In which there are a ridiculous number of words.

Now seems as good a time to update as any –I’ve journal entries for my “Understanding Strangers” class due by Friday, but those are (a) no big deal to complete and (b) not going to happen right now anyway. If I’m going to muck about it might as well be productive mucking about!

It’s been a long time since I’m made a valid post, which mean that this one threatens to be extremely long. Apologies! I’ll split it up into subheadings with summaries, to meet all of your skimming needs. Note: the subheadings won’t necessarily correspond with the truth. Note also: no pressure to read any/all of this, ever, if you are of the sort who tends to feel pressure to do such things. This is as much for my remembrance as your enlightenment. Also, my creating massive posts seems a bit more ethically sound than K’s method of sharing her adventures, which is to type up massive accounts of her adventures and then add little things here and there to make it seem a personal letter to each person she keeps in touch with. So! At least I’m obviously not pretending to super-personalize it!

NOTE THAT YOU ACTUALLY SHOULD READ: I realized the other day that some folks have been inadvertently left off the photo-receiving list. If you’ve seen my “I’m posting photos now!” posts but haven’t gotten links to the albums, it isn’t intentional. So. If you want to be seeing photos but haven’t been getting notified, do send me a message and I’ll make sure to add you to the list. I haven’t purposefully deleted anyone, so if you’ve stopped getting them it really is an accident. END OF NOTE THAT YOU ACTUALLY SHOULD READ

And now…

******In which I write entirely too much.*******

Oxford!

In which my nerdy heart sings and I see Lis!

Um. Oxford! It was so long ago! Let’s see.

I had a lovely time. We walked down to the Thames and watched crew-folk paddle about/nearly run over birds, and it was all very picturesque. Lis went to orchestra rehearsal, which turned me into a tourist (rather than the heightened status of “guest”) so I took advantage of the license to take too many photos and wandered around lots of pretty streets with impressive buildings. True to form, I took too many pictures. I walked around the Botanical Gardens and saw the tree that Tolkien sat under and which inspired Ents in Lord of the Rings and what I thought was Will and Lyra’s bench. I sat on it, and thought it was pretty but not near as Will and Lyra-ish as I’d imagined --I found out later that I was on the wrong bench. Alas, although it explains the lack of significant feeling! {{Congrats to Emmons, who won my Reader Challenge by correctly identifying the alleged significance of the bench in my pictures! Cool Irish prize to be forthcoming…}}There was snow and ice on the ground, but it was sunny and lovely. I joined one of Lis’s housemates (a Dutch girl who goes to Hope in Grand Rapids, actually!) at a poetry reading and was amused by how even the most plain poetry sounds brilliant when read with a British accent and met a boy with a British accent who was born in Battle Creek but (obviously) raised in England. I marveled at how poets dress like poets. I was amused by how some of the poets seemed to be straight out of Brideshead Revisited.

In the evenings we hung out with her housemates and watched/over-analyzed hokey sci-fi movies (Shades of Darkness with Vin Diesel, anyone?) and upped our nerd-cred by watching both of the “Men in Black”s and were taught by Lis’s friend how to prepare to be debutantes and Lis’s arm may have gotten art-ed and there was a house-wide game of After Eights and Zip/Bong and it was comfortable and full of waaaay too much tea (but wait! one can never have too much tea! I amend that to “waaay just the right amount of tea”) and it made me miss Xenia a fair bit. But! In a good way! Also, they have the most gigantic teapot I’ve ever seen. (That’s what she said?)

On Sunday morning Lis and I investigated the Natural History Museum, which was gorgeous and all sorts of cool. (Proof is in the pictures!) We then went to lunch at The Eagle and Child (stomping grounds of the Inklings, Tolkien and C. S. Lewis), just to push my inner literary nerd over the edge, before she headed to another rehearsal and I walked to the bus stop.

Traveling back from Oxford!

In which I fly from winter to spring and am looked after by several friendly Irishfolk.

Things would have gone smoothly in terms of getting back if my bus from Oxford had been on time. Instead, the bus arrived an hour an a half late and got us to the airport an hour and a half late, at which point I just barely missed my on-time flight to Shannon. After a bit of discussion with the Ryanair dude I figured out that it would be cheaper to take a Ryanair flight to another Irish city than stay overnight in Oxford and take the next day’s (once a day) flight to Shannon or another airline’s direct-to-Galway/Shannon flight. I hung around the airport for awhile, and then switched from a Dublin flight to an earlier Kerry flight, in hopes that I’d make it back to Galway that night (and therefore 9am class Monday morning, which was why I wasn’t flying home on Monday in the first place). We boarded the Kerry flight relatively on time, and then taxied around the Kerry runways for an hour before the airport got shut down from snow (two inches had just fallen! Oh no!). After two hours sitting in the airport, we got back on the plane and flew to Kerry, where we landed at midnight.

