UCC Traditional Irish Music Society

Last night Meghan and I made it back to The Spailpin Fanac to listen to some traditional Irish music!  Every Monday at 9:30 the UCC Traditional Irish Music Society plays at this pub.  I got a video so you all could listen to the music! It's really dark so you can't see much but we got a pretty good seat so the audio is pretty good...

Click here to watch video.

We've been learning about this music in class too.  We have learned about bagpipes, fiddles, harps, and flutes.  Our professor has brought in a lot of CD's for us to listen to the different styles of music.   She also plays a lot of these instruments so we get to hear them live too.  She brought in her set of bag pipes last week for class, it was really cool!

I snapped a couple pictures of inside the pub before it filled up:

Galway This Weekend!

This weekend Meghan and I have decided go to Galway! Galway is a fairly popular artsy town on the western coast of Ireland.  My roommates and other Irish students tell us that we must go to Galway while we are in Ireland.  By the looks of my book and what we've heard it sounds like there is a lot of stuff to do there and it has good night life.

We will be leaving Friday afternoon, taking a 3 hour bus ride, and arriving in Galway at 2pm.  We will be staying in a student hostel both Friday and Saturday night in the heart of the city centre.  We will also be celebrating Meghan's 21st birthday which is this Sunday!  It will be a fun weekend and I'm sure I will have a lot to share on Sunday when I get back to Cork!

An Spailpin Fanac

This weekend another American student, Marissa, brought us to a pub just around the corner from our apartment called An Spailpin Fanac.  This means the migrant worker in Irish.  It is the most authentic looking pub that I've been into here.  It's dark, has low ceilings, brick walls, old men sitting at the bar, and open fireplaces.  I loved the atmosphere! 

The Spailpin has live music every night starting at 9:30.  The music on Friday night wasn't the old traditional Irish music but we were told that students play traditional Irish music on Monday nights!  We will be making our way back there tomorrow night to hear it.  I tried to get a video of the music on Friday night but it was too loud and we were too far away.  I'll try again tomorrow!

One song that the singer sang on Friday was an Irish version of "This Land is Your Land".  Everyone in the pub knew the song.  If it wasn't so loud in there the video would have sounded a lot like this...click here to listen.

UCC vs. UCD

This afternoon Meghan and I wandered down to the Mardyke Sports Arena to watch the UCC rugby team play UCD (University College Dublin).  We are the red players on the field.  Schools don't really have mascots here but we are called the UCC "Rebels" and the symbol that they use for athletics is a skull and crossbones.

Rugby is definitely a full contact sport.  This game is a lot rougher than American football and their uniforms consist of a lot less protection.  About 15 players from each team are on the field at a time and no one really comes off the field unless they get hurt.  Rugby has two 40 minute halfs.

Rugby is one of the most popular sports here in Ireland. After stopping into a sports bar after the game today it looks like there is a big European rugby tournament coming up.  The national team is called the Ireland Wolfhounds.

Some Irish follow American Football.  You have to call it American football here because football to them means Gaelic football, which is a different sport.  I met a "lad" at the pub the other night who knew who the Iowa State Cyclones were!  The International Students Society will be playing the Superbowl on campus on next Sunday night.  We have been asking around and it doesn't sound like they play it in any of the pubs in town.

Port of Cork

This afternoon Meghan, this girl Marissa, and I went walking to the east edge of town.  It was very nice here today! The sun was shining here for most of the afternoon. Here are a few pictures that I took along the way...

Almost all of the houses here have their door knobs in the middle of the doors, weird!

We found the Port of Cork and the train station.  There were a bunch of big barges in the marina.

Meghan, Melissa, and I are just getting ready to go out to the pubs tonight! We are on a mission to find a pub with some traditional Irish music. I hope everyone is having a good weekend!

London it is!

Meghan and I will be traveling to London from February 9th-13th!  I have an old friend from high school who is interning there for a semester.  We will be staying with her in her flat in West London.  She has been there for two weeks now so it will be nice to have a tour guide who knows where things are!

