Seannacht i nGaillimh, part 2: Inis Meain

I decided to spend my last day in Galway on Inis Meáin. As I overheard a Frenchman saying on the bus:

“If you really want to know what is France, you do not go to Paris. With all this beautiful countryside, why do you go to Paris?”

Sometimes you have to out in the middle of nowhere if you want to learn where you are. Inis Meáin (the "middle island") is the least-visited of the Aran Islands. The ferry there was carrying supplies - a new TV, among other items, loaded by squinting, sunburnt men in caps into the sides of the boat - as well as people, and most of the people were locals traveling between the island and the mainland.

The boat was named Banrionn na Fharraige (that spelling might be off - I've not got my dictionary with me), which means "Queen of the Sea."

Now, my computer isn't letting me upload photos, so I'll keep this short for now and edit more in later (I'm sure you're all devestated at this sudden absence of pretty rocks). I went onto the island, and found a shop, which was closed. As was the other shop (there are two, I think, on the island), as was the hotel. I had no map, so I walked along for an hour or so until I saw another human being. She was sitting in a chair reading a book, in the yard, outside a house with a small sign that was advertised as a tea shop.

I tiptoed up and tried to look lost and friendly at the same time. She looked up, and greeted me - in Irish. Then she laughed and apologized at the look on my face.

Keep in mind that I've been learning to read and write Irish, not speak it - like most languages, it can be hard to recognize off the page.

It turns out the lady was from the Netherlands. She was a psychologist who'd learned Irish, moved to the Aran Islands, and decided that was they needed was a tea shop. I bought tea and banana bread. She stood next to the table and we talked for a while. She pointed out the path, and I paid and wandered off, and promptly got lost again.

It was lovely, though. All I could think, walking down the road, was, "Lord, let this not be the last I see of this place."

As I said, photos later.

Seannacht i nGaillimh, part 2: Inis Mor WILL UPDATE WITH PHOTOS

The boat was crowded but comfortable. It went fast enough to kick up sprays of salt water over everyone on the lower deck. It was named “Ceol na Fharraige,” which means Music of the Sea.  “Inis Mor,” by the way, means Big Island.* Inis Mor is usually where visitors go – it has bikes for rent, Aran sweaters for sale, and a Centra.

I acquired a map at the information station and made a plan of what to see – the Aran Islands are full of ruins and interesting historical sites.

When I got there, however, I found at I had instead was a killer headache and no idea whatsoever where I was on the map. So I went to the Centra and bought water and painkillers (noting that the receipt printed Go Raibh Maith Agat at the bottom), and then... wandered.

I was feeling a little disconsolate and more than a little lonely. I don’t do well travelling on my own. So when I found myself walking down a road beside a beach, I stopped, and turned, and stared. It was the most beautiful thing I’d seen all spring, including all the flowers in Belfast, and it was EMPTY. It was still too early in the morning for people to have congregated on it, and it was mostly on the weedy end, full of shallow pools of snails and limpets, and vast fields of pebbles and seaweed drifts, and the kinds of rocks that just beg to have mermaids perched artistically among them.

I came back up the beach three hours later, smelling of salt water, with my trousers wet through and seaweed between my toes. It was glorious.

The only problem with this was that I now had no idea where I was. The only person I met on the road was a dog, who walked with me for a while till we came to the sign that pointed upwards towards a couple bored donkeys and a hiking trail. Thinking that a trail had to go somewhere, I followed it.

Needless to say, I got hopelessly lost. There were cliffs, with huge green pools in the rock, high hilltops where all you could see were rocky shingles, wildflowers and small striped snails, and long lines of walls that separated the cows’ pastures.

I was very proud of myself for climbing over several of these without serious injury, though there were some nasty brambles that tried their hardest to change this.

I made it back to the pier before the boat left, though, and got a sandwich and some crisps from Centra because my granola bars were gone. I wandered through the sweater store, surreptitiously taking photos of the sweaters there for future knitting reference.

