wet and wild irish sports

I don't think that they're meant to be wet, but given the climate around here.... I had gaelic football practice today and was totally soaked by the end of it. today was so wet that I didn't even feel like I needed a shower after practice, or 'training,' as they call it here. I've had training four days a week for the past two weeks, and while it's great craic (a delightful irish word, which roughly translated means "goings-on"). gaelic football is fun, and next monday we'll finally start with some real training; until now we've mostly been doing scrimages, which are ok, but when you don't really know how to play in the first place.... it's kind of like having a soccer match composed completely of goalies, fifteen on a side, trying to score a goal or get a point by kicking it through uprights very similar to those on a football field. then there's camogie.... how can I even begin to explain my fascination with camogie? I've run into some Irish people who looked at me like I was crazy when I told them that I was trying to learn camogie (it is in fact a very similar expression to the one I get in response to saying that I've tried to learn irish). it's not like anything I've ever played before - it's like hockey, golf, and football all mixed together. ashley and I have decided that it's our mission to learn to play, and we've already outlasted a lot of other people who showed up for the first practice or two, then stopped. the group that plays camogie is a lot smaller, which is nice. we've already gotten to know several of the people, and one of them even gave us a ride back to campus, even though she didn't even know our names. we needed a ride back to campus because the practice pitches are about a fifteen minute walk north of campus. I made it there from the apartment today in 30 minutes, which was actually pretty fast, since it usually takes 35... not that anyone really stresses about timeliness... anyways. I'm enjoying running around and meeting irish people, even with all the rain and mud (which mucks up my beautiful red shoes).
classes have been going well. I really enjoy my classes with daibhi o croinin, which are the ones about medieval ireland. tuesdays really are my favorite days - I have his seminar in the morning, which is two hours of discussion about the development of the columban monastic family, then at noon I'm in his introductory course on medieval ireland, which is an hour (45 minutes, really) of him discussing the basics of early irish life, society, religion, etc., peppered with entertaining anecdotes and social commentaries. he has an incredibly dry sense of humor, which of course appeals to me. in both of those classes there's another girl named frida (like the shortened version of frederika, not like the deceased mexican artist) who is from berlin, and who also spent last summer in carraroe! what are the odds? we worked together on a book presentation (which we rocked, by the way), and it's nice to have someone to sit with in class.
what else is there to say.... still can't get the picture publisher thing working. :-\ I'll be going to the aran islands (inis mor, in particular) with my roommates tara and elisa and a bunch of elisa's european friends. I've also been in communication with my friend emma who is in berlin, and we have agreed that it will be necessary for each of us to pay visits to the other.
I think that's about it for now, but I'm sure that I'll remember something as soon as I publish this, so oh well.
cheers!

new shoes!

