistic play list of American songs, has employees dancing on the table, and the people randomly chant, “USA! USA! USA!” because they apparently think that is what we do over in America).
Well, this was a three-day effort to write down as much as I could about the first few weeks in Carlow. Infinite paper allows me to carry on sometimes.
If you have ANY questions or would like to hear specific examples of a night out at the club, pub, around the apartments, the college, etc, you are encouraged to leave a comment on this blog or e-mail me at sconro@st.kishwaukeecollege.edu.
To check out other study abroad options offered, go to the Kishwaukee College website for more information. Just go to Current Students and find Study Abroad Programs!
Pictures:
County Carlow:
County Wexford:
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