We were ferried back to the mainland in time for dinner (granola bars and Guinness). I spent that evening trying to figure out where to go next, because it seemed silly just to go back (which was what I wanted to do).  

* Some place names sound better when they aren’t translated into English.

The End Of The World... Also Known As Exam Week

I know I meant to write about break, especially after that rather exhausting entry on Easter. But everything’s currently on hold for exams, and for exam anti-stress measures in between studying.

I had my first exam yesterday: Irish studies. The exams here are all essays, written in books separate from the exam questions. I am eternally grateful to my stepmother for forcing me to learn the standard, five-paragraph essay!

Exams here are held in exam halls. I don’t know if they have these anywhere in the States. At Wilson, we just go to class as usual, the prof hands out the questions, and we do them in the time allotted to the class (1 ½ hours). Here, students from many different classes all go to a large place at a listed time – Friday, it was the PEC, the gym – where they find their letter and number on a desk in a room full of little school desks in rows. It was frightening, in a way, but not as bad as I thought it would be. The mixed groups and impersonal setting, different from the actual classroom, made, I thought, for a clearer atmosphere in which to think. And we got 2 hours. In an essay exam, an extra half-hour can make all the difference.

I think I did well – I hope I did well. We’ll see.

To get to the PEC, you walk through Botanic Gardens, and past the Rose Garden. I was excited to see that the roses are beginning to bloom. There were a couple dozen out so far, and many more in buds, in yellows, whites, pinks, and creamy flame oranges. Here are a few, for you: though I can't take photos of the Ulster weather, of the light sun and rain - or of the gardeners, photographers, and schoolchildren that appear and disappear in the gardens here. They're like fairies in baggy jumpers.

                                                 

Friday night, Maureen and I went to the Queen’s film theatre to see a rather dramatic documentary about an Irish dance competition. It was fun. I know that dance is a lot of work, and that a lot of people never have the chance, physically or financially, to do it at a professional level (me among them), but I didn’t realize just how extreme Irish dance – any kind of dance, once it becomes competitive – can be. I’ll stick to being an amateur, go raibh maith agaibh!  

And It Just Keeps On Ending...

I've now completed my second exam, and yes, I'm still terrified. I've never seriously doubted my ability to pass a class to this extent... I seriously fear for my future. It doesn't help that I've found it impossible to look for work from across the Atlantic, so I don't know what I'm going to do when I get home this summer. It's a pity - I was doing so well, health-wise, in control of my diet, but now the stress-sickness has hit again. I've only been able to eat one meal today. But it hasn't stopped me from "experiencing life abroad," or however you'd put it: I did have Sunday lunch and tea at a kind church member's house (more about Sunday later! It was exciting - there was more than tea) which - though I spent a few hours not studying - is probably the only reason I haven't had a major breakdown during exam week, and why I haven't spent the equivalent amount of time staring at the wall and having small, silent panic attacks.

All I'm praying for, for myself, is that I pass my classes with high enough grades to keep my GPA at scholarship level. If I can graduate college, it will be a miracle, and it will prove to me once and for all that I can do anything. If I drop out of college, I don't know what will happen. I don't know what will happen inside my head.

Anyway... I'll end there. You're all probably sick of being my accidental therapists!

The Wee Wet People of Northern Ireland

A remembered conversation, overhead on the walk to Tesco last week:

First Schoolgirl: Augh, it’s so rainy and cold out!

Second Schoolgirl: I bet there’s people who’d like it here. I bet there’s desert people who’d say, ooh, we’d love weather like this. While we say, ooh, we want some o’ that sun.

First Schoolgirl: Desert people?

Second Schoolgirl: Well... Africa? Y’know.

First Schoolgirl: What are we, then?

Second Schoolgirl: We’re wee wet people. We’re the wee wet people o’ Northern Ireland.

Says it all, really.