If you look at a map of Ireland, you’ll notice that Kerry is rather far from Galway. Also, you should know that the buses stop running a bit earlier in the evening. I had no idea what to do –at that point, I didn’t even know exactly where Kerry was in relation to everything else; all I knew was that I’d seen it on bus routes someplace. After asking several different people (passengers and a travel agent person) I found out that my best bet was to stay overnight in Tralee (again, no idea what/where Tralee was) and take a bus to Limerick and from there to Galway in the morning. At this point it was half midnight. There was one taxi parked outside, and even though I got to it first there were two women who needed to go elsewhere, in a completely different direction, and it clearly didn’t make sense for the guy to go back and forth if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Another passenger had offered to go out of her way to take one of these women home if they had no other way, so it was decided that the women would go in the taxi and I would go with this woman (Julie?) and her husband. Then ensued a rather lovely (and warm!) (and reallllllllly fast) drive through the Irish countryside, complete with cows and moonshine (the countryside, not the ride). They were really friendly, and it was amusing because the husband couldn’t understand me at all so the woman was playing interpreter, even though we were all English speakers (and his accent wasn’t THAT thick). They dropped me off (and waited to make sure I was taken care of!) at a (four-star, ugh) hotel in Tralee. My room? Cost more than the hostel/plane for the entire weekend, even with the discount they gave me for arriving at 1am (four-star, ugh). On the bright side, it was the nicest, hottest shower I’d taken in months (four-star, whee!) and the bed was HUGE (four-star, whee!) and there was fast internet! (…!) There was also my outlet converter, which decided to spark rather than converting when plugged in, so I didn’t have enough battery to do more than check bus schedules for the morning. It was just as well, because at this point it was ridiculously late and I needed Sleep.

I was planning to take the 9am bus from Tralee to Limerick, and a bus from there back to Galway. When I was checking out, the woman asked how I was getting to the bus stop, and I said I was walking, that Google Maps had said it was a five minute walk, and I had twenty to get there. She looked horrified and called me a cab, who looked similarly freaked and was prepared to block the driveway of the bus station to keep the bus from driving away if we got there slightly too late. The traffic was pretty bad (Tralee is a more industrial type *city* but still smallish, so when everyone is trying to get to work on by taking the one main road there is what one might call No Movement), but we got there in enough time that he didn’t have to do anything dramatic. He was quite nice, too –we talked about his daughters, one who was at university to be a doctor (maybe a nurse? regardless, she did well at all of her exams and could pretty much do what she wanted, even though for some reason she was younger than everyone else) and one who will go to university in a year or two, and who is apparently terrifyingly brilliant and self-assured. The way he put it was, I believe, “I’m afraid for any man who marries her –he’ll have to walk behind her, or he’ll get trampled!” For all that he was a bit fearful of her, he also seemed a bit in awe, and exceptionally proud –he thought she’d be a pretty fantastic lawyer or politician- and I would have liked to meet her! He also said “you know?” at the end of every phrase, and it took me most of the ride to realize that that was just how he spoke, not that he thought I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

The bus ride itself was uneventful and scenic (including horses that looked like they were trying to blend in with cows…huh?!). The bus change in Limerick was easy enough—as I’ve said before, bus travel here is really easy and fairly pleasant. I got back to Galway with time to get groceries before my English class at four. An eventful trip home, but all in all not a bad one. As far as I’m concerned, that’s how traveling ought to be –planned but a little sketchy in terms of getting from place to place, with time to talk to people. Also, with four-star hotels. Needless to say, I won’t see another of those for a very long time!

Paris! Paris Paris Paris. Paris!

In which Hannah acquires a Japanese ward, a wildly-gesticulating man loses an argument with a light post, Hallie turns twenty with a rather epic birthday candle, and we are Masters of Transportation.