I'm hoping to check these things off my list:
-Big Ben
-London Eye
-Westminster Abby
-Buckingham Palace
-Ride a double decker bus
-Get the classic picture in a red telephone booth
-Abbey Road
-Find the site of this summer's Olympics
-Pester a guard wearing a fuzzy black hat

If any of you have been to London before and have suggestions, please comment below or shoot me an email!

Immigration Office

Today we made my way to a new part of town to attempt register with the immigration office in Cork.  We went after class which happen to fall over the lunch hour.  The lunch hour seems like a good and logical time to run errands at home...well, not in Ireland.  Every office in the town shuts down for at least an hour over lunch.  It appears that government offices get a cushy two hours. We arrived just after their windows closed for lunch.  So our logical solution to this problem...

This is the Market Tavern.  This pub was really cozy and the bartender was really friendly so we will definitely be going back.  Does anyone notice the green Iowa license plate in the upper left? It was calling my name!

After the lunch hour we made it back to the immigration office.  This office had a very similar feeling to a DMV.  After standing in a long line for an hour we were told that we didn't have a necessary form filled out and that it doesn't need to be done until April.  However if I wait I may be able to avoid the 150 Euro immigration processing fee. We spend four hours waiting around for nothing.  This picture was clearly taken before I went through this whole DMV-like process given my attitude.  Garda means guard or police in Irish.  As you can see the sun was shining all afternoon.  It was so nice!  I don't think my face has seen sunshine in weeks.

Update: Meghan and I are finally leaving Ireland!  We booked our flight tonight for our first trip from February 9th through the 13th.  I'll update you all tomorrow on where!

Alleys & Mushy Peas

Although I've been walking around this town for almost three weeks now I'm still seeing new things every day.  There are so many small alleyways off the main drag with one of a kind gift shops, pubs, and restaurants.  I think that if I ate at a different restaurant here for every meal during my stay in Cork I would still miss a couple.  

**I was about to snatch that little pink munchkin on the left side of this picture, she was so adorable!  There's nothing cuter than a toddler with an Irish accent.

There's another aspect of the Irish life that I need to share with you all. Mushy peas.  The Irish are obsessed with these things.  My roommates eat them all the time for dinner.  They look like peas thrown in a blender, or baby food essentially.  My roommate Laura asked me if I wanted to try them one night and I did.  They weren't bad because I love peas!  It just tasted like peas that had already been chewed up by someone else before they reached my mouth.  I wouldn't avoid them if they were served to me but I decided that I prefer the round vegetable. 

A Visit to the Doctor & Hot Shakes

As you may have noticed, I have been out of commission these past few days.  I woke up a few mornings ago with a sore throat and fever which has gotten progressively worse.  After a late night trip to a doctor and pharmacy last night, it looks like I have tonsillitis.

There isn't much to share about the last couple days other than I've been spending a lot of time in bed catching up on Desperate Housewives.  Eating has been pretty much impossible with my throat, however, Meghan and I did make a stop at Hot Shakes last night.  We met a local in a pub the other night who told us he works at this place that sells hot milkshakes.  We were so intrigued by the idea of a hot milkshake that we had to try it out!  It also seemed like something my throat would enjoy.

Hot Shakes has a ton of flavors to pick from.  They use vanilla ice cream for all of their shakes and add the ingredient to make the flavor.  If you pick chocolate muffin, they literally put chocolate muffin into your milkshake, it's not artificial flavoring.  They had so many flavors to pick from!  Some include rolo, apple pie, carrot cake, lemon cheesecake, orange tic tac, special k cereal, and oreo.  Some of the flavors seem like they would be disgusting, it must be an acquired taste. You can order your milkshake either hot or cold.  I got a hot reeces milkshake and Meghan got a hot chocolate muffin milkshake.   They were pretty good!  We decided that a hot milkshake is essentially a flavored hot chocolate.

Roommates

Here is a picture of my roommates and I from last night! They are the girls in this picture...

From left to right it's Lorna, Elaine, Laura, Me, Kerri, and my friend Meghan from home.  The other two guys are Mark and Liam.  They are Laura's friends from her hometown.  We had a lot of fun hanging out with them!  They were so interested in how we live in America and they loved our vocabulary.