It’s as if someone designed a country to my specifications, scaling familiar places down and humidifying the them all: it’s small and damp. Everything here is small and damp. The buildings are small, as are the streets, with little nooks full of little flowers, or full of little windows with music inside, and little birds hunting dropped chips in puddles.

Tesco is the size, maybe, of a clothing store in the States. There’s no Supercenter of any kind round here. There doesn’t need to be – that’s the reason for the size – because everything is so much closer to everything else. I can walk all over Belfast if I want. It’s all right here. I’m eating much better than I thought I’d be, for instance, because I can walk right down the road to Tesco, and it’s only a short walk – though I still have to follow Maureen so as not to get lost – to the City Centre where St George’s Market lives.

We went to the market again this weekend, where we acquired potatoes, tomatoes, Clementines, and other tasty little plant bits. As we were walking past the tables, we spotted a used-book stall, and I caved at the presence of Discworld hardcovers and The Hounds of the Morrigan – this last being a book I’ve only seen once in my life in the States – and I had to try my best not to get them greasy when we stopped at the fish & chip shop next door for lunch.

I gave up meat for Lent, mainly in order to force myself out of my comfort zone and be less of a picky/demanding eater. So, I’m learning to like fish. The UK is the best place, I think, to learn. There’s a fish & chip shop every block.*

On the way back from lunch and shopping, we went by Craft World. I bought a few small bags of beads to make myself a set of Anglican prayer beads (or an Anglican rosary, or Christian prayer beads, or whatever you want to call them). Then we went further down the street and discovered a shoe store. This is a good thing – after all this walking over city streets, our shoes are beginning to go to pieces.

This was before I spent the next week stressing over essays. Today, however, the essays were dead and gone – done and submitted, that is – so I began once more to appreciate the lovely smallness and dampness of my surroundings. I love it.

After class today, I had to turn a pile of books in to the library. So I walked there, blunked** them through the self-service scanner, and walked back – and stopped. There’s an entrance to the Botanic Gardens right beside the library door.

The Botanic Gardens are right beside Queen’s.

Ooh...

I wandered into the garden and found myself at the Palm House.

The Palm House was designed by Sir Charles Lanyon, the Belfast architect for whom the Lanyon Building is named (he probably designed it, too – I don’t remember). It was completed in the 1850s, and is, according to the signs, one of the earliest examples of a conservatory built with curved glass and cast iron ribs.

It’s also a magical change from outside. Outside, it’s cold and the flowers are only just blooming: but in the Palm House, it’s warm, and humid, and you step right into the middle of a range of exotic plants from all over the world – the tags I could fins read “S.E. Australia” and “Madagascar.” Palms are just the big ones. To your left, then, is the wing full of flowers – here, ones like daffodils. To your right, are tall green plants that make you feel like you’ve shrunk to the size of a mouse and all the garden’s above your head.

And those would be the palms.

A carved wood Saraswati, in the main section of the Palm House

"Polypodium" is right...!

 Anyone know what kind of flowers these are?

Back behind the giant plants...

  

Daffodils!

I came out on Stranmillis, and went down the road to the local charity shop, the Marie Cure Cancer Cure shop. I needed some more clothes, but couldn’t find anything I liked and that I was certain of the size of, so I browsed for a while for fun. In the cd/dvd shelf I found a dramatized Narnia audiobook by the BBC. It was []1.50.

Uncertain as to whether it was really worth it, I flipped open the case and skimmed the insert.

Aslan ~ David Suchet

And so I bought it.

Leaving the shop with my newfound treasure, I bumped into a familiar face. This is a rare occurrence for a stranger in a big city. It was Janice, on her way home to the rectory. She recognized me at once, saying, “Ah, I see you’ve been shopping at the best shop in Belfast!”

I showed her what I’d bought, and we talked about the relative quality of charity shops, and I followed her back to St. Bart’s to take a picture of the church.