In brief, Paris was awesome. Hallie and I met at the train station in the middle of Paris; it took me a bit longer than expected to get from the bus stop to the train station due to (a) going down stairs leading to Not The Metro and (b) acquiring a Japanese girl whose baggage included a suitcase nearly as large as herself (for four days!) and not a word of French. But! We both managed to get onto the metro, thanks to my one French phrase: “Where is the ____”. Thank you, Flight of the Conchords! The Japanese girl was very impressed (You speak French too? Oh wow!) and I felt like a bit of an idiot, because, of course, I don’t! ANYWAY. I met Hallie at the train station and we metroed our way to the quite nice hotel she’d reserved, where the concierge was condescending and asked us if we’d met Tom Cruise. Le sigh, as they say in French. After dropping our stuff off, we encountered food (or le food, as they say in French!) and then went on a short walk that turned into a long walk and which took us to Notre Dame via lots of Parisian prettiness. We metro-ed back and took a bit of a rest (which is to say, Hallie was responsible and stayed awake while I fell asleep) before setting out to meet C at the train-station. (C is Hallie’s host-sister; she was supposed to get in at tennish, but there’d been something funky with the trains and she ended up getting in at 12:30…what did people do in the age before cell phones???) We got to the train station, no problem (this is 12:30 at night, mind you) with a brilliant plan for catching the last metros of the night back to our hotel, only to be thwarted by the metro being gated off when we arrived. So we caught a bus. And another bus. And then the bus came to the end of the line, and we got off, and realized that we (a) where we were wasn’t where we wanted to be and (b) bus stops are named poorly and (c) it was Very Late and A Little Shady (not to mention Rather Dark). So we found the bus stop for going the other direction, only the next bus wasn’t due to arrive for another forty minutes or so. We were trying to figure out if it made sense to call a cab (and if so, to find a cab number somehow) when the same bus we’d just gotten off came by. The driver was, needless to say, more than a little amused; he was also very helpful and made sure we got to the right stop on the way back (it turns out we’d passed it on the bus, just hadn’t noticed). It should be noted that at some point during the initial bus ride Hallie had said that the area looked familiar and I had scoffed at her, because all of Paris looks familiar. As the French would say, le whoops. At the point we got to our actual stop it was 2ish (the bus ride was long!) so we found picnicish food in a convenience-shop-thing outside the hotel and, after picnic-ing, went to sleep. Yay! It should probably be mentioned that eh concierge wasn’t condescending once we had C with us. Les sighs.

Breakfast the next morning was in the hotel (it was quite a nice set-up, even though C and Hallie laughed at me for putting cheese on a croissant. I don’t care, it was delicious!). We walked over past Notre Dame again and through a lovely street market (where we brought strawberries that proceeded to get more and more squashed throughout the day) and over to the Pantheon, which we didn’t actually stay at because they were charging steep admission and we didn’t care thaaaat much. Wandering and metro-ing ensued, and we ended up over by…oh geez. The Opera building, perhaps? As you can tell, I’m way more interested in the wandering than I am in the actual reality of where we were. At any rate, we saw a fairly excellent brass band on the steps (again, video to come later) and took advantage of a very glamorous Starbucks, and then had a bit of a photo shoot in a dress shop across the street before wandering Galleries Lafayettes –super-store for the rich and…richer. Good lord there were some expensive (and hideous) things to look at! Also some lovely hats to try on, and an absolutely amazing stained glass ceiling. Then back to the hotel for siesta-ing (old murder mysteries dubbed into French are very hard to follow!) before out to dinner. Hallie had made reservations at this really cute little place with very elegantly arranged everything (nut-safe, too –it should be noted that traveling with allergies is way more comfortable when one’s traveling companions speak the language!) and when we were done and after the opening of birthday gifties (hours later! I rather like the whole “let’s sit around and talk at dinner for ages” mentality, although I guess that’s what we do when at school) we hopped back on the metro to get to the Eiffel Tower. So! The Eiffel Tower! We walked up to the Trocadero, where we sat on the big ledges to watch the sparkly lights at midnight. Champagne (ok, “Champagne” –it wasn’t ACTUALLY from Champagne so it has some other name that I can’t remember right now) was toasted with in plastic flutes that Hallie and I arted beforehand (yes, art IS a verb, and generally assumes some use of Sharpie) and strawberries (now a little moshy but still tasty) were consumed and Hallie made a wish on the Eiffel tower because neither C nor I had thought to bring candles to the restaurant. Unsurprisingly, she was unable to blow it out. ‘twas lovely!! Really lovely. [See Fig. 1, and by Fig. 1 I mean the photos!] We then caught the last set of metros home –lucky, actually, as we hadn’t planned to be taking the last ones, just happened to be on them. At the point that we got back to the hotel it was generally decided that going out somewhere else was a bad idea (and it was pretty late at that point anyway) so we crashed shortly thereafter, only to wake up at a decent hour to go to…

…Gregorian mass at Notre Dame! Pretty cool, excepting the fact that when I hear Gregorian Chant my thoughts are all in Gregorian Chant for a decent amount of time afterwards. Given that I didn’t know what they were saying and don’t speak a word of French (oh wait, I do! Gerard Depardieu! Thanks again, Flight of the Conchords!) I spent a lot of time admiring the roof and deciding that for all that I think religion is tripe, it has sponsored an awful lot of amazing architectural careers, and imagining what would happen if a very friendly dragon happened to wander in. I came to the conclusion that it would probably be pretty happy there, as long as they stopped the incense nonsense….luckily for you, at that point the service ended and we went in search of the lunch and the Louvre. I like the Louvre. A lot. More than the actual art, I like looking at people look at art, and at all the minor characters on the sides of massive portraits (those characters clearly have stories to tell…). We did a lot of wandering, and a lot of picture taking, and a good bit of mocking, and some picture taking of mocking, and a good bit of snickering (mostly me and Hallie, because we are Eternally Immature, even if we both are now in our third decades). When the Louvre started to close we hunkered down at the attached Starbucks to crank out several postcards (and by “we” I mean “we” –I usually buy loads of postcards and then manage to not send any of them, ever, but Hallie is a very efficient postcard writer and I decided to be inspired) before catching the metro to the bus stop (C stayed behind; her train out of Paris was later in the evening than our flight).