I finally have all of my documents prepared for the immigration officers and I'm headed to their office tomorrow.  Hopefully they let me stay because I sure like it here!!

Opera Lane

Well here is a picture of the street that I am trying my hardest to avoid.  It is pretty difficult given that it is right in the middle of the city centre. This is Opera Lane...

It is the street with all of the top clothing stores on it.  It has familiar stores like Tommy Hilfiger, Gap, and H&M.  It also has a lot of European and one of a kind stores like Topshop, New Look, and Next.  They all give at least a 10% discount with a university ID which justifies shopping, right?

In addition to the stores on Opera Lane they have a T.K. Maxx, and no that "k" is not a typo.  They have the same store and logo as T.J. Maxx here it's just has a K instead of  J.

Well my roommates are having some of their hometown friends up for the night!  I can't wait to meet some more Irish people! Slainte! (cheers in Irish)

Fun fact: The word "whisky" in Irish is uisce beatha and it translates literally to "water of life".

Dia dhuit!

As you can see I attended my first Intro to Irish class this morning!  The phrase above says hello and it directly translates to "God to you".  If you were to say hello back to me you would say "dia's muire dhuit" and that directly translates to "God and Mary to you".  I'm glad none of you are able to ask me how to pronounce these phrases because I couldn't do it...yet.  If I were to tell you where I live in Irish it would be Corcaigh, Eire.  This say Cork, Ireland.  The word Cork directly translates to marsh or swamp.

Small world story: This afternoon I ran into my roommate Laura and she was wearing an Iowa State softball wind breaker.  I looked at her funny, started laughing, and asked her where she got that apparel from.  She told me she got it from her cousin and asked me if I had ever heard of that school.  I had told her that I went to Iowa State University when I met her but she never put two and two together with the sweatshirt that she owned.  Long story short--her cousin is the director of operations for the Iowa State athletics department. This blows my mind!!

Yesterday when I went to the grocery store I stumbled across a jar of peanut butter!! I got so excited because everyone told me that they wouldn't have peanut butter here.  It's even "american style" says the label.  It was kind of expensive (4 Euro=$5 USD) but I decided that it was worth it.  I came home from the store and made some peanut butter toast because I was so excited!

I'm watching the Golden Globes tonight with my roommates.  American TV programs play here in Ireland but they are usually a few nights delayed if it's a single program.  TV series play about a season delayed.  The Irish movie theaters (or cinemas as they call them) play a combination of American and films from England.  However, they do not come out at the same time as they do in America.  They usually premiere about month later.

Slan go Foill! (Goodbye for a while)

Guinness

My trip would not be complete without a picture of me and a pint of Guinness...

I'm just sitting in my apartment patiently waiting for my roommates to come back for the week!

The Cork City Gaol

Today Meghan and I went to the Cork City Gaol (or jail).  It was a couple miles away from our apartment. Here's a picture of me on a not-so-sturdy bridge on the way to the gaol.  Please notice the pink mansion in the background.

The tour was given by a cassette tape (old school?) that we wore around our neck and a set of headphones.  Here's a picture of me and a wax figure of the governor who interviewed each inmate that came into the gaol.

The Cork City Gaol was open until 1923.  Here is a picture of the west end.  We were able to go into some of these cells and hear stories of specific inmates that were in the cells.  It was pretty interesting! There was even writing on some of the walls from the inmates that they were able to preserve.  

This is a picture of the exercise lawn.  If an inmate wanted to exercise they had to walk in a single file line around in a circle.  Doesn't sound very recreational to me. You can still see their tracks in the lawn. 

The tour was really interesting and kind of eerie.  On their brochure it says that you can set up a night tour if you have 30+ people or host a corporate event their.  Creepy!  Now let's hope I won't have to see the inside of the current Cork City Gaol.

Cars

I would say that 3 out of every 4 cars on the road are these small station wagon looking cars.  It is very rare to see anything larger than a car here.  I've only seen a few SUV's.  Public transportation is huge here.  Bus Eireann is a big bus company that transports people around Cork but also does long distance routes around Ireland.  Here's a picture of the double-decker Cork busses! Although Cork is small enough where I can walk everywhere, at some point I will ride on the 2nd story of one of these!