Here’s the street it’s on, Stranmillis:

And this is a side street.

Last Sunday, one of the church members and a friend took me across the street to a café for tea. Despite the conversation being mainly about tonsil problems (said church member is a local GP) it was fun.

On Wednesday we went to the Linen Hall Library. In the interests of getting this blog updated, I’ll write more about the LHL later. I’ll just say it’s rather wonderful, if you’re the type who gets excited by 18^th-century newspapers, children’s books, or Sinn Féin political posters.***

*Though on Malone, I believe, there’s one block with four in a row.

**I honestly don’t know why it makes that noise. But it does.

***If you’re me.

Yorkshire Pudding, The Rectory Cat, Mysterious Wool Shops, And So On

Nothing terrifically exciting has happened to speak of. But I'm going to speak of it anyway.

This past week has been a hard one for mood swings and schoolwork. It's frustrating coming from a life of small-town atmospheres into a city, and into a big school: I'm used to knowing everyone, or knowing someone who knows someone who borrowed this book/collander/hacksaw from someone last week (and so one), and used to knowing where everything is (or, to knowing someone who knows where everything is).

Population statistics for comparison, taken from Wikipedia and other reliable sources:

Williamsburg, VA: about 14, 000*
Swannanoa, NC: about 4,000
Warren Wilson College, in Swannanoa: about 900 students

Belfast, NC: about 276, 000
Queen's University Belfast, in Belfast: about 17,000

So, according to the all-knowing internet, THIS SCHOOL is only slightly smaller than my hometown and my college town PUT TOGETHER.

I don't. I don't even. My brain, it is broke.

Anyways...

... I've expanded my biscuit collection to include custard creams and bourbon creams (chocolate custard creams). I also tried a new recipe last night. An experiment in English cooking:

Toad-in-the-hole!

When I was little, the characters in a book** I was reading ate this for breakfast once. I thought the name was brilliant, and I've been waiting since then to try and make it. My problem was 1) I kept forgetting, and 2) I keep living at Wilson and/or with health conscious/vegetarian people. Now, however, I'm taking advantage of the fact that I'm cooking for myself (both health food and junk food can happen to other people) and have access to dozens of local butchers who sell loads of lovely English sausages.

It's made by browning sausages, and then baking them in Yorkshire pudding batter. My photo was taken after Maureen and I had eaten half of it, so it's deflated quite a bit. I didn't really follow a recipe, so here's the Wikipedia page if, like me, you find the food the most interesting part of this blog: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toad_in_the_hole You should all try it.

To health conscious types: I served this with carrots. Don't have a heart attack.

Moving right along.

This is the view from my window:

Does anyone know what these trees are? They're very pretty.

They're one of those small beauties that make up for all the annoyances school, and life in the city, heaps on one's head. A website stops working, the guy at the fish-and-chip shop can't hear you and, when you open your little carton of dinner later, it turns out he just gave you chips (the sad), someone makes a recipe you wanted to try when you were gone and doesn't do it the way you'd planned (with ingredients you bought together), your partner for a class presentation happens to skip both the lecture at which you'd intended to make contact with her and the tutorial at which you're supposed to presenet... etc. etc. etc. But there are flowers outside your window, and magpies fly in pairs, and children fidget with Irish step-dancing steps.

Seriously, that last one was adorable. She was wearing glittery shoes, too. This was at the tea table after the service last Sunday. Now - that's something I need to write about, but I never seem to get around to it. I've been going to the second Sunday service at St. Bartholomew's, an Anglican church down Stranmillis, for the past few weeks. Surprisingly, I like it: I suppose being raised with no structure whatsoever means I don't instantly run when someone pulls out a prayer book. Personally, I find the set prayers and organized services calming. The organization allows one to think, instead of thinking "What's going on?" all the time.