Getting to the bus station was a little eventful; we took the metro to the right stop, but when we left the metro we apparently took the wrong exit, because we ended up on this rather nice little rabbit-covered circular park in the middle of a roundabout. Yes, rabbit-covered. We’ve a video of that will be posted at some point. We walked all the way around and decided that it was suicide to cross the multi-lane, cross-walk-less road, so went back into the metro and out a different exit and to the bus station –just in time, it turned out, as we were two of the last on the bus (no seats left together) and the bus took off a few minutes after we got there. The airport was mobbed, but we eventually made it through security with no problem. Actually, that’s not quite true –Hallie’s boots somehow managed to make things beep, but they let her go pretty quickly and all was well, especially after we found food. And then the flight, which got in mostly on time and had a good handful of Galway international folk that I recognized; and then the airport, which we sat in for an hour or so until the bus was ready to leave; and then the bus, which was (as always) nearly empty, and which we slept on. Only, it got hotter and hotter and more and more sweltering, and by the time we got to Galway I thought I was going to asphyxiate. It was pretty late (and more to the point, we were exhausted) so we caught a cab back to my apartment, arriving at 2:30am.

Hallie’s visit part I: Galway!!

In which Galway acts the part of Stereotypical Ireland.

àDefinition: RAG Week: a week ostensibly for fundraising but in reality for staying as drunk as possible and skipping as many classes as possible and going to foam parties at clubs that open during the day for that purpose. Although it lasts a week, by the end of the week things have calmed down, because (as a friendly shop-woman put it) “they’re all broke by Wednesday.” No idea what RAG stands for. Raging Alcoholic Galwegians? *asks K* “Raise a Grand.” Oh. How boring, although they did in fact raise quite a bit more than that. Regardless, it happens after SHAG week, which is “sexual health and…” erm. not actually sure what the “g” stands for. Grand? Whatever. My point here is that during SHAG week there are “pee in a pot” receptacles around campus. Which you don’t actually need to know about, except for the fact that “pee in a pot” is a funny phrase and will possibly brighten your day as much is it brightened mine..

So the week Hallie was here happened to correspond with the week that the students were acting crazier than ever, and I spent a good deal of time hopelessly declaring, “It’s not usually like this!” You’ll have to ask her if she believes it! The overall summary: It was so nice to have her here! As a general rule I am perfectly happy to be wandering and exploring by myself, but things are a lot more hilarious and musical when there are two of us and going back to Solo would be a lot more difficult if it weren’t for the fact that I’ll see her again in a week and a half.

What did we do, you ask? Monday: we arrive at my apartment at 2:30am. The boys are still up, we have short-lived bursts of energy and then crash. I lose my key some place in the apartment. We sleep. I get up for a 9am class, and meet Hallie for lunch and wandering when she wakes up at noonish. We go to my English class and encounter Wellesley. Hallie and Wellesley figure out each other’s nicknames and I feel a bit foolish but mostly glad that they get along. That’s a lie, I feel mostly foolish. Ah well. They get along, so it’s okay that Hallie is “Easy Mac Hallie” and Wellesley is A-girl-A. We come back (Wellesley in toe) and (with K) demolish a pint of (half-price!) Ben and Jerry’s before making mac ‘n cheese. Hanging out ensues. Hallie makes a (I think successful, not sure how she thinks!) stab at low-whistling. We go out to King’s Head to see the wonderful Fred and James, who are a merely okay sort of cover band that we hype to make it sound like they are worth seeing. End Monday. End step by step narration.

Tuesday: two classes for me, then lunch and shopping (souveniry such things) around Galway. Choir rehearsal, at which most of our guys are absent until the end, when they show up very drunk. Things that are amusing for very short periods of time: drunk tenors. Things that are lovely: having Hallie at choir. Other things that are lovely: overtone harmonics. Things that cause the latter of the lovely thing: intonation. Things that go out the window with drunk tenors: intonation. After choir we went over to Monroe’s for Bailey’s coffees (mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm) and pancakes (?) and watching trad dancing (oh, and Wellesley joined us).