this seems to be a recurring theme. I'm not really a clothes horse (not really...), but I have found that I am lacking some very important items of clothing and footwear, mostly water proof things. well, I went two days of practicing out on a large grassy pitch, and the lack of cleats was definitely noticeable on at least one occassion, which I'll return to in a minute.
so on wednesday they had the first training session for camogie, which I finally found, after about an hour walk from the apartment. there's a shorter way to walk, but it's probably not less than 40 minutes in each direction, and since I'll probably be walking back in the dark, I'm thinking of investing in a monthly bus pass. if I have training (practice, that is) three or four times a week, the thing will pay for itself pretty quickly. anyways, my friend ashley (from vermont, via wisconsin) and I decided that we definitely need to try out this very unique sport. we ended up being the only people there who had never played camogie before. there was one other girl who knew very little about the game, una, who was part of our little group of non-cleat-wearing, non-masked group. we were given to some returning players to try to get us a little instruction, but I don't think they understood that we had no idea what to do. they gave each of us a hurlie (the stick which is kind of like a cross between a baseball bat, a hockey stick, and a golf club) and were trying to get us the hit the slitter (ball that looks like either a baseball or a tennis ball) off the ground. you swing it kind of like a golf club, but the end of the stick is flat like a hockey stick, so you can hit it with either side. I was having a heck of a time just trying to hit the dumb thing, while ashley is across from me, just hitting away... very annoying. then one of the older girls came over and was like, I think your hurlie might be a little short... then she gave me one that was about two inches longer, and voila, I was actually able to make contact with the slitter. after a couple minutes of that we were thrown into the practice match that was going on. it was a little intimidating: here are these girls in masks and helmets running around with sticks, and little ole me can hardly hit the ball off the ground. well, we ran around for about 15 minutes, and I can proudly say that I never touched the slitter that whole time.
after all this excitement I thought that our day was over, but oh no, there was more. one of the coaches suggested that we go to a tutorial that evening where there would be a bit more basic instruction. an hour later (and a very long and tiring walk as well) we found ourselves back at the pitch with a group of what we later found out to be teachers, who were there getting instructions on how to deal with little kids playing hurling or camogie. we then went through an hour of "what to do when teaching a group hurling." the guy there went through the basic skills and what kind of drills you can do with kids from the ages of 11-15. most of the people there had some experience with hurling, but a few didn't, and much hilarity ensued, such as the first "clash" between ashley and myself, where she missed the slitter and caught my left hand full across the knuckles. it doesn't hurt too much today, but my hand was not happy yesterday. an upshot of our obvious badness was that one of the coaches of the women's team who was there let us take home the hurlies and a couple slitters, so that we could practice over the weekend.
the next day, thursday, it was time for gaelic football. this one I had to go to alone, because ashley wants to do cricket instead (boo). when I got there, there were a few more people who didn't know how to play, including una from camogie and another american girl. I was a little nervous after the challenging aspects of camogie, but it turns out that gaelic football is like soccer with a lot of goalies. and I mean a lot of goalies. each side has fifteen players on the field at a time. normally everyone has someone who is their mark, but the coach just kind of put us in the middle of the field and let us run around. it's actually pretty different from soccer, even though many of the skills are similar. people usually stay in their position, and you run while holding the ball, but every four steps you either have to bounce the ball or do what's called a 'solo' where you just drop the ball and kick it up to yourself. well, I had a golden opportunity at one point. the goalie for my team got the ball, I waved to her, and she kicked down the field straight to me. I was wide open since I had no one marking me, and I caught the ball off the bounce, a nice over the head catch, and was turning to kick it down field, since I had seen that I had a clear shot down toward the goal. as I was turning not one, but both of my feet went flying out from under me and I landed flat on my ass. and hard. it didn't hurt that much, especially after the shot from the hurlie the day before, but I felt like an idiot, and I lost the ball. sigh. when I got up the coach asked if I was alright and I said, yeah, just lost my feet, and he suggested I go buy boots over the weekend, the kind with the screw in cleats.
that was a lot of back story just to get to my initial point, that I got football boots. ashley and I went shopping for boots this afternoon, and at champion sports they had this pair of shiny red shoes, which ashley and I zoomed in on right away. they were so pretty....but ashley wanted them, so I decided to take one for the time, and just let her get them. when the sales lady came over, ashley asked her for the shoes in fours (the size she had found fit her here) and she was told that they didn't come in anything smaller than a six. after consoling her briefly, I asked for them in a seven. turns out the seven and a halfs were better, but I fell in love with them, and 40 euros didn't seem like much to keep myself from falling on my ass again.
after we each had found shoes, ashley and I went out into a field by her apartment and we practiced tossing up the slitter and hitting it, which is really the main way of moving the ball. we spent about an hour at it, discovering in the process that I'm good at hitting the ball with a front hand (standing like I was going up to bat or to hit a golf ball) while ashley is better at hitting it with a back hand. tomorrow she's going to come over here and we're going to work on hitting slitters off the ground and picking them up... it should be fun.

on a totally unrelated note, I know that I had promised pictures at some point, but I'm having troubles contacting to the picture service, but that's one of my projects for the weekend.

yey for the internet!

after much tinkering with settings and so on, I was able to figure out the whole internet thing, which I found very exciting. I just want to make sure that I don't use the computer instead of being social and going out and doing things here. it seems like it would be really easy to use this as a crutch, and I don't want that to happen.
I do have some plans though for things to do in the coming weeks. the first weekend in october tara, elisa, and I are going to inis mor with a group of elisa's friends. it's very funny to me to see elisa and her group planning for things so far in advance, since it's so much at odds with the irish mindset of just kind of letting things happen. we tease her a bit about being the one who organizes everything and she blames it on her german heritage. ah well.
then (we haven't quite worked out the details yet) tara and I are going to go to brussels, belgium. why brussels you might ask. well I'll tell you: ryanair is having a sale in which plane tickets to several places, including brussels, are free. most of the destinations from dublin or shannon were somewhere on the neighboring island, and tara had expressed an interest in travelling a little further afield. we have to pay something like 16 euros in taxes, but really, that's practically nothing.
I guess that's about it for now...hurray for the trojans beating the mormons yesterday! it's so great being able to talk to people on aim....

continuing where I left off...