I've gotten to sing "All Things Bright And Beautiful" for the first time, and I've enjoyed the sermons and the children's talks. I don't remember yesterday's sermon (sorry, Janice) but yesterday was Transfiguration Sunday, so the children's talk was about school uniforms - how the lady talking hadn't been recognized by a schoolteacher, as a child, because she wasn't in uniform at the time, and how the Transfiguration was like that because the disciples hadn't recognized Jesus as God until they saw him on the mountain top. I love how in-context this is... how many churches in the States would be able to use an example like that? Here, most children wear uniforms, so it works.

The ministers - by which I mean the curate and the rector, though I'm pretty much clueless at to what those words actually indicate - are very nice, and had me over for Sunday dinner a few weeks ago. Their names are Janice and Ron. I'm sure they have a last name, but I've yet to hear anybody use it. Ron spent a summer working at the Smithsonian, studying volcanic rocks - this was ages ago - so they knew where I came from and were eager to make me feel at home here.

They're also birdwatchers, so all through dinner Ron - who was facing the window - kept seeing birds he'd been wanting to take pictures of, getting up, getting the camera, and rushing back only to the find the thing had flown away. This, while Janice was enthusing about American brownies, until the other students there, a couple, brought up the subject of cats. Dinner ended as a group adoration of Herbie, the rectory cat.

Herbie was fun. I was led into a room, to sit on a couch and wait while Ron wandered around somewhere preparing tea. I tried a biscuit from a tin and looked at the books on the bookshelf. Then, the door opened a fraction, and a cat strolled in: a huge white and grey-striped cat. He saw me and stopped dead, giving me a look that said, "What. What is this." At which point he hid behind the couch, much affronted. I was informed over tea that this was Herbie, and the space behind the couch which I had sat on was His Space.

I'll write more about St. Bart's after tomorrow's pancake supper. And about Fisherwick, as well - am I a total nerd that, when I found out they had an evening service, I got really excited thinking "Wow, I can go to church twice every Sunday!" Yes.

It might be a good time to warn all and sundry that Facebook is on my Lent list. You will have to utilize primitive technology and e-mail me. It's difficult, I know.

By the way, I found the wool shop - Jean's Wool Shop on Cregagh Road. Maureen and I walked all up and down that road a couple weeks ago - no sign of the place. We went back there last Friday, after food shopping at St. George's, and walked all up and down the road again. Still no sign of the place. There's a Tesco, a charity shop, two butchers, and things of that nature, but try as we might we couldn't locate this wool shop. So we bought some milk - it's cheaper at the butcher's than at Tesco - and turned to head back to College Gardens.

And there it was.

Highly suspicious, if you ask me.

Here's what I bought: green wool to make a warm cabled vest, and some variegated green wool for socks. Two complicated projects should last me for a while. I hope.

* Technically, I live in Norge. But I didn't put up the population statistics for Norge, VA, because the internet doesn't believe that people live there.

** One of the "Indian in the Cupboard" books, if you must know. I can't remember which one. You should go and read them all to find out.

This And That... And A Theological Lecture, Just For Fun

I've now been in NI for a whole month! It feels longer, but it also feels shorter, because of the time I've spent in class (not sure how that works, but, it does). I've been cooking for myself for a month, wandering around a strange city for a month, listening to people speak all kinds of strange accents for a month. At this very moment I am sitting in the kitchen - it's one of the few places in this house where we can pick up internet - listening to two of the other exchange students toast crumpets and talk to each other in Chinese.

I've also been seeing the first signs of spring. It isn't deathly cold the moment you open a window, for instance, and flowers are beginning to come up.

Just in time for me to finish my knitting project - yes, the "airplane" project:

Knitted wool lace is the funnest fabric to squidge your fingers in. Fact.

I have to find some more wool soon and start another project, because it's maddening sitting in lectures without something to do with my hands. If I don't knit, I take crazy frantic notes, and if I force myself not to take notes, I fall asleep. Knitting is a good thing.