Wednesday: 9am Celtic mythology class, which I dragged Hallie to because I think the prof is House-ish. 9 am is a dreadful hour to be to class when one has been up super late the night before, but I felt vindicated when the prof sang for us. Two different versions of keening. And got applauded. An odd fellow, but I really do like him! We then walked down to Salthill in the glorious sunniness, took pictures and a video or two (videos to come later), frolicked with a dog, drank fancy hot chocolates, and took the bus back to town. We stopped at the Cathedral on the way to class –the first time I’d been in the Cathedral, actually—and were met with real-life keening. Case study, anyone? Hallie came to Irish class, too –we’d prepped her on how to respond to the very few phrases I actually know, which came in handy for the “quick! have a conversation with the people next to you!” and Daíthi (read: DAH-hee) was particularly amusing and liberal with the storytelling. After my history tutorial we attempted to take over the piano behind the chapel for some singing, but there was a service about to happen (oh, have I mentioned that it was Ash Wednesday? It was) so that didn’t work. Evening = vegging, = movies, =frozen pizza, = hanging out. = Nice. I miss good solid Hanging Out here. I am looking forward to next fall back at Midd. I am trying not to count chickens for this summer.

Thursday: See “Hallie’s visit part II: Epic Adventures on Inis Mór!!!”. Night: dinner out at Sonny’s, where there were entirely too many choices of things to dip chips into. Verdict: Guinness really is gross, and a waste of euro. It does look pretty, though. Clarification: the Guinness was not one of the chip-dipping options; well, I suppose it could have been, but what a waste of a good chip. Clarification part deux: think ‘chips’ as in ‘fish and’. Then going through photos happened, as did more successful low-whistleage. As did a particularly impressive packing job on Hallie’s part. Traveling with one smallish bag for ten days is no mean feat!

Friday: We walked to the bus station in time for her 8am bus to Shannon. It was early. We were a bit under slept.

Hallie’s visit part II: Epic Adventures on Inis Mór!!!

In which Intrepid Back-country Gangsters encounter the strangest-looking cat ever, lots of stone walls, a ferocious horse, the edge of the world, and a fairly unfortunate beaten path. Also, in which Hallie doesn’t steal a chicken and Hannah loses a lens cap. Because she is her father’s daughter. Or In which a box of Teacakes and a package of Tayto Toobz meets its doom.

The buses for all the Galway tours (Cliffs of Moher & the Burren; Connemara; the Aran Islands) leave from the end of my street (there’s a hostel right there) but we weren’t sure if the Aran Islands buses left at 9 or 9:30 so we got there at 9 Thursday morning. Since they actually were scheduled for 9:30, we had a chance to go grab coffee at a Mocha Beans across Eyre Square. Well. There was a Very Drunk man there. At first I wasn’t sure if he was drunk or mentally handicapped, but he was definitely drunk. The Russian barrsita had to sit him down (“here’s the milk, here’s the sugar. Drink your coffee”) and he had a grand time singing bar songs and being hushed by the owner dude. Every time he was hushed he’d say “oh, oh I’m sorry” and then he’d break into song again. As we were heading out to our bus, he caught sight of us and asked if we were American, and what part we were from. He clearly had no idea what Michigan or Texas were, because he said, “oh, …like back-country gangsters?” We agreed, still attempting to leave, and he asked what we thought of our new president. Only, he didn’t say “new president,” he threw some horribly derogatory terms in instead (terms I’ve not heard even unhappy Americans use). We just kind of looked at each other –I mean, what? Our what?!? We stuttered a denial, but…really! It was more hilarious than anything, to be honest-- he was sooooo drunk. So drunk. If ever there was someone to not take seriously, he’d be it!

The bus ride wasn’t particularly long, and nor was the ferry, and we arrived on Inis Mór, the largest of the three Aran islands but still a tiny place, at about noon (the ferry back was to leave at five). We searched out lunch –not much choice, because it was the off season and a weekday and nearly everything else was closed—and ended up at a cute café next to the grocery; the waiter/host/server guy and the cook spoke Irish to each other, unsurprisingly –the Aran Islands are one of the few places where Irish is still the main language. We then stocked up at the grocery, pet (well, I pet, Hallie laughed at) a cat with the largest, most misshapen nose ever, and rented bikes (and spiffy helmets). As the guy at the rental place said, “Bikes are ten euro for the day, the exercise is free.” And we set off!