Here is a picture of my roommate Lorna and I from last night.  A couple of my roommates have mentioned bringing me back to their hometowns for a weekend to stay with their family and meet their friends.  They keep telling me how delighted their mothers would be!  I told them how fun that would be for me so I hope it pulls through!

A not-so-fun fact: I have come to find out from locals that Kristi is a boys name in Ireland and it's spelled like "Christy".  Great...

The Lough

Before coming to Ireland I was looking around on Google Maps of the area that I was living in.  I saw that there was a huge park about a mile south of my apartment.  Today when I woke up I went to go look for it!  It was pretty hard to miss.  While I was walking down the hill to the park I got my first glimpse of the Irish countryside! It was so beautiful!  Here's a picture:

At the bottom of this hill is the park.  It's called The Lough (the Irish pronounce this like "lock") It is a huge man made lake with two walking paths, benches, a park, and restaurants around it.  I decided it would be a great place to go running!

There were a ton of birds sitting in the lake and flying around.  There were swans, ducks, pigeons, seagulls, and a few birds that I've never seen before.

I'll add some more pictures to the top of my blog of my adventure today!

Food

There are a lot of different terms for food here. Grocery shopping and ordering food at restaurants takes more time because I need to translate the food.  French fries in Ireland are called chips and they are the thicker wedge or steak cut fries.  You can only find the skinny ones at McDonalds and Burger King.  They are served with almost everything.  They were even a side option at the authentic Chinese restaurant that we went to!  Potato chips are called crisps here. Hamburger is called mince.  A zucchini is called a crochet. Pop is called fizz drink. Also, the ketchup is different here, it's sweeter.  The Irish also love sweet chili sauce!! It's as common as ketchup here.  

My Irish roommates eat a lot later than me.  They eat lunch around 2pm and they are just starting to all make dinner now (8:30).  They eat beef or pork with potatoes and a lot of vegetables covered in gravy most nights.  

Does anyone need me to overnight them some roast turkey or shrimp cocktail Pringles?? Gross.

I don't have school tomorrow or Friday.  I am going to go walking around tomorrow when I wake up.  There is a big park just south of my apartment that I want to go find. I'm sure I will have lots of pictures to share!

Roommates & Class

My Irish roommates have arrived! There is Lorna and Kerri from Limerick, Laura from Kerry, and Elaine is from West Cork. They are all really nice and we have been getting to know each other the past couple nights. Their accents are pretty thick and I find myself asking them to repeat themselves a lot.  They go to the College of Commerce here in Cork. It sounds like they are enrolled in a temporary program before they go to a university.  They have school from 9-5 every day...a lot more than I do.  Their vocabulary is a lot different and it's been pretty humorous trying to figure out what each other is trying to say.

I was making a grilled cheese for lunch and my roommate Lorna walked into the kitchen and started laughing.  She was like "Why are you making that toasty in a pan?! We have an oven you know!" She had never seen someone make a sandwich that way.  It was pretty funny.

They will be going home every weekend. It's just what the Irish students do. They are already counting down the days...it's weird. They don't understand why American students don't go home on the weekends when we are at college.

Today was my second day of school! Unlike in the United States, the professors just show up to class whenever they please.  At Iowa State we pretty much start right on time and if a teacher doesn't show up in 10 minutes everyone just leaves and assumes class is cancelled. I sat in class for 25 minutes today waiting for the professor and no one left!  None of the students take notes either which is very different.  I can't tell if they're just lazy or we don't need to.  As you can see from my schedule, I'm taking a couple business electives.  In my classes my professors were using the US market, companies, and CEO's for most of their examples which is convenient. They kept saying "Now, is anyone familiar with the American company Walmart? Or Victoria's Secret?" I just kind of laughed to myself as everyone shook their heads.

Saint Finbarrs Cathedral

Well here is the other view out of my window...

This is St. Finbarrs Cathedral! It is a massive french gothic style cathedral. It is just down the block from me and it is spectacular! I walk past it every day on my way to school. It has choir services every Sunday and I want to go to one.  I can only imagine what it looks like inside!