And, just because:

Yes. I now own Harry Potter as Gaeilge.*

Speaking of books, and of general awesomeness, one of the things I did this past week was attend the 2011 Church of Ireland Theological Lectures. These are an annual event at Queen's. They're free, and you can have tea and biscuits if you come early to the Hub (the Anglican chaplaincy cafe). This year, the speaker was Michael Ward - the "Narnia Code" guy. Basically, he is a chaplain at Oxford and a C.S. Lewis** scholar/enthusiast who wrote his thesis on the way the symbolism in the Chronicles of Narnia corresponds to the seven celestial bodies in pre-Copernican cosmology. That is, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe uses Jupiter-ish symbols, Prince Caspian uses Mars-like symbols, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader uses Sun-like symbols, etc. Which was yet another way Lewis was tracing different mythologies, traditions, and so on back to Christianity, if that makes sense (please... if this is interesting... read the book. Don't listen to me).

I found the lectures intriguing, and I think he's probably right - that there's a level of medieval cosmological symbolism in the Narnia books. The idea that they were written to showcase this symbolism (which I think some people may have gotten just by hearing of it) is obviously absurd, and he made a point of pointing this out. But the fact that it's there makes sense, at least to me, because I've read enough by and about Lewis to know that that's exactly the kind of thing he would've done (which is one of the points Ward made, for people who hadn't read the books - yes, there are people who haven't read the books, but who came to the lecture anyway, and of course were confused anfterwards... *sigh*)

This is how I ended up having tea at a table full of Anglican clergy, including a bishop and a retired missionary. Which was fun. The Hub was decorated in "Narnian" style, which meant a plastic fir tree in every corner, and a dorm wardrobe full of faux fur coats at one wall, with a quite adorable little plush lion lounging on top. The walls had papers with Narnia quotes written in marker, and they'd put up white Christmas lights, and put the first movie on the TV screens (which usually show news or sports or whatever).

And, when questions about Tolkien came up, as they do in conversations about C.S. Lewis, guess who was the only person at the table who knew the answers... being a fantasy nerd does come in useful in the real world sometimes.

Anyway, it was Janice and Ron from St Bart's Parish Church who told me about the lectures. I'll write more about them and the church later.

Ooh - just found the Planet Narnia website: http://www.planetnarnia.com/ I've yet to read the book. I bought it - the long version, of course - and he signed it "to Meghan, with Jovial regards." I have it, and an unread C.S. Lewis book, waiting for me once I manage to clamber over the mountain of sociology and history books that seems to have erupted over my desk.

*I think this is right for "in Irish"... but, needless to say, don't quote me on it.

**Who, for those who don't know, was Irish - from Belfast! More about that later, too (meaning, I'll probably take a tour, or wander around on my own, being a total creeper, and take pictures of plaques and statues and things).

Me, Tourist: The Giant's Causeway

The Giant's Causeway, on the north coast of Ulster, was formed about 60 million years ago by intense volcanic activity. The cooling stone fractured in a distinctive pattern of hexagonal columns. Today, this means massive piles of what look like paving stones stacked, piled, and leading out into the sea.

It's one of the weirdest geological things I've ever seen, and last week I was taking pictures of glowing rocks. It's also beautiful. If you're not the kind of person who would take being cold, tired, and wet in order to see beautiful rocks, don't go. But if you are, it's worth it. The basalt in the water is so black, and the water is this translucent pale green, and the foam gets caught in big fluffy piles in between the columns. And it's all so... big. The stones themselves aren't; they're like what you'd make a walkway through your garden with. But there are so many of them, and so much water... and you can really feel the weight of the water when you watch it crash and drag on the columns like it does...

This is one of those times when I can't understand how, with things like this around us, we, people, can think the world is boring. I took about sixty million pictures...

And because you're probably all in shock right now from the excess of glorious natural beauty (and if you're not, you should be, shame on you):

Red phone box!!!