And promptly stopped to take pictures of the post office. And a telephone booth (Alison and Lizzie: no, not on a cliff! I wouldn’t have stood in it if it had been…). And a bar with chickens all over the front yard. And the ruins of a church. And the ocean. And horses. There were two horses, and they were friendly and came over to the edge of the field to say hello. Hallie put her hand out the way her grandmother taught her, so that the white horse could smell her hand, and then it ate her. No, really. From my vantage point, several meters back, it looked like it was eating only her coat –not a problem, since she was borrowing my coat for the day! Only, it turned out it was actually eating her hand, to the point that she had a very distinct crescent-shaped tooth mark on her hand. I would like to say that I was a concerned and caring friend at this point, but the truth is that I was laughing too hard to be of any help whatsoever. Moral: never let a horse smell you, even if it is a friendly horse. Alternative moral: horses have big teeth. Alternative moral number two: when your friend says “ouch!” it’s probably a good indication that yes, she really is being eaten. Alternative moral number three: if you laugh at your friend who is being eaten by a horse, she will not like you very much. And thus, we set out again!

It was a glorious day for a ride, and the island was beautiful. Also, there were very few people about, and we only passed one tour van. There was a stop at a white sand beach, and a stop at some rocks that were possibly a seal colony but had no seals (I had some issues with the map…). We got to Dún Aonghasa (Fort Angus) in fairly decent time, given how much we stopped to take pictures, and walked (/hiked? what’s the difference? it was along a stony path that went very distinctly Up) up to the fort, which was amazing. Actually, the amazing part was more the bit where it was built at the top of the large hill and one of it’s sides was non-existent –just a drop down the cliff into the Atlantic Ocean. Breathtaking. It really did feel like we’d hit the edge of the world (which, of course, gave rise to discussion about Great Big Sea’s cover of REM’s “End of the World (I Feel Fine)”). It was a little windy, but not cold, and there was no one else up there which was kind of cool (I can only imagine how crowded it gets on weekends/during the summer). We were a bit surprised that there was no barrier between us and the edge, but there was a fence along a bit of the fort –where, if you fell, you’d drop a couple of feet and bang your elbow on the rock, but survive. Not at all a place to bring small children. Or larger children. Or large groups of stupid college students. Or anyone drunk. Shall I continue? At any rate, it was pretty cool. Also, Hallie’s phone had five bars of signal strength, which is significant later. We took a picture of this. (I was later laughed at by my mum for having taken a picture of this.)

The problems started on the ride back. We had time, and looking at our map there was this additional little loop of road off of the main recommended loop, and Hallie wanted to see the “burial slab,” so we took it. Turns out it wasn’t on the main recommended loop for a reason, and that reason was Rocks & Steepness. Also, as far as I’m concerned, the “burial slab” was non-existent. After a bit of up-hilling and not-finding-the-turn-back-to-the-main-path-ing and Hannah-losing-her-lens-capping and getting-passed-by-a-nice-man-in-a-tractor-ing we were getting a bit discouraged—not the least of which because there was only one ferry leaving the island for the day, at 5pm, and Hallie had a flight out of Shannon the next morning. And we’d just come to the conclusion that we might not actually make it back in time to catch the ferry, but maybe if we walked uphill fast? And that was when Hallie’s bike chain jammed.

Now, as a bit of background, mine had jammed a bit earlier in the trip, but we’d managed to unjam it. My hands and pants were a bit greasy from the encounter, but it had gotten fixed. Hallie’s bike, though, was not getting any sort of fixed. We both tried and tried and tried but there was nothing for it, it was stuck. Hallie’s phone tells us it is four, so we have to make a beeline for the boat, only…Yeah. So the wheels would go around, and the brakes would mostly work, but there was no peddling, which led to walking on the uphills/straightaways and coasting on the downhills. Eventually we came to the high point of the path/island –we could see where we wanted to be (waaaay far away), and could tell that it was all downhill from there (literally!). Downhill = coasting, right? Hallie started off first, and I followed shortly behind. At some point I realized that it was a bit too steep for my comfort, and that I would walk it and “Hallie can just wait for me at the bottom” –at this point we are both fully aware that I am waaaaay more cautious/neurotic than she will ever be, so I figured it was just natural wimpiness on my part, and was plodded my way down the hill. And then I turned a corner and she was sitting on the ground, and my first thought was “Wow she must have gotten down here fast” and my second thought was “Oh god, is she sitting there on purpose?” and then she said “Ow,” and I thought “Oh God, she broke her leg and we’ll never get out of here!”

Turns out that her bike didn’t have as much control as either of us had thought, and she’d done a particularly spectacular somersault sideways over the handlebars. [At this point, let’s take a break to remind everyone to Wear Helmets! Really!] She was a real trooper about it –I’m pretty sure I would have cried at least a little, but she was quite stoic and soon downright cheerful. Damage: scraped/bleeding elbow, knee, hands. We cleaned her hands off with water, and realized that we were dumb for not bringing along a first aid kit (if we’d needed epinephrine or an inhaler we would have been covered, but what about antibiotic ointment or bandages?). Everything had fallen out of her pockets, but all in one pile, which was handy (so we didn’t have to trek back up the hill/mountain to retrieve things) and she also managed not to damage my camera at all in the fall --kind of a miracle, actually, given the state of her hands. She was wearing the camera and I had the backpack at that point that she went flying. (Also, the camera was the least of my worries –she was checking to make sure it was ok and I was still busy freaking out that she might have broken herself) (also, it’s clear she isn’t a Robertson, because she didn’t even lose the lens cap!). Her arm/shoulder hurt but wasn’t broken, and we were at the bottom of the steepest part. And so we set out again.

We must have been quite the sight walking back –our pants were covered in grease from wiping it off our hands after trying to fix the bike chains, our hands were greasy, Hallie’s hands were bloody, as was her elbow and knee. Also, she was scootering her bike along the flattish bits at this point –it was pretty funny to be following (we’ve got a verrrry bumpy video of this as well). When we walked up to the bike rental place, with fifteen minutes to spare before the ferry left the guy looked positively horrified –we were smiling, but we really must have looked a sight. He had a first aid kit, and said (in disbelief), “We have a retrieval service!”

Um. Yeah. So we had five bars of phone service and a map with the bike company’s phone number on it and it didn’t occur to us to call for help. Sigh. Or, as they say in Irish, Seagh. (Probably not, but the spelling of things and their pronunciations are completely unrelated as far as I can tell.) Anyway, we were still in good spirits (if exhausted) and were happy to collapse onto the ferry and demolish the rest of the teacakes. And the Tayto Toobz. And the water. And somehow, we managed not to be seasick at all.

All in all, a pretty awesome trip. Until the bike woes, it was wonderful. Lesson 1: Never say “I’m pretty sure life doesn’t get better than this,” because it will probably cause things to go wrong. Lesson 2: If it isn’t highlighted on the map, chances are it is off the beaten path. Or, as we discovered, it IS the beaten path. Regardless, avoid it. Lesson 3: No more lessons! Just fun! We took lots of videos on the Island, so we’ll put those together and post them at some point.

Things right now. (Okay, okay, “!”. Just not as much “!” as the “!, !!, and !!!” of the last three headings…)

In which things are mundane. Except for a dragon, and a princess, and a couple of toadstools.

I know that I reported that it was spring a few days ago, but apparently that was a lie because it snowed once yesterday and twice today. Big fat flakes. The poor stoic little daffodils pretend nothing is wrong, but they must be terribly cold.

I haven’t gotten much sleep so far this week because of midterms and early classes. I plan to go to bed early tonight, though, and can sleep a little later as my first thing tomorrow is a blood draw at half ten. (INR: relatively stable. Score.)

I really enjoy Homework Club on Tuesdays. Honestly, I’m not sure which I like better –working with the kids, or the lengthy but friendly walk over with the other girls (and occasional guy) who run the thing. T and I thought we were the only ones meeting at the Uni to walk over yesterday, but halfway there (as it was beginning to rain) we got a call that one of the guys was supposed to be with us. We met him at Dunnes, halfway there, which was lucky as T’s umbrella was too broken to use and she was able to buy a pretty one at Dunnes. At which point it stopped raining, naturally. My umbrella is in the process of breaking, too, which is a bit distressing as it is the lovely rainbow one mum got me for freshman year. I’m hoping that I can patch it up, but I’m not too optimistic –some of the joints seem to have worn out. (Know anyone who’d want to be a rainbow bat for Halloween next year?) Anyway, the kids were all fine for the first half of the session, and completely crazy for the second half. Really, how many times should you have to tell one person to Please Don’t Climb On The Tables, Really, I Mean It. Sigh. We have no control, and they know it. We have a plan for next week, though…

Choir is also going well, and we’re off to some competition in Limerick this weekend. The group is fairly evenly American/international and Irish students, which is rather surprising, especially as there are fewer than fifty singers out of a university of ten thousand people. I’ve stopped going to archery; it was cool but too crowded/too much standing around time at first, and then I had summer applications to write and midterms to do, and at this point I have no interest in going back. I’d like to try again at Midd in the fall, maybe. (Alison: buddies?) In the world of being lax, I also haven’t been to the Trad sessions at the Crane for several weeks; choir event things, visitor(!), and pure exhaustion are good reasons, but not excuses, so I hope to go again next week. I wish they weren’t on Tuesdays, though –Tuesdays are especially exhausting.

Things to come.

In which you don’t know whether to trust the subtitles because the last one was completely bogus and this one is pointless.