It looks really of eerie at night, like it's in a horror movie! They light it up with these orange lights.  However, it has become quite convenient when we get lost or are wandering home from the pubs because it's so tall! I was rudely woken up on Sunday by the cathedral's bells that were sounding for 20 minutes, yes, 20 minutes! It sounded pretty at first but it got really obnoxious really quick.  Hopefully I will get used to them. Here are some closer pictures...

Getting Lost

Today was the first day that I saw the blue sky and sun! It is almost always overcast here. It was a beautiful day! Meghan and I walked around this afternoon to hunt down our classrooms that aren't located on the main campus. We ended up getting pretty lost in some neighborhoods. Here's a picture of some city houses! I wish I lived in this pink one.

We had the whole day to find our way back so we weren't too worried.  We had a few maps with us, however, maps are pretty much worthless in Cork because none of the streets are labeled. We had to figure out where we were by landmarks and the shape of the road. We stumbled across a Heineken brewery, an elementary school, a huge cathedral, and lots of pubs! On our way into the city centre for lunch we found the Occupy Cork movement. There's a picture below! 

I forgot to talk about a holiday that I learned about on Friday. It's called Little Women's Christmas. It is celebrated on January 6th every year. It is the day that the women of Cork celebrate Christmas. Women make their husbands stay at home with the kids and they go out and celebrate with their girlfriends, sisters, mothers, and grandmothers. This holiday used to be more common around Europe however Mother's Day has kind of taken over. It is still a well known holiday in Cork though!

It's getting more difficult to pick which pictures to put in these posts so make sure to look at more pictures at the top of the page!

That's right, I'm here for school too...

Classes at UCC officially started on Tuesday.  For visiting students they allowed us to have a trial period where we could just attend any courses we wanted last week to see which ones we liked.  I register officially on Monday. It has been a frustrating process because I found out after I got here that I wasn't approved to take accounting and economic courses because I wasn't in those respective majors.  Those were some easy electives that I saved to take in Ireland.

I've been consuming my ISU academic advisor's vacation and we scrambled to find some classes that should transfer back. I'm crossing my fingers. Here is what I've got...

GA1120-Introduction to Modern Irish (learning the Gaelic language)

Time TBD

MU1V01S-Introduction to Irish Traditional Music 

Monday, 5-6pm

MG1005-Intro to Management and Organization 

Tuesday, 12-2

PE2004 Technical Communication Skills 

Tuesday, 11-12 and Wednesday, 3-5

IS3318-Introduction to Corporate Information Systems

Tuesday, 4-6

As of right now Meghan and I do not have class on Thursday or Friday! It sounds like we will be able to extend our weekend trips! Here are a couple more pictures of campus! The first one is the student union and the second one is the business building.

Deanshall

Well here are some pictures of where I live! I live in the Deanshall student apartments off of a road called Crosses Green.  I am about a ten minute walk from my school and just over the river is the city centre (downtown Cork)! I live in a 5 bedroom apartment and I was told that four Irish girls live in the other rooms.  I haven't seen or met any of my roommates yet. One of Meghan's roommates says that they might be students of the Cork Music School which doesn't start until next week. Maybe I will be seeing them on Sunday! Unlike American college students, most of the Irish students go home on the weekends so I probably won't be seeing them around this weekend.

The first picture is right when you walk into my room.  There's a desk right under a huge bay window! The second picture is the view out of my window when you look to the right. I'll have to show you a picture of the view to the left another time, it's deserving of its own post! I have my own bathroom and shower which is really nice and I have a double bed and a huge closet. It looks like I'll need to do some serious shopping in order to fill out the space. Shoot. 

I share a kitchen, living room with TV, and a balcony with my 4 other roommates.

Something I learned the hard way: grocery stores in Cork doen't give you plastic bags for free. You have to buy them! It's about $1 for a plastic grocery bag at the super markets here or else you can bring your own reusable bag.  Although this will be inconvenient until I start remembering to bring a bag, I think it's a great idea!!

Even though the Irish students go home on the weekend, it won't stop the Americans from having their own fun! I'm just about to get ready to go out for the night. I hope you all have a good weekend!