where was I? ah, yes, the big sigh of relief that I had gotten into my history seminar. which I went to this morning, and when professor o chroinin (I'll probably never master irish spelling) called on me to answer a question, I was able to do so, though I was really just repeating what he said last week, but that's ok. later he was describing what happened to clerics when the king who backed them died (generally of unnatural causes), and he said that the cleric was in 'deep doo doo.' he was curious how someone would say that in america, and after thinking about it I (as the only american in the class) said 'fubar.' when that had been figured out I went on to point out the closely related, though not quite as accurate (in this case), term 'snafu.' I enjoyed the class, even if there were some people who got stuck on the idea of families garnering influence from their saintly relatives/ancestors. the conversation about that went on far longer than it really should have.
after seminar I went down to a coffee shop in the building next to the IT building, where I was able to just sit and eat a scone until the next class, with the same professor, though this time in a leture hall. while I was waiting to go in, brigid, one of the two other people from sc walked by. we talked for a little bit, then she introduced her friend katrin from wales. she and I sat together during class, exchanging glances whenever the crazy old woman said something completely idiotic or laughed far too loud.
I guess I should talk about this weekend, since I mentioned that I had plans last post. I went to the cliffs of moher on sunday my roommate tara, where we were witnesses to the aftermath of hurricane frances. the winds were incredible, and when it rained it was absolutely horizontal, and felt like bullets on the face. it was a long bus ride, and we didn't have much time there, but really, in that weather, you don't need much time. hopefully the pictures I took there came out ok. if they did, I'll post them, assuming they ever get the internet for our apartment. we were supposed to have it by monday, so I asked one of the fionas about it when I went for laundry tokens (one of the less exciting things I've had to do so far) and she said that the system was down, but if it wasn't up by wednesday to come back and see her. so the wait for that continues.
I'm going to go now, and enjoy the sunshine while it lasts, aka five minutes.

where to begin....

I suppose that I should begin where I left off last, but I can't quite remember when that was... I found a latin class, though I think I may have gotten myself in over my head; there are only four of us, and I think that everyone else has taken latin for several years, but hopefully I'll be able to keep up by preparing ahead of time for everything. I would love to take a class on something other than cicero, but the only other latin course being offered is beginners latin, and it would be silly for me to do that again. now I just need to wait for tomorrow to find out how many units the class is worth, so that I'll know if I need to find another class or not.
speaking of classes, I got into the seminar that I wanted to take, but not without a good four hour period where I thought that I hadn't gotten in. the history department told us that they would post lists of who got into what classes on monday, since they work their system off of a lottery: they draw forms from those turned in, and give people their top choices if their available. I wrote down 1,2,3,4,5,&6 for the class that I wanted to take, and added a note that I had already gone to the seminar once (even though it wasn't required) and would cry if I didn't get in. well, I went upstairs yesterday morning and while looking around found the list of students enrolled in each seminar. and my name was no wear to be found. I felt ill. I walked over to the secretary's office, to see if I could talk to someone about it, and there was no one there. I then had to sit through latin and northern irish history (which I was late for because the career center which I generally pass through was locked for lunch so I had to go back around....) before I could do anything. finally, I went upstairs to the history department again, determined to smile, beg, or cry, do anything, to get into this class. while I'm upstairs waiting for the secretary, the professor who works next door asked if there was anything she could do. I started to explain what had happened, and I'll be damned if I didn't start tearing up. she walked over to the other secretary's office with me, explaining that the other secretary was NOT the person to talk to (apparently she's not a very pleasant person; I had heard this from others as well). when we got to the other office she pointed to a paper on that bulletin board, which had the names of visiting students who had been enrolled in the seminars. and whose name was at the top of the list for 'iona, columba, & kells'? that's right. mine. so I got in after all without have to smile or beg or cry (though that happened anyways).
I'll continue my update of the goings on of the past few days after my classes.

back in gaillimh

it's been a while, but I hope that can be forgiven. russia was amazing, as was the weather at every port, except for copenhagen, which was pretty decent inspite of that.
my apartment here is galway looks amazing, especially after trojan hall and la sorbonne. I'm probably not going to stay there until friday, since the folks are in town and the b&b has more sheets and towels that I do. I registered today and got my student id, and yesterday I got a cell phone, which should be very useful.
we toured around ireland for a bit after we finished the cruise, and I have to say that clonmacnoise, the rock of cashel, and glendalough were every bit as amazing as I had hoped they would be. somehow, just being here makes me happy. I miss california, of course, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now.