• This weekend: Limerick.
• Next weekend: Amsterdam! With Lis and Hallie!
• St. Patty’s Day: Lis is coming back from Amsterdam with me for a day or two, which happens to cover St. Patty’s day! Not sure what we’re doing yet; there are no classes that Tuesday but I don’t want to spend it in Dublin, where things are allegedly more Exciting and Violent and Drunk then here in Drunk but Comfortable Galway.
• Only a few more weeks of classes, which is just ridiculous.
• First full week of April: Mum and Dad visiting! Gallivanting around Ireland –up to Giant’s Causeway and back down the coast.
• After that: No idea. A few exams. Traveling, I hope!
• After that: Flying to see folks graduate at Midd!
• After that: Train-ing (…or walking, or teleporting) to Plainwell to see Em graduate! (Yeeeeeeeep.)
• After that: Hopefully having an internship? *desperately trying not to count chickens*

T, from homework club, laughs at me for going away all the time. To be honest, it is a little ridiculous –I love it, but have to stress to her that at home things are Not At All This Adventuresome (or at least not on as grand a scale). And I do actually do work (a good deal of it!) during the school week, so I’m not *only* traveling. Regardless, I will very much miss being able to jet off to other continents.

Random points.

In which this is a subtitle.

1. If you ask for “tape” in a shop they’ll look at you blankly and then say, “Oh, Sellotape?”
2. If you try to buy Sellotape at the 2-euro store across from the post office because you need to tape up a package, your only option will be a package of 6 rolls. For 2-euro. Handy hint: pay for it, take out one roll and leave the rest at the shop with the Indian man behind the counter who, even after hearing your accent, thinks that you are Irish because “you don’t look American.” Response to handy hint: “Um.”
3. If one of the buttons on your winter jacket falls off in Vermont while you’re rushing around trying not to piss off the Public Safety officer who is Waiting For You To Put Your Stuff In The Barn and you put it someplace safe until you have time to sew it back on, there is a good chance that it will appear in a notebook you open three months later. In the middle of a lecture theater in Ireland.
4. A roommate(/faux-housemates, a la Midd!) who brings one tea when one looks like one needs it is an invaluable thing to have.
5. I thought a half-pint of something was called a “lass ___”. It isn’t, it’s a “glass ____”. Lame!
6. There is a sign above the entrance to the apartments that says “Niland House Apartments.” Either it is new or I am really, really unobservant and somewhat an idiot. *update* K informs me that it has been there all along. It is official: I am an idiot. Let’s chalk it up to having been jetlagged…
7. Ryanair is good at tricking one into thinking that travel is cheap. False!
8. The fact that one- and two-euro coins exist is dangerous, because they are way too easy to spend. Unlike most coins, they are actually quite significant and add up very quickly.
9. One of my roommates is going to be in the St. Patty’s Day parade. Pushing a lighthouse float and wearing overalls. The rest of us are SO amused by this, and to his credit he’s pretty amused too (it’s part of volunteering with some handicapped group, and I think he’s just thankful not to be the one at the top of the lighthouse, waving –they volunteered another of their friends, who wasn’t there tonight, for it!). Hah.

Thing related not at all to anything Irish.

In which I endorse something. *gasp*

If you are an iTunes user, I highly recommend the “Genius” feature. For awhile I resisted for no good reason, but then I tried it out the other day, and it really does an excellent job of grouping songs together. Note: this is not at all a substitute for good old-fashioned mix creating: I fully believe in the power of mixes! But if you’ve got other things to do and don’t have specific songs you want to listen to, it does a great job of matching moods. Also, it’s really good at pulling out songs (from my library, that is) that I’m not particularly familiar with but now realize that I need to be. *endorses*

And finally: Important thing discovered during research for my Medical Sociology Midterm

You really ought to not be lazy and just read this one.

Manufacturers (for members of the EU and also in the US) are NOT LEGALLY REQUIRED TO PUT CONTAMINATION WARNINGS ON PRODUCTS THAT ARE MANUFACTURED WITH POSSIBLE CONTAMINANTS. They are required to put if the product contains that allergen, but not if it is made in the factory or even on the same equipment. Aside from the fact that this is [expletive], this means that if something doesn’t SAY “may contain” it still “may contain….” I think I’m going to stick with the “most companies don’t want to get sued so they’ll label anyway” frame of thought, but it makes me much more wary of smaller companies with no allergen warnings on their labels at all … if/when I figure out how this can be changed (the US is working on a revision of the regulation right now) I’ll be sure to let you know. In the mean time, just be aware.

******Good lord, that’s a lot of words.**********

If you’ve read this far, yay! You deserve some sort of prize (apparently I’m not above bribery?)! *thinks* Send me an email? Or just leave a message. And I’ll come up with something.

If you’ve skimmed this far, sort of yay! No prize for you, though! Bummer. Not that I’d know if you left me a message anyway!

If you skipped to the end to read my Epic and Meaningful Closing words, I guess I need to provide some. Erm. Here we go:

Bail ó Dhia oraibh!

(Alternatively, Guinneach go sail ort!)