Why I've Done Nothing This Week

Me: This will be a great week! I'll answer all my e-mails, get a good day in at the library and do all my reading for next week, update my blog, and go back for a day in Dublin to see the museums I didn't get to last week!

My body: Woah, hang on. You are way too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed right now.

Nasty little virus with nothing better to do: We'll fix that!

My body:  ACUTE SINUSITIS! Attack virus! Attaaack!!! *an epic battle proceeds to be fought inside my head*

Me: Wha?!skhgerkjhksfjhdkjhbfksjksdblehhhhhh *falls over*

Everybody loves a good virus, right? I started feeling a bit odd last weekend, probably a slight cold or intensified allergies, but by the time I came home from class at the beginning of this week... I was definitely in bad shape. I was having difficulties walking in a straight line, I was losing my voice, and Monday night was a fever dream. So... it might take me a while to get back to blogging, for real, and to getting stuff done. I'll try and get through my e-mails tomorrow, when I have more reliable internet access, and can look down at a keyboard without my brains trying to escape my skull via my nose. I've spent today in my room (after an interesting walk to Tesco for Sudafed and chocolate), reading books that I don't have to take notes on, destroying poor defenseless handkerchiefs, drinking warm water, and just generally oozing all over everything.

This may be TMI for a few people, but it's mostly my family and friends who read this and I feel I ought to explain my lack of activity.

Oh, and by the way, to the pickpocket who robbed me in Dublin: I keep my handkerchiefs in the back pocket of my backpack. Yeah. I'm sorry. Drink lots of fluids, try to get some rest, and you should be over it in a few days.

What is my name? What is my quest? What is my favourite colour?

POLL: What should my name be as Gaeilge?

1. Mairéad (mahr ADE)

2. Peigín (PEG een)

It was never a problem in the States, but here, people know a Welsh name when they hear it. I'm beginning to lose count of how many times I've had to explain I'm not Welsh-American, I'm Irish-American, really... and I'm now considering what I should call myself in Irish to avoid this.

In other news, I've had one of those absurdly absent-minded days that will have everyone back home rolling their eyes, but I did get a new pair of glasses out of it. And, considering just how fabulously incompetent I can be (exhbitited in days such as these) I feel much better having two pairs of glasses. I just know I'll accidently drop the old pair in the Liffey or a gutter* or something awkward like that.

I've also come to the startling conclusion that my favourite colour may, in fact, be green. That is, my favourite colour is rainbow, all colours, and/or jewel tones and/or earth tones, and so on and so forth, but that doesn't cut it when people ask you what your favourite colour is when they're trying to pick you out a toothbrush or something. Accepting blue as inevitable, I seem to be choosing everything (yarn, books, etc.) in green. This may be because I like a lot of greens, but only a few reds (brick reds, oranges) and yellows (gold yellow). Interesting.

ALSO: I'm going, after I write up my fabulous day, to write another entry with some Irish words. If anybody has any words they'd like me to look up in my handy-dandy dictionary, and/or ask somebody, and to translate into Irish, tell me! Though I'll warn you I've got a small baby's sense of grammar...

And because I can't let you go without a picture, here are some pretty clouds. Be happy for a little bit, wherever you are and however stressed you are - there are pretty clouds in the sky.

*Evidence suggests this is genetic. Though it was probably a bad idea for my dad to jump up and down on that drain grate in the first place.

Tastes And Phobias

Apparently, I really am stepping outside my comfort zone and experiencing new experiences. For someone as stressed by everday life as I am, this is impressive:  

1. I'm afraid of telephones, but I used a pay phone today. I spent 60p and made an appointment for an eye test with a local optometrist.

2. I used to hate fish, but I've learned to love fried fish. This is the “Fish Special” from The Chippie on Stranmillis, which I treated myself to as a reward for turning in my papers. It’s a pile of squidgy chips, crisp chickpeas, and minced onion. They'll ladle either curry or gravy over top, and this is then topped with a piece of fried cod. It’s amazingly tasty.

3. I haven't once taken the elevator in the library. That doesn't sound like much. But this is what the stairs in the library are like:

I'm afraid of heights, and also (though it comes and goes) of stairs. The first time I tried to get to the first floor (what we'd call the second floor) I had to keep stopping to sit down or to grab hold of steps. Now I can walk up to the second floor (the third floor) without a second thought.

When faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles and terrifying, blank futures - which is sort of my permament state of being - it helps to be able to say, well, yesterday I phoned a complete stranger, and I wasn't sick at all. The day before, I ate a food* I thought I didn't like, and the day before that, I walked up some scary stairs.

Yeah. I rock. Bring it on.

*I DRANK MILK LAST NIGHT, TOO. MILK THAT CAME FROM A COW. AND IT WAS GOOD.

Saint Patrick's Day

Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona duit!*

Saint Patrick’s Day started Wednesday night. I went to the Inter-Chaplaincy Saint Patrick’s Day event at the Student Union. This was advertised as a ceilidh beag** so I thought it wouldn’t be too scary. It was fun. There was a ceilidh band, so, acoustic guitars, a harp, fiddle and whistle. There were a few worship songs and jigs, and then the chaplains paraded in bearing huge quantities of pizza. There were a lot of people there (I can’t guess the number of a crowd if it’s above fifty or so) so they had a speed-meeting getting-to-know-you game, which I can’t remember a single name from. But it was still fun – it’s good to remind people, I think, that the holiday is in fact a saint’s*** day, however many people use it as an excuse to get drunk and wear stupid hats.

The only bad thing about study abroad in a city is having no friends. Every activity that you have the opportunity to participate in is with other exchange students, and you have nothing in common with students from Europe or Asia, and really want to get to know Irish students, but every event that goes on has hundreds of people at it, so it’s near impossible to get to know anybody. I mean, you can’t even hear people talk. I desperately wish there was some kind of small-group activity going on, but I haven’t found it. At least, it doesn’t seem to exist independent of clubs (by which I mean nightclubs). I am an antisocial drinker – I like drinking, sometimes, but I hate loud noise and drunk people, which is a problem when it comes to socialization in a big city.

End rant. *sigh* Anyway....

Did I go to the parade? Yes. I went to the parade. Did I actually see any of it? Surprisingly, yes. While one of the downsides to being small is the inability to see over anybody else, one of the perks is being able to worm one’s way into just about anywhere. Thus, after a few minutes of patient worming across the City Centre street, I made it close enough to see the parade. I’d never been to a Saint Patrick’s Day parade before, so it was exciting - and this one has a colourful, home-made look to it, not like the big parades in the States. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

There was a H & W float, and a lot of people in bright costumes waving streamers, a Chinese dragon on poles that danced in a circle, a school marching band, and more – scroll down for pictures. The crowd was just as entertaining. From the languages and accents heard in the thick of it, at least half the people there weren’t native Irish. But don’t get me wrong – there were plenty of those there, too. The street was a huge, chattering sea of green, lots of children on shoulders waving paper shamrock flags, and there were also plenty of sequined bowler hats and other such tasteless accessories. A few people had even found tricolours and wrapped themselves in them like bath towels.

The crowd watching the parade - a lot of children on shoulders!



What is this? I don't know...



... but it was followed by a troupe of children on unicycles!

One of two artistic fish, carried by people in front of...

... the Harland & Wolf shipworks float.

And the Chinese dragon, obviously a time-honoured Saint Patrick's Day tradition!
Note: girl at the far left lives in 7 College Gardens as well!

The blue people were my favourite. I have no idea what they were supposed to represent (if anything) but they were pretty. They spun their bird streamers round and round, and it looked as though they were caught in the middle of a flock of big, bright birds, such a contrast to the dull colours of the city.

These came after the blue people - the yellow and green, and then the pink and purple!

Then - your friendly Monster Muppet Man!

Finally, a band of marching Scottish pipers.

As I said - exciting!

There were also police officers. Everywhere.

The College Gardens students meandered over more or less together. After the parade, the others disappeared to go off drinking. This was interesting, as I didn’t want to go off drinking, especially at noon, and didn’t know the way back to College Gardens. So I wandered around City Centre for a while, and then went shopping. I’d been wanting to find some tights or long stockings (there are only so many layers you can get a pair of jeans over). I went to a charity shop on the corner. I love charity shops – they’re the little British equivalent of thrift stores. Instead of the DAV or the CHKD, you get Oxfam and the Marie Curie Cancer Centre shops. You get the same shelves of suspicious paperbacks, disorganized clothing, and deranged-looking ceramic animals like pigs and geese and elephants that you wonder why anyone would buy in the first place. It’s fun.  

There was a French family there while I was there, so I got to listen to the parents wrangling their children in exasperated French. I asked the lady behind the desks where people here went to buy socks and tights and things. Almost everyone here wears them under everything, so far as I can tell, even shorts – because it’s cold and damp all the time, you do not want to go bare-legged or wear skirt without anything under them.

I was pointed towards Primark, across the street. Remember how I said there’s no Superstores of any kind? Well, the clothing department in a big store in the States – think Target or Wal-Mart – apparently exists independently, here, in the form of Primark. It’s the kind of place where there are lots of children yelling, lots of sale racks, disposable drinks cups perched on displays, and there are displays of huge heaps of shirts and skirts falling off hangers with signs saying “NOW 50% OFF” and "£1." It's my new favourite clothing store, I've decided, and when I wear holes in all my socks I'll head on back.

Afterwards, I went home. Things were pretty mellow for the moment.

However, I knew there'd soon be a big, noisy party. But luckily I had plans for the night – or, for the next couple hours:

The main table in front of the church. The lady in the blue coat is Janice, the curate.

 Every year on Saint Patrick’s Day, St. Bart’s sets up some tables with snacks, hot tea, and coffee, and gives it out for free to passersby. The theory is that the drunk students will be distracted and get some real food inside them to offset the alcohol, which, speaking as a college student myself, is an excellent idea. In this city things can get crazy bad the week of the 17th - there's posters up in the houses, and e-mails sent out, warning exchange students and pleading with the natives. People just start drinking, and don't stop.


Of course, in addition to this practical concern, it makes a lot of people very happy when someone comes down the sidewalk with a tray saying, “Free sandwiches! Free sweets! Biscuits! Rock Cakes! Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!”


Some people stayed at the tables, and some people went to houses where they knew there’d be parties, and some people went up and down the streets. The block over had crowds of students all up and down, and I emptied a whole tray of sandwiches and tiny sausages in minutes. Hopefully, it did some good.

These splendid people are Ross and Elizabeth, who are from different churches and came over to help out.

I signed up for 4-6, and had to leave by 6:30 because I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes, despite the paper cups of hot tea I kept drinking, more to hold than for any other reason.

I’m now very determined to finish knitting these woollen socks. Watch it get warm the moment I bind off. Just watch.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

*I’m pretty sure this is how you say “Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.”

**“little party” (pronounced kay-lee beg)

***Saint Patrick – Patricius – was actually born in the place that’d later be Wales. He was taken to Ireland as a slave. Just saying.

No leprechauns were involved in the making of this holiday. Unless, of course, the fairies get drunk and go out dancing as well, and need new shoes.

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.

Behold, The Essays Have Been Soundly Vanquished

I have successfully completed my first two scary essays! They weren’t, in my opinion, very good – as the library is unfamiliar, the internet is erratic, my computer is... um... pick an adjective to describe a mental disease of your choice... and, of course, I’m lazy as a cat on a sunny windowsill.

But the important thing is, they’re finished, multiple copies have been delivered to offices with cover sheets, things have been signed, and I did address the question in the correct number of words, so I should pass.

My first essay was on the varied ways anthropologists, over the years, have defined law and legal systems and how they have argued for (and against) the universal presence of law in human society. No, we didn’t choose our topic. But it was interesting, though difficult – most of it was spent up in trying to summarize a century’s worth of thinkers’ definitions of law. Yes, including dear old Malinowski –

http://www.ask.com/wiki/Bronis%C5%82aw_Malinowski

- and his “body of binding obligations regarded as a right by one party and acknowledged as a duty by the other.”

*twitch twitch*

My second essay was on the extent to which the Irish revolution was a sectarian conflict. This, in my opinion, is an unanswerable question. Of course it was, as much as it was a political one, a historical one, an economic one, etc. etc. etc. That is, which Christian sect was an important element within the defining characteristics of the conflicts’ sides. Does that make sense? Probably not. We’ll see what McGarry says. Maybe he’ll look kindly on me, as I referenced one of his books?

My Professors:

It just occurred to me that I’ve yet to introduce my professors. I have several... I’ll try and describe them, just so you can know what it’s like in class here (except, without all the actual schoolwork, because you 1) don’t want more of that, or 2) you graduated, and you don’t deserve it).

My primary Irish Studies professor is named Dominic Bryan. He’s one of those teachers who wears T-shirts to lectures and waves his arms and jumps around a lot. He’s here, he told us, because he was a bad student. The only university that would accept him was in Northern Ireland, because this was in the Troubles and the schools here were so desperate for students they’d accept anybody.

He, however, is from England. He’s got a strong London accent that sounds fabulously out of place in NI.

Quotes:

“Northern Ireland doesn’t fecking matter! ... but it’s quite an interesting English-speaking case study.”

“It’s fascinating to try and work out when the legitimacy of the state disappears.”

“And they say, can things go back to the way they were? No! No, they can’t! History is not circular! Though Yeats thought it was... but he was better at poetry than history.”

“It doesn’t matter how big the bomb is, or how many people die... to the victims, it still feels the same.”

 “One thing I’ve noticed about Victoria Square – where’s the fecking square? It’s the roundiest* building I’ve ever seen!”

He is occasionally joined by Olwen Purdue, who specializes in most history** and who has a pretty name, and by Gordon Gillespie, who specializes in recent history and who has a funny name.

My tutorial’s TA is a stylish young woman named Mary Katherine Rallings, and she’s from, of all places, North Carolina. This makes tutorials that much more fun when she randomly references the American South for non-Irish conflict examples (like, in a discussion on flying flags associated with discriminatory/violent history, a major problem here).

My Irish Revolution professor is named Fearghal McGarry. He’s the type of very intense academic who uses words like “historiography” and “draconian,”*** and “analysis” and “cyclical,” the same way most people use “and” and “but.” It’s actually very interesting – he makes some good connections between macro and micro studies. His books, which I’m reading, tend to focus on micro studies using primary sources and, through them, to try and understand the huge political and ideological events occurring way up on a national/international scale.

He’s so Irish, he doesn’t pronounce the sound “th.” Read “d” for every “th”... I love listening to his accent.

Quotes [the ones with short words]:

“ ‘History is written by the winners’... and it’s said the losers write the songs.”

 “While they arrested a lot of people, it wasn’t very effective, because they arrested all the wrong people.”

[On the Irish Declaration of Independence and its stance on violent resistance] “There’s wiggle room.”

“They beat up the local police with sticks, which is as good a way as any to prove your manliness.”

“Northern Ireland is like a slot machine to the British government. They keep putting money in hoping it’ll pay off someday.”

“There’s no nice way of showing forty men going into a house and shooting two men in front of their family.”

He sometimes alternates with Marie Coleman, who wrote a book on County Longford and is studying Cumann na mBan.

My Politics, Law and Power professor is named Lissette Josephides, which is one of the best names I’ve ever heard, ever. She is middle-aged (the others are much younger) and she did her fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, where she almost got murdered one night, and also got a kitten. She has multiple degrees in both anthropology and philosophy, and being in class is like being back in Social Theory, except with older books, and more fun.

She wears little silk scarves, and says “as it were” a lot. She is English – extremely English. She talks like the Rather Dotty Yet Brilliantly Observant Aristocratic English Lady in some classic British mystery novel. You know?

Quotes [as it were]:

“So it’s a kind of pre-emptive treachery.”

“Gluckman’s not under ‘Gluckman’? Is Gluckman anywhere?”

“After Wali of Swat became ruler in 1926, the political system ceased to be acephalous. Acephalous? It means ‘headless.’ It doesn’t mean that they’re running around like chickens who’ve had their heads cut off, it means they have no chief.”

“Objectivity isn’t... nothingness. It’s the sum total of all the subjectivities put together.”

*Not a typo.

**Dr. Purdue on the 1798 rebellion: “It wasn’t organized, but it was enough to scare the pants off the British government.”

This is funnier when you know that “pants,” here, mean underwear.

***This is an epic word. You should all try to find an excuse to use it in everyday conversation.

Clearly, I Am Going Through Facebook Withdrawal

I swear I'll write something substantial after I finish these papers... anyway, here's your classic bad-turned-out-to-be-good example for the weekend, since I can't stick it up in a Facebook status update:


Me: Oh, I'm such a procrastinator! I've only written a quarter of this essay, and it's due Monday! *feels bad*

Microsoft Word: *shuts down and eats essay*

Me: Suddenly, I feel better about things.


So... I get to start my essay again from scratch tomorrow, and scramble to get it done in one day. But think if I'd had it nearly